Supervisor: Milton Mermikedes

Institution email: j.langton@surrey.ac.uk

I propose to research and reveal the relationship between the technological inventions and musical creativity of a selection of electronic composers in the period 1950s-80s. These composers (who include Daphne Oram, Theresa Rampazzi, Beatriz Ferreyra and Laurie Spiegel) are of particular research interest as they all combined technological invention with music composition (what may now be referred to as ‘electronicist’) and their contributions are under-represented in the field.  In the 1950s, music for broadcast was almost entirely orchestral and acoustic. In the UK, Oram first introduced the concept of electronically-generated music for radio and television, when she opened the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and went on to design and build her own recording machine based on ‘drawn sound.’ Working at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales under Pierre Schaeffer in Paris, Ferreyra was amongst the first composers to experiment with music made from recorded sounds on tape machines. Rampazzi, working at the Darmstadt school with Stockhausen, devised music based on mathematical systems. Spiegel, working at Bell laboratories in the US designed one of the first domestic computer programmes for composing music. My research covers new ground in forming a ‘technomusicology,’ a discussion of technology within the creative music process and is important in highlighting the contribution of women in this field. It will explore the ways in which these new technologies, once anathema to the music-making world, changed the notion of music composition in a new genre of Electronic Music where the methods of creating sound are as important as composition technique.  Drawing on my experience as a music engineer and electronic composer, my research will provide an e-thesis containing critical analysis, technical documentation and audio files of relevant music examples and interviews with composer-technologists, technicians, and writers.