Holmes — Electronic and Experimental Music

Author: Thom Holmes
Title: Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture
Year: 1985
Type: Academic book (Scribner’s; sixth edition, Routledge, 2020)

Electronic and Experimental Music is a book by the composer and music historian Thom Holmes, first published by Scribner’s in 1985 and revised in five later editions from Routledge, the sixth in 2020. Since the third edition, of 2008, it has carried the subtitle Technology, Music, and Culture. Its publisher describes it as a history of electronic music from the late nineteenth century to the present that recounts “the musical ideas that arose in parallel with technological progress.” The sixth edition is organized in four parts, on the fundamentals of electronic music, its history from experiments before 1920 to the computer music of 1970 to 1985, the makers of analog and digital synthesizers, and live electronic music and contemporary practice, with Listening Guides that annotate key works. Routledge’s page carries an endorsement from Terence M. Pender of Columbia University’s Computer Music Center, who calls it one of the most comprehensive references for teaching experimental computer music.

Holmes, a music historian and composer, studied composition with Paul Epstein at Temple University, published and edited the magazine Recordings of Experimental Music from 1979 to 1985, and, working with John Cage, maintained the only discography of Cage’s music authorized by the composer.¹ Scribner’s published the first edition in 1985 without a subtitle. Routledge published a second edition in 2002, subtitled Pioneers in Technology and Composition, and a third in 2008 under the present subtitle. The fourth followed in 2012, the fifth as an ebook in 2015 and in print in 2016, and the sixth, of 672 pages, in March 2020.²

Routledge describes the sixth edition as “an extensive history of electronic music,” from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present, “recounting the musical ideas that arose in parallel with technological progress.” It says the book covers the key composers, genres and techniques of analog and digital synthesis, in art and popular music and in Western and non-Western music.³ The sixth edition is organized in four parts. The first sets out the fundamentals, from “What Is Electronic Music?” to tape composition and MIDI. The second gives the history of electronic and computer music, from “Earliest Experiments in Electronic Music (Pre-1920)” to “Computer Music (1970-1985),” with chapters including “Edgard Varèse and The Listener’s Experiment,” “Musique Concrète In France,” “Elektronische Musik in Germany,” “John Cage in the United States” and “The Columbia–Princeton Electronic Music Center, New York.” The third covers the makers of synthesizers, among them Moog, Buchla, EMS and ARP, and the fourth covers live electronic music and contemporary practice, from “Modern Turntablism” to “Eurorack.” Listening Guides throughout the book give step-by-step annotations of key works.³

The only verdict on Routledge’s page is an endorsement from Terence M. Pender, associate director of the Computer Music Center at Columbia University, who calls the book “one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date references for teaching experimental computer music.”³

Key contributions

• A history of electronic music from the late nineteenth century to the present, told as musical ideas arising in parallel with technology.
• Coverage of the studios, synthesizer makers and live practices of electronic music, from musique concrète and the Columbia–Princeton center to turntablism and Eurorack.
• Listening Guides that annotate key works step by step.
• A survey kept current across six editions, from 1985 to 2020.

See also

• Ocean of Sound — David Toop’s 1995 history of ambient music
• Energy Flash — Simon Reynolds’s 1998 history of rave
• Pink Noises — Tara Rodgers’s 2010 interviews with women in electronic music