Instruments for New Music: Sound, Technology, and ModernismA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Player pianos, radio-electric circuits, gramophone records, and optical sound film—these were the cutting-edge acoustic technologies of the early twentieth century, and for many musicians and artists of the time, these devices were also the implements of a musical revolution. Instruments for New Music traces a diffuse network of cultural agents who shared the belief that a truly modern music could be attained only through a radical challenge to the technological foundations of the art. Centered in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, the movement to create new instruments encompassed a broad spectrum of experiments, from the exploration of microtonal tunings and exotic tone colors to the ability to compose directly for automatic musical machines. This movement comprised composers, inventors, and visual artists, including Paul Hindemith, Ernst Toch, Jörg Mager, Friedrich Trautwein, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttmann, and Oskar Fischinger. Patteson’s fascinating study combines an artifact-oriented history of new music in the early twentieth century with an astute revisiting of still-relevant debates about the relationship between technology and the arts. |
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acoustic aesthetic artistic Bauhaus Berlin Beyer called Cambridge composer composition concert create culture device Donaueschingen Donhauser early twentieth century Eimert electric instruments electric tone electro-music electroacoustic Electronic Music Elektrische Klangmaschinen Elektrische Musik Ernst essay experimental Ferruccio Busoni forms Friedrich Trautwein German gramophone record H.H. Stuckenschmidt Heinrich human Ibid instru inventions inventor Jörg Mager keyboard László Moholy-Nagy machine Mager's instruments means mechanical instruments mechanical music Mechanisierung Melos ment microtonal modernist Moholy-Nagy Mondrian motion musical instruments musicians Musikblätter des Anbruch Nazis neue Epoche noises optical sound film organ original Oskar Fischinger Oskar Schlemmer Partiturophon Paul Hindemith performance pitch player piano playing production published Quoted reproduction Ruttmann Sala sonic sound film sound track Spherophone struments studio technical technique Theremin timbral timbre tion Toch tonal tone color Tonfilm traditional trans Trautonium Triadic Ballet University Press Verlag vibrations visual Weimar Republic Welte-Mignon York Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau Zeitschrift für Musik