Electronic Music History (part 1)

Electronic music is a loose term for music created using electronic equipment. Any sound produced by the means of an electrical signal may reasonably be called electronic, and the term is sometimes used that way -- in music where acoustic performance is the norm, even the introduction of electronic amplifiers may touch off discussions of electronic music (jazz and folk music, for example, have gone through a good deal of argument about the topic).
As a category of criticism and marketing, however, electronic music refers to music produced largely by electronic components, such as synthesizers, samplers, computers, and drum machines. Theoretically, the music could include any of an array of other "instruments".
The earliest purely electronic instrument was the Teleharmonium or Telharmonium, developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. Simple inconvenience hindered the adoption of the Teleharmonium: the instrument weighed seven tons and was the size of a boxcar. The first practical electronic instrument is often viewed to be the Theremin, invented by Professor Leon Theremin circa 1919 - 1920. Another early electronic instrument was the Ondes Martenot, which was used in the Turangalîla Symphony by Olivier Messiaen.
In the years following World War II, Electronic music was embraced by progressive composers, and was hailed as a way to exceed the limits of traditional instruments. Modern Electronic composition is considered to have begun in force with the development of musique concrète and tape recorders in 1948, only to rapidly evolve with the creation of early analog synthesizers. The first pieces of musique concrète were written by Pierre Schaeffer, who later worked alongside such avant garde classical composers as Pierre Henry, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen has worked for many years as part of Cologne's Studio for Electronic Music combining electronically generated sounds with conventional orchestras. Other well-known composers in this field include Edgar Varese and Steve Reich.
At the Radiophonic Workshop, the sound special effects unit of the BBC, Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire created one of the first electronic signature tunes for television as the theme music for Doctor Who.
Although electronic music began in the world of classical (or "art") composition, within a few years it had been adopted into popular culture with varying degrees of enthusiasm. In the 1960s, Walter Carlos (now Wendy Carlos) popularized early synthesizer music with two notable albums The Well Tempered Synthesiser and Switched On Bach, which took pieces of baroque classical music and reproduced them on Moog synthesizers. (...)

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