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Definition: electronic music from Philip's Encyclopedia

Music in which electronic methods are used to generate or modulate sounds. The first pieces produced on tape recorders were composed in the 1920s. In Paris, Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry manipulated recorded sounds, producing one of the first major works, Symphonie pour un homme seul (1950). The invention of the synthesizer inspired many composers, particularly Karlheinz Stockhausen. In the 1960s, it became possible to use computers for complex electronic sounds; Yannis Xenakis and Pierre Boulez are two of many composers to have used computers.


electronic music

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Music composed completely or partly of electronically generated and/or modified sounds. The term was first used in 1954 to describe music made up of synthesized sounds recorded on tape, to distinguish it from musique concrète (‘concrete music’), but later included music for electronic sounds with traditional instruments or voices. Karlheinz Stockhausen was a pioneer of electronic music, and his Gesang der Jünglinge/Song of the Youths (1955–56), for boys' voices and electronic sounds, was one of the first important pieces in this style. Luciano Berio also composed music using a mixture of electronic and traditional instruments, such as Differences (1957) for chamber ensemble and tape. Other composers working in the early years of electronic music were Milton Babbitt, Bruno Maderna , and Edgard Varèse , the latter being a very early pioneer. The development of portable electronic instruments in the late 1950s meant that electronic music could be played live and no longer had to be…
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Full text Article electronic music

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
or electro-acoustic music, term for compositions that utilize the capacities of electronic media for creating and altering sounds. Initially, a distinction must be made between the technological development of electronic instruments and the music conceived to utilize the inherent advantages of these…
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Full text Article electronic music

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Music composed completely or partly of electronically generated and/or modified sounds. The term was first used in 1954 to describe music made up of synthesized sounds recorded on tape, to distinguish it from musique concrète (‘concrete music’), but later included music for electronic sounds with…
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Full text Article electronic music

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Electronic organ. Credit:r4Rick
Any music involving electronic processing (e.g., recording and editing on tape) and whose reproduction involves the use of loudspeakers. In the late 1940s, magnetic tape began to be used, especially in France, to modify natural sounds (playing them backward, at different speeds, etc.), creating the…
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Full text Article electronic music

From The New Penguin Dictionary of Music
Music made with electronic means. By the narrowest definition, it is music synthesized electronically and stored in recorded form: the elektronische Musik pioneered by Stockhausen and Eimert in Cologne in 1952–3 and explicitly contrasted at the time with the rival brand of MUSIQUE CONCRETE coming…
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Full text Article Electronic Music

From A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
(c. 1910) Used accurately, Electronic Music describes not one new thing but several new developments; for music, of all the arts, has been the most constant beneficiary of recent technological developments. These inventions include not only new instruments but technically superior versions of older…
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Full text Article Movement Electronic Music Festival

From Cultural Studies: Holidays Around the World
Movement Electronic Music Festival (formerly the Detroit Electronic Music Festival) is a four-day celebration of electronic dance music held annually on Memorial Day weekend in Detroit, MI. Developing out of the techno (or “house”) music scene that originated in the city's dance clubs during the…
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Full text Article live electronic music

From The New Penguin Dictionary of Music
Music whose performers work with amplified sound in unusual ways. Since the category of unusualness inevitably diminishes through time, the term applies most comfortably to music from the high noon of the post-war avant-garde, in the 1960s and early 1970s - before the use of electronics in…
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Full text Article electronic music

From Musical Terms, Symbols and Theory: An Illustrated Dictionary
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Full text Article electronic music

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article electronic music

From The Macquarie Dictionary
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