# Electronic music?



## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

I was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on composers who wrote electronic music, and which might be the more understandable, or at the very least, enjoyable, I've tried on a couple of occasions with random composers, names I do not remember, and gave up because I didn't understand, so I come here to ask who should I start with?


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## Guest (Nov 8, 2012)

Well, I could give you some suggestions on composers who wrote electroacoustic music, but I have no idea what you, Manok, would find understandable or enjoyable. These words do not describe single states, true and valid for any listener. Make your request more reasonable, more realistic, and maybe we could do business.

There's a ton of material, by the way. Electroacoustic music has been around for longer than the so-called classical period, and it's still going on. There's tape music and synthesizer music. There's live electronics. There's mixed--instrument plus soundtrack. There's acousmatic and soundscape. There's EAI (electroacoustic improvisation). There's turntable music and CD player music. There's music made with cheap home-made circuitry. There's practically everything you could find in an electronic studio accessible from laptops. And hundreds of composers and thousands of pieces.

Some stand-outs historically are Varese's _Poeme electronique,_ Stockhausen's _Gesange der Juenglinge_ and _Hymnen,_ Cage's _Cartridge music_ and _HPSCHD,_ Luc Ferrari's _Presque Rien_ (all of them), Dockstader's _Quatermass,_ Xenakis' _Bohor_ and _Orient Occident,_ and Dhomont's _Foret profonde._

That's actually a very small sample of the standouts. And I haven't mentioned stuff that I don't particularly like that you might like quite a lot. Ussachevsky, Luening, Eimert, Davidovsky, Subotnick.

If you go to the emprientes DIGITALes website, you can listen to clips of lots of current electroacoustic composers. That's a pretty good way to go, I think, since only you can tell what you will find "understandable" or "enjoyable."

Youtube is full of stuff, too. And the way that site is set up, as you know, if you just go to one thing, Ludger Bruemmer's _Speed,_ for instance, you get a whole column of other things on the right. Same for if you go to Otomo Yoshihide or eRikm or Martin Tetreault, who all do EAI.

You might like Beatriz Ferreyra, Michele Bokanowski, or Christine Groult. You might like Elsa Justel or Ricardo Mandolini or Gilles Gobeil. I just don't know. All of these people have made some very fine sounding music, I think.


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## Guest (Nov 8, 2012)

What about _The Electronic Spirit of Erik Satie, featuring The Moog Synthesizer with The Camarata Contemporary Chamber Orchestra

_http://apheramusic.com/2010/11/the-...w-to-appear-knowledgeable-in-classical-music/
- you can download the whole album from here.

I loved this as a teenager - first introduction to Satie.

[i know, i know he didn't write this for the Moog and I'm cheating]


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Ok revelations ... I like some Electronic music. Like some works of *Vangelis*, *Jean Michel Jarre*, *Alan Parsons*, Alphaville and Gigi D'Agostino!


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Manok said:


> I was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on composers who wrote electronic music, and which might be the more understandable, or at the very least, enjoyable, I've tried on a couple of occasions with random composers, names I do not remember, and gave up because I didn't understand, so I come here to ask who should I start with?


Here are my suggestions:







Incudes Varése's _Poeme Electronique._







Includes Milton Babbitt's _Philomel,_ for soprano and the behemoth, room-filling RCA/Princeton synthesizer. This is the better version with Bethany Beardslee on soprano, originally released on vinyl (DG) as part of Acoustic Research's modern music series, offered through Stereo Review magazine.







Bruno Maderna, beloved conductor and composer.


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## Guest (Nov 8, 2012)

The sound of the Neuma disc, however, is less than desirable.

For the classics of the early years of electroacoustic music, él is much better. The él disc with the Varese is EL RECORDS ACMEM 159 CD. It includes Schaeffer's _Cinq etudes de bruits,_ Stockhausen's _Studie Nr. 1, Studie Nr. 2,_ and _Gesang der Jünglinge,_ Xenakis' _Diamorphoses_ and _Concret PH,_ and Pierre Henry's _Voile d'Orphée._

Beautifully re-mastered.

And él is also putting out a complete Varése edition, too. Let's just hope that this one is truly complete. (The beautifully performed and engineered set on London with Ricardo Chailly is not complete.)


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Morton Subotnick's _Silver Apples of the Moon _and _The Wild Bull _were both quite popular when they came out on two separate LPs way back when. They're available now on a single CD. Probably not for everybody; I like these but couldn't begin to explain why!


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## SpanishFly (Oct 13, 2012)

*Karlheinz Stockhausen* - Kontakte, Helicopter Quartet (hard to find an original recording), Gesang der Junglinge
*Steve Reich* - Electric Counterpoint, Four Organs

That's all that I really have listened to, TBH


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## oogabooha (Nov 22, 2011)

Persian Surgery Dervishes by Terry Riley is one of my favorite pieces written for an electric instrument (if you want to consider that electronic)...

Ray Lynch wrote my favorite album of all time (and it's been my favorite album for years since I discovered it). It's called _Deep Breakfast_ and is primarily filled with compositions for the Yamaha DX7, although there are viola and flute features. It's really rad.


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## Ondine (Aug 24, 2012)

Arsakes said:


> Ok revelations ... I like some Electronic music. Like some works of *Vangelis*, *Jean Michel Jarre*, *Alan Parsons*, Alphaville and Gigi D'Agostino!


Sure.

What about Isao Tomita...

Also comes to mind some good ones by Vangelis: Odes with Irene Papas is a wonderful one; Soil Festivities; Ignacio is an outstanding oeuvre; Mask; El Greco.

Soft Machine is, in my opinion, an excellent band that developed good music in the frontiers between Jazz, Rock and Classic.

The early Tangerin Dream before becoming too commercial has good ones. One of those commercial ones , one that can be rescued is 'Turn of Tides'.

I explored this a long, long time ago... nowadays I have lost interest in such music, but anyway...


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

Well I thought I'd post my intersest in the subject, bu if I didn't make myself clear, I am interested in electronic music composed by classical composers, I thank all of you for your replies, and am always open for more suggestions.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Manok said:


> ...but if I didn't make myself clear, I am interested in electronic music composed by classical composers...


The period from 1760 to 1830 has little music of this type. Perhaps if you were to more clearly define "classical composers"... ?


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## Manok (Aug 29, 2011)

So Shostakovich or Schnittke is not considered a classical composer? What are they then?


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2012)

The quibble on "classical" was pretty threadbare already before Ken was even born, I'm sure.

And the fact that most of the music in the so-called classical era was already written (and most of its practitioners already dead) by the time the term "classical music" was coined (not to mention) makes bringing this wee quibble up now seem even more feeble.


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## Morgante (Jul 26, 2012)

Electronic music is bad because Bach did not have a computer.


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2012)

"A feeble wee quibble" has a certain musical quality to it!


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Morgante said:


> Electronic music is bad because Bach did not have a computer.


Well Bach was an old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud. If he had moved with the times he could have played the very first electric instrument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_d'or


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## Guest (Nov 9, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> "A feeble wee quibble" has a certain musical quality to it!


........


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Black Mass by Lucifer!!!






By far the goofiest and most imaginative synth record ever. When it came out no one knew who made it... Was it some mystical cult? Anton LaVey? No, it ended up being good old Mort Garson! Let's go down to the deli with Mort to get a pastrami sandwich and a piclkle! Hooray!


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Electronic music?

Why ... It's time for Tristram Cary!










... and also for some Australian Tall Poppies. 
Here's a 2-CD set of T. Cary's electroacoustic music called "Soundings"


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## Guest (Nov 10, 2012)

Tristram Cary. A name I often forget. I must go stand in the corner now.

OK, I'm back. Chastened. And I just remembered another name that I often forget, Denis Smalley.

Back to that corner.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Nice documentary I just watched:


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Anyway, plops and bleeps are nice and all but electronic music has evolved since then.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Anyway, Bach's clavier stuff is nice and all but acoustic music has evolved since then.


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## Guest (Nov 11, 2012)

DeepR said:


> Nice documentary I just watched:


Excellent...thanks DeepR.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

KenOC said:


> Anyway, Bach's clavier stuff is nice and all but acoustic music has evolved since then.


it's not exactly the same thing, electronic music needs electronic devices and it's obvious that the technology in the fifties and sixties was at the beginning, so often (not always) to hear the electronic music of that period it's like to see a movie of melies or griffith.


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## Prodromides (Mar 18, 2012)

Wanna play _Solitaire_? 






What's it all about, Arne?










... Naugh' a lot o' people know that.


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