433timeline.htm

MUSM 433/533 TIME LINE

An excellent, similar, yet more detailed time line can be found at Dartmouth HERE.

1759 Clavecin Electrique invented by Jean-Baptiste de Laborde. Low voltage electricity applied to a harpsichord-like keyboard rang bells so long as a key was depressed.
1863 Hermann Helmholtz published The Sensations of Tone, an important early treatise on the principles of acoustics.
1876 Alexander Graham Bell transmits voice using electrical current.
1876 – 78 Thomas Alva Edison invents the phonograph.
1898 Vlademar Poulsen developed the Telegraphone, the first magnetic recording device, which used wire as its recording medium. The machine failed because of lack of amplification.
1906 Cahill builds the first Telharmonium (later dismantled and installed into Telharmonic Hall), a massive instrument that generated sounds electronically and resulted in the first commercial effort to distribute music over telephone lines (a precursor to Muzak?).
1913 Luigi Russolo published the Futurist manifesto The Art of Noises, which proposed the composition of works based entirely on the use of sound sources from the environment. This work was an aesthetic influence of Pierre Schaeffer.
1919 Leon Theramin developed the Theramin, which produced sounds using two oscillators that responded to the proximity of hands to antennae.
1928 Maurice Martenot developed the Ondes Martenot, an electronic instrument written for by many prominent twentieth century composers (Hindemith and Messiaen to name two).
1948 Pierre Schaeffer begins experiments with Musique Concrete. He classifies 56,000 sound possibilities, of which the Objet Sonore is the basic sound event. He also identified two possible approaches to composition in this style: a rational, studio oriented approach and a creative, sound oriented approach.
1948 Louis and Bebe Barron experiment with Tape Music (musique concrete) in their home studio in NYC. Their aesthetic was based on the equipment (the studio approach). They attracted many music personalities that would go on to prominence in and out of electronic music (John Cage and David Tudor to name two).
1948 Pierre Schaeffer's Concert de Bruits is broadcast over French Radio, the first public presentation of musique concrete. The concert featured Schaeffer's five musique concrete etudes.
1951 Schaeffer's assistant Jacques Poullin designed the auditorium/studio of Groupe de Musique Concrète, Club d'Essai.
1951 Cologne electronic music studio established at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), committed to the creation of music that adhered to the philosophies of Meyer-Eppler.
1952 Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening present a Concert of Tape Music at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. They and their work would overshadow the work of the Barron's in and out of America.
1955 Harry Olson and Herbert Belar developed the RCA Mark I Synthesizer. An expanded and modified version, the Mark II, was installed at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1958 on the Columbia University campus.
1955 RAI studios (Studio di Fonologia Musicale) established in Milan, Luciano Berio its director. The studio philosophy emphasized texture, sonority and speech manipulation. It was one of the best equipped studios of its day, featuring the Springer Machine.
1956 Philips Research Laboratories open a studio for electronic music in Eindhoven. Studios moved to Utrecht in 1960, eventually becoming the Institute of Sonology.
1958 Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center established with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
1958 World’s Fair, Brussels, featuring the Philips Pavilion (designed by Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis), a multimedia experience including Edgar Varèse’s Poeme Electronique and Iannis Xenakis’ Concrete PH.
1962 The San Francisco Tape Music Center founded by Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender.
1961 Harold Bode, inventor of the Melochord, published an article on transistor based, modular synthesizer devices (oscillators, filters, etc.). This article provided the basis for the development of new synthesizers in the 1960's that were small, modular, versatile and affordable.
1965 Robert Moog developed and marketed the first moderately priced and commercially available voltage-controlled synthesizer, the Moog. It was designed for both studio and live performance.
1966 Donald Buchla developed the Buchla synthesizer for the San Francisco Tape Music Center, designed primarily for studio composition (most Buchla synthesizers lack a keyboard controller). The commercial availability of both the Moog and Buchla synthesizers made for a boom in the number of studios at a fraction of the former cost.
1970 Pulitzer Prize awarded for an electroacoustic work for first time, Charles Wuorinen’s Time’s Encomium (1968-69).
1972 Intel released the first general purpose microprocessor
1976 Synclavier produced, an expensive, performance oriented, first all digital synthesizer, using microprocessor technology. It featured a VDU for editing and control programming, which was to influence the development of software in the 1980's and 1990's.
1977 IRCAM ((Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) estsablished
1978 Iannis Xenakis founds the research center CeMAMU, which would become Les Ateliers UPIC (1985), and later CCMIX (CENTRE DE CREATION MUSICALE IANNIS XENAKIS).
ca.1978 First off-the-shelf commercial microcomputers (built around microprocessors) are released: Commodore PET, Radio Shack TRS- 80, Apple II. Until 1980, desktop microcomputers were targeted primarily at the education market.
1981 IBM released the PC, attracting business and other commercial sector areas.
1981 E-mu Emulator I first lower-cost commercial sampler, 30 Hz, 8 bit resolution.
1981 A universal communications protocol is proposed at NAMM by Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits.
1982 A protocol is suggested that transmits note on/note off data. Later that year, Robert Moog announced MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface)
1983 Specifications on MIDI are published - it is a standardized method (protocol) of communicating CONTROL DATA (NOT SOUND). Synthesizers are produced offering MIDI compatibility.
1983 Yamaha DX-7 released, featuring the patented FM algorithms of John Chowning. It was fully MIDI compatible, and featured Velocity Sensitivity, Aftertouch, Microtuning, Computer Editing, Multitimbral Performance (1985), and very high audio specs.
1989 Synthesizers released with built in DSP's.
1980's First HARD DISK RECORDING FACILITIES (tape-less) offered.
1980's DSP units released: sample analog input, apply delay effects in digital domain and convert to analog signal in (near)real-time.
1980's Synthesizers released with built in sequencers: WORKSTATION
1990's Sample Playback units become popular. Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) based on personal computers introduced into commercial and home studios.

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