Electronic and Computer Music (review)

Never did I feel the need to visit a website accompanying a book more so than when reading this book about the developments in electronic music after 1945. Whereas one chapter on Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) was sufficient in Peter Manning's first edition of 1985, the newest edition devotes twelve chapters to computer music. These closely follow the rise of computer-assisted composition, MIDI communication protocols and hardware, performance controllers, digital audio systems, software synthesis of sound, and desktop sound-processing software. And thus we encounter MIDI samplers, digital drum pads, MP3, retro-synthesis (the simulation of analog synthesizers through digital technologies), and Pro Tools.

What creates the need for a website are not these newest chapters, however, but the preceding ones. Manning starts out with a highly readable history of electronic music prior to World War II. This introduction makes clear how composers longed for machines that enabled them to create completely new sounds and to directly reach the listener—"unadulterated by 'interpretation'" as Edgard Varèse put it. The subsequent chapters are less lively, however. The first set focuses on particular music studios: in Paris (Musique Concrète), Cologne (Elektronische Musik), Milan, the United States, and even Japan, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Manning's geographical "net" is interestingly wide and his knowledge of what happened at these studios is impressive. Yet the structure of the chapters is highly repetitive. Again and again, Manning describes in great detail the machines available at each studio (such as sine-wave oscillators, variable-speed recorders, band-pass filters, and noise generators); the sounds that could be produced with the help of this equipment; and the works created, with the instruments employed, the structure of the composition, and, at times, an evaluation. The same holds for chapters on the voltage-controlled synthesizer, works for tape, live electronic music, and rock and pop electronic music.

Although the greatest contribution of Manning's book to the knowledge of electronic music lies in the impressive mastery of technical detail he displays, his volume often reads as a catalog. And without hands-on experience with the machines described, this remains a rather abstract undertaking, even though the book has a discography. It was for this reason that I started dreaming about a website or CD-ROM with a virtual display of the devices available to (say) Karlheinz Stockhausen, that would enable me to play with the control panels and sounds he had at his disposal. For students working in studios themselves—and they will be a large part of the audience for this book—the lack of such virtual space for do-it-yourself tinkering will be no problem. To a wider audience, it is.

To the STS audience interested in music, this book provides invaluable background information and may function as a regularly consulted encyclopedia. And to those involved in music making, it will help, as Manning rightly underlines, to prevent reinventing the wheel. But it does not add systematic insights to what we already know about the relation between technology, musical creativity, and the practice of music making. At times, Manning provides intriguing examples, yet he does not seek to compare these with similar phenomena elsewhere or to elaborate consistently on the more fundamental questions these examples raise. Manning mentions twice, for instance, that Pierre Schaeffer did not initially welcome tape recorders as substitutes for disc cutters: "the long and close association with the old equipment had fostered a methodology such that its limited facilities had become a major part of the musical process" (p. 25). He also stresses the need for a fine-tuned musical syntax, both in art and pop music. At the very same time, however, he discusses many technologies as lacking particular possibilities that thus, inevitably, had to be created. At such moments, the creative potential of limitations (of technology or musical style) does not seem to bother Manning.

And remarkably, the problem of keeping live performances of prerecorded electronic music a captivating experience is only mentioned in...