Intuitive Music

Genre of composition that uses acoustic sound sources augmented or transformed with electronic technology.

Electro-acoustic music was one of the most important forms of formal music composition between the 40’s and 60’s, and it was related with the genres of musique concrete and avant-garde. The origins of the electro-acoustic music are far back in the history, from the Futurism and Dadaism European movements in the early 20th century. The Dadaism was an international revolutionary movement born in Zurich in 1916 as a response to the established bourgeois rationality and morality, which allowed the absurdity of the world war. The movement had major centres in Zurich, Paris, Berlin, Cologne and New York City and it was based in the return of art to the most absurd, primitive and elementary ideals. Dadaism was practised in different kinds of arts, including poetry (Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, Louis Aragon), painting (Marcel Duchamp, Max Earnst), and sculpture (Kurt Schwitters). Some of the avant-garde music composers associated with the Dadaist movement were Ervin Schulhoff, Erik Satie, Edgar Varese, and later John Cage.In 1920 Edgar Varese was the first composer to get close to the electro-acoustic music by composing a series of ensembles of analog sounds from acoustic instruments, including flute percussive sounds, clicks and fire siren wails. Varesse was one of the first composers interested in working with electronic created sounds and during the early 30’s he started a series of works based in the use of electronic instruments, such as and . In 1954 Edgar Varese produced at the famous Columbia-Priceton electronic studio “Poeme Electronique”, a work for the 1957 World’s Fair in Brussels performed on 425 loudspeakers, and accompanied by projected images, being one of the first large-scale multimedia productions. Mario Davidovsky was one of the young composers who got impressed by this work and he later developed the new born genre in the forthcoming decades.

In 1939, John Cage was one of the pioneers of the electro-acoustic genre where performers use multiple record players changing the variable speed settings in a series of indeterminacy experiments, which were presented in his work “Imaginary Landscape no 1″.

During the 50’s the main goals of the electro-acoustic experimentation were the creation of new synthetic sounds, and the organization of sequences of sounds in a rhythmic time-frame controlled mechanically. In 1952 the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa became a pioneer in the use of analog synthesized sounds to create effects in the sound track of his classic work “Seven Samurais”.

By the late 60’s the development of the electronic technology allowed the generations of old and new electro-acoustic composers to develop new experimentations and executions of formal music theories.

Electro-acoustic music has also influenced an array of popular music artists such as Broadcast, Tangerine Dream, Frank Zappa, Wendy Carlos, and Kraftwerk, to name a few.

Some of the most reputed electro-acoustic composers are Edgar Varese, Pierre Boulez, Robert Ashley, John Eaton, Mauricio Kagel, Max Brand, Luigi Nono, Alice Shields, Diane Thome, Iancu Domitrescu, Ana Maria Avram, Charles Dodge, Annea Lockwood, Bernard Parmegiani, Halim El-Dabh, Francis Dhomont, Torotu Takemitsu, Gordon Numma, Yves Daoust, Arne Nordheim, Daria Semegen, Hildergard Westerkamp, Ton de Leeuw, James Tenney, Francoise Bayle, Gustav Ciamaga, Tod Dockstader, Henk Badings, Ivan Tcherepnin, Phil Smiley, Jon Appleton, Natasha Barret, Karlheinz Essl, Tristam Cary, Mara Helmut, Olivia Block, and Percy Grainer.