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Electronic Inspirations

Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde. The New Cultural History of Music Series

By (author) Jennifer Iverson
Format: Paperback / softback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, New York, United States
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Published: 10th Jan 2019
Dimensions: w 156mm h 234mm d 18mm
Weight: 492g
ISBN-10: 0190868201
ISBN-13: 9780190868208
Barcode No: 9780190868208
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Synopsis
For a decimated post-war West Germany, the electronic music studio at the WDR radio in Cologne was a beacon of hope. Jennifer Iverson's Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde traces the reclamation and repurposing of wartime machines, spaces, and discourses into the new sounds of the mid-century studio. In the 1950s, when technologies were plentiful and the need for reconstruction was great, West Germany began to rebuild its cultural prestige via aesthetic and technical advances. The studio's composers, collaborating with scientists and technicians, coaxed music from sine-tone oscillators, noise generators, band-pass filters, and magnetic tape. Together, they applied core tenets from information theory and phonetics, reclaiming military communication technologies as well as fascist propaganda broadcasting spaces. The electronic studio nurtured a revolutionary synthesis of science, technology, politics, and aesthetics. Its esoteric sounds transformed mid-century music and continue to reverberate today. Electronic music-echoing both cultural anxiety and promise-is a quintessential Cold War innovation.

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Electronic Inspirations offers a number of interesting and worthwhile insights into the avant-garde electronic music of the 1950s, both in terms of historical detail and theoretical interpretation, synthesizing a great deal of published and unpublished material. * Sam Ridout, Transposition * This book is addressed to an audience not only of experts but also of students and music lovers. Iverson's effort to introduce the actors, networks, and music to all kinds of readers in an astute way is very compelling. Anyone interested in electronic music and its networks will find much to enjoy in Iverson's work. * Jo~ao Rom~ao, Revue de musicologie * A brilliant book, pulsating with excitement: Iverson makes instant connections faster than an electric circuit, transmits information more accurately than magnetic tape, and creates a network of actors more complex than the Cologne Radio Station. * Alexander Rehding, Fanny Peabody Professor of Music, Harvard University * This fascinating account of the Cologne West German Radio Station and its famous underground electronic music studio traces how international networks, surplus cold war technology, and cybernetic visions and imaginaries shaped and inspired the new genre. Born from repression, the dance of agency between humans and technology, Iverson argues, is the key to understanding how this music developed. Ironically it would eventually transmogrify into today's joyous Electronic Dance Music - capital city: Berlin! * Trevor Pinch, author of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer * Taking the studio as an object of scholarly inquiry...helps to make legible a dynamic that is often only dimly discernible. * Matthew Mendez, Yale University, Society for Music Theory *