Program #66, 16 August 2001: Early electronic music.

We took a look back at some of the earliest successful attempts at making music with electronics -- i.e. where electronic devices themselves are the instruments for making music, or serve as the primary conduits for transforming existing sound sources into new forms, rather than essentially serve as recording or amplification devices.

The period of time surveyed ran roughly from the 1930s to the early 1960s. We touched on the divergence, later interpenetration, and ultimate reconvergence of the musique concrète and "pure electronics" approaches to electronic composition; variations in how electronic music was deployed through different compositional schools of thought; and the melding of electronic music with more established forms. We ended by setting the table for the next three weeks' worth of soundtrack programs by working through the score from the popular 1956 film Forbidden Planet.