The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music (review)

This book is a recent addition to the popular and extensive Cambridge Companion series. In the introduction, the editors propose to "deliver access to a powerful territory of inspiration and excitement" (p. 2), and deliver it they do. This survey deftly escapes the common pitfall of some similarly aimed works which, though bursting with fascinating facts about historical electronic music, ultimately fail to illustrate the aims that inspired such efforts in a way that meaningfully connects them to areas of current creative effort. Rather than simply serving up the history, this book invites and assumes participation and offers a diverse range of perspectives for consideration. Restating content found in other familiar works is largely avoided in favor of presenting new ways of thinking about both past and present endeavor and "less widely represented themes from the research front" (p. 2).

The structure of The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music consists of an introduction followed by 13 chapters grouped around three major thematic areas. Part One, Electronic Music in Context, contains four chapters. In the first, entitled "The Origins of Electronic Music," Andrew Hugill finds the nascent stirrings of desire for sound technology in passages of visionary fiction from the 17th through 19th centuries. It is a refreshing vantage point from which to begin. Taken together with his discussion of early inventions and their transformation into new expressive media, he illustrates the emergence of real sonic art from the collective imagination.

In chapter 2, "Electronic Music and the Studio," Margaret Schedel looks at the importance of the early studio to aesthetic development and the changing definition of the studio concept. "The studio is no longer defined by its contents; rather it has become a context created by the user" (p. 37).

Nicolas Collins examines the development of "Live Electronic Music" in the third chapter, acknowledging the important experiments of 20th century composer–performers and smartly including often-neglected subjects such as turntablism and circuit bending.

Ge Wang's "A History of Programming and Music" concludes Part One. He addresses pre-computer mechanical automation, the development of early computer music languages, contemporary real-time systems, and future directions, looking at how "the programming language acts as a mediator between human intention and the corresponding bits and instructions that make sense to a computer" (p. 55).

Interleaved with the three major subject areas are two engaging collections of artists' statements following chapters 4 and 10 that together offer a sampling of the creative perspectives of 30 electronic musicians from across a wide array of experiences.

This excerpt by Alejandro Viñao offers a glimpse:

Our serious music world has disowned one of its greatest traditions: that of being at the forefront of technological transformation in music. Far from inspiring change and invention like composers of the past, most composers of the last sixty or seventy years have attempted to create the music of today with the technology of another time

(p. 187).

As does this one by Seong-Ah Shin:

Most students called the studio the "ghost room" because of the strange sounds that emanated from that dark corner of the building. However, for me it was the most interesting room in the department, with new sounds and fascinating equipment

(p. 82).

Part Two, Electronic Music in Practice, comprises six chapters (chapters 5–10) each dipping into a different conceptual stream of contemporary work. "Interactivity and Live Computer Music" by Sergi Jordà covers the computer as instrument, the composer as instrument builder, and catalogs various means of performance interface and their inherent possibilities/limitations.

Karlheinz Essl's "Algorithmic Composition" presents a useful overview of the field linking pre-computer process musics that involved style rules...