Writings on the early days

People worth knowing:

Edgar Varese(1883-1965)
-Poeme Electronique(1958)
Melvin Kranzberg
-Necesity in the mother of invention
Philip Reis(1834-74)
-Reis Telephone
Elisha Grey(1835-1901)
-Musical telegraph
Herman Von Helmholtz(1821-94)
-Science of perception, chimes, "ON the sensations of tone"
Thaddeus Cahill(1867-1934)
-Dynamophone or telharmonium, first synth
Feruccio Busoni(1866-1924)
-"Sketch of the new aesthetic of music", pushed tech in music comp
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti(1876-1944)
- "The futurist manifesto"
Francesco Balilla Pratella(1880-1955)
-Wrote futurists manifesto on music
Luigi Russolo(1885-1947)
-"The art of noise"(1913)
-low info high redundency sound.
-first live noise concerts
Lee De Forest(1873-1961)
-Audtion vacuum tube/ audition piano
Leon Thermin(1896-1993)
-Invented thermin
Robert Moog(1934-2005)
-Moog
Maurice Martenot(1898- 1980)
-ondes martenot
Jorg Mager(1880-1939)
-spharophon
Laurens Hammond(1895-1973)
-hammond organ, used tone wheel
Dr. Friedrich trautwien(1888-1956)
-Electic string inst.
E. Leon Scott
-early phonograph
T. Edison(1847-1931)
-phonograph, lightbulb...
Emile Berliner(1851-1929)
-Disc recording(gramophone)
Valdmar Poulsen(1869-1942)
-Magnetic tape recorder
Fritz Pfleumer(1881-1945)
-Magnetophone. Invented celluloid tape coated in iron oxide for recording.
Henry Cowell(1897-1965)
-rhythmicon, early drum machine
John Cage(1912-92)
-Composer

Themes of the chapter:

Marriage of tech and music: Music and technology, while they may not work together perfectly, the combination of the two is inexcapable, and technological advancements often drive new types of music. Invention leads to new mediums.

6 sounds of Russolo:
1.Roars thunderings explotion hissing bangs boom
2. whistleing hising puffing
3. whispers murmers muttering gurgling
4. screaching creaking crackling
5. beating on materials
6. Voices of animals and people.

Summery:

It all started with the telegraph. Elisha Grey realized that the telegraph could be modified to create a music creating machine. After that tone wheels were invented by cahill, and from there it was just a matter of time till we electronic instruments were a viable and widely used medium. De Forest's invention of the vacuum tube made it possible to amplify the sound from these instruments without enormous power supplies, eventually leading to consumer use of electric instruments. In the early days electronic instruments could take up entire buildings, and still have amplitude problems, ie the teleharmonium. Vacuum tubes solved that problem. Between the invention of such exciting instruments such as the thermin and the ondes martenot, to the development of ways to record music, the late 1800s and early 1900s contained some of the most important innovations in all of music history.