Episode 1 - Everything Audible in the World Becomes Material

Recording and electricity crack open the world of sound.

The Philips Pavillion at Expo 58 in Brussels. Photo: Wouter Hagens CC3.0

We start at the Brussels World’s Fair, Expo ’58 where a number of threads in the story were to converge and thence to radiate.

Then we go back in time to Rabelais who wrote presciently about frozen sounds back in the 16^th Century.

We look at a variety of very early technologies and concepts that were to play an important role in the development of electronic music: Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s Phonautograph; Thomas Edison’s phonograph and Emile Berliner’s gramophone; John Cage’s CREDO manifesto; Luigi Russolo’s intonarumori – mechanical noise instruments; Percy Grainger’s and Conlon Nancarrow’s work with player pianos; early electronic instruments the Theremin and Ondes Martenot; the mind-boggling work done by Russian film-makers, laboriously piecing together optical soundtracks; and much more.

Explore more of These Hopeful Machines

Written and presented by James Gardner, produced by Tim Dodd and James Gardner for Radio New Zealand.

Scroll down for handy links and a bibliography..

Grateful thanks in the production of this programme go to:

Mark Brend;
Warren Burt, for the Percy Grainger ‘Sea Song’ recording;
Luciano Chessa, for the intonarumori recording;
Patrick Feaster, for the Emile Berliner recording and information on early recordings;
Jonathan Golove, for the Theremin Cello recording;
Clinton Green, for the Jack Ellitt recording;
Ian Helliwell;
Roger Horrocks;
Leta Miller;
National Public Radio USA, for the recording of Bob Moog playing the Theremin;
Pathé News, for footage of Maurice Martenot;
Andrey Smirnov, for the Russian “Graphical Sound” examples;
Jeff Stadelman;
Dave Tompkins, for the Bell Labs vocoder demonstrations.

Links

• Luciano Chessa talks about Luigi Russolo and the Intonarumori
• Luciano Chessa album on Sub Rosa
• Luigi Russolo’s ‘The Art of Noises’
• More on 'The Art of Noises'
• Some Futurist-related material
• British Novachord site
• Another Novachord site
• The Novachord at The New York World’s Fair 1939-40
• Demonstration of the Voder
• Another clip about the Voder
• Maurice Martenot at Pathé
• Trautonium Demonstration from 1941 (in Dutch and German)
• A presentation by Patrick Feaster
• Feaster's own site devoted to early recordings etc.
• Information about Feaster's book ‘Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio: 980–1980’
• Mark Katz on ‘Capturing Sound’
• Ian Helliwell’s short animation about The Atomium
• Ian Helliwell’s page about music from Expo/World fairs
• Virtual Philips Pavilion project
• Andrey Smirnov on Sound in Z
• Evgeny Sholpo's Variophone
• Another clip about the Variophone
• Arseny Avraamov
• Nikolai Voinov
• Theremin plays Theremin
• Albert Glinsky – a brief Theremin History
• Jonathon Golove on the Theremin Cello
• Lydia Kavina, Theremin virtuosa
• Pamelia Kurstin on the Theremin
• John Cage website
• Walter Ruttmann's ‘Melodie der Welt
   

Bibliography

Patrick Feaster
Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio: 980–1980
Dust-to-Digital 2013
https://dust-digital.com/products/pictures-of-sound-one-thousand-years-of-educed-audio-980-1980

Evan Eisenberg
The Recording Angel: Music Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa (2^nd ed.)
Yale University Press 2005
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300099041/recording-angel

Mark Katz
Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (revised ed.)
University of California Press 2010
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/capturing-sound/paper

Luciano Chessa
Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts and the Occult
University of California Press 2012
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/luigi-russolo-futurist/paper

Andrey Smirnov
Sound in Z: Experiments in sound and electronic music in early 20th-century Russia
Walther Koenig 2013
https://monoskop.org/images/6/63/Smirnov_Andrey_Sound_in_Z_Experiments_in_Sound_and_Electronic_Music_in_Early_20th_Century_Russia.pdf

Albert Glinsky
Theremin: Ether music and Espionage
University of Illinois Press 2000
https://www.albertglinsky.com/theremin

Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner (eds)
Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music 2^nd ed
Bloomsbury 2017
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/audio-culture-revised-edition-9781501318368/

Dave Tompkins
How to Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder from World War II to Hip-Hop: The Machine Speaks
StopSmiling Books/Melville House Publishing 2011
https://stopsmiling-books.com/how-to-wreck-a-nice-beach.php

Mark Brend
The Sound Of Tomorrow: How Electronic Music Was Smuggled Into the Mainstream
Bloomsbury 2012
https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/sound-of-tomorrow-9780826424525/