Chapter 6: THREE PIONEERS: JOHN CAGE, EDGARD VARÈSE, AND KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN.

This chapter focuses on three pioneers in the field of electronic music. While many of the contemporaries of U.S. composer John Cage were seeking serial approaches to control every aspect of written music, he was exploring the assembly of musical material using composition techniques for which the outcome was not preconceived. His method of composing aimed to remove his taste, control or personal choice from the musical result. In 1951, Cage organized the Project of Music for Magnetic Tape. Frenchman Edgard Varèse was the first composer to recognize that the natural extension of avant-garde music was into the use of electronics. His first work of tape composition was Deserts in 1954. He composed Poème electronique, his version of musique concrète which combined passages of familiar sounds with starkly electronic effects and treatments. German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen mostly engaged in tape composition. His earliest electronic music compositions were based on his analysis of sound phenomena. He distilled the composition of electronic music into four guiding principles. During the 1950s he became interested in the spatial projection of music in the performance space.