Editing Electronic music (section)

===Columbia-Princeton Center===
{{Further|Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center}}
{{See also|Vladimir Ussachevsky|RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer}}

In the same year [[Columbia University]] purchased its first tape recorder—a professional [[Ampex]] machine—to record concerts. Vladimir Ussachevsky, who was on the music faculty of Columbia University, was placed in charge of the device, and almost immediately began experimenting with it.

Herbert Russcol writes: "Soon he was intrigued with the new sonorities he could achieve by recording musical instruments and then superimposing them on one another."<ref name="nwclfn">{{harvnb|Russcol|1972|p=92}}.</ref> Ussachevsky said later: "I suddenly realized that the tape recorder could be treated as an instrument of sound transformation."<ref name="nwclfn" /> On Thursday, 8 May 1952, Ussachevsky presented several demonstrations of tape music/effects that he created at his Composers Forum, in the McMillin Theatre at Columbia University. These included ''Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment, Composition'', and ''Underwater Valse''. In an interview, he stated: "I presented a few examples of my discovery in a public concert in New York together with other compositions I had written for conventional instruments."<ref name="nwclfn" />
Otto Luening, who had attended this concert, remarked: "The equipment at his disposal consisted of an Ampex tape recorder . . . and a simple box-like device designed by the brilliant young engineer, Peter Mauzey, to create feedback, a form of mechanical reverberation. Other equipment was borrowed or purchased with personal funds."<ref name="urajla">{{harvnb|Luening|1968|p=48}}.</ref>

Just three months later, in August 1952, Ussachevsky traveled to Bennington, Vermont, at Luening's invitation to present his experiments. There, the two collaborated on various pieces. Luening described the event: "Equipped with earphones and a flute, I began developing my first tape-recorder composition. Both of us were fluent improvisors and the medium fired our imaginations."<ref name="urajla" /> They played some early pieces informally at a party, where "a number of composers almost solemnly congratulated us saying, 'This is it' ('it' meaning the music of the future)."<ref name="urajla" />

Word quickly reached New York City. Oliver Daniel telephoned and invited the pair to "produce a group of short compositions for the October concert sponsored by the American Composers Alliance and Broadcast Music, Inc., under the direction of [[Leopold Stokowski]] at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. After some hesitation, we agreed. . . . [[Henry Cowell]] placed his home and studio in Woodstock, New York, at our disposal. With the borrowed equipment in the back of Ussachevsky's car, we left Bennington for Woodstock and stayed two weeks. . . . In late September 1952, the travelling laboratory reached Ussachevsky's living room in New York, where we eventually completed the compositions."<ref name="urajla" />

Two months later, on 28 October, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening presented the first Tape Music concert in the United States. The concert included Luening's ''Fantasy in Space'' (1952)—"an impressionistic [[virtuoso]] piece"<ref name="urajla" /> using manipulated recordings of flute—and ''Low Speed'' (1952), an "exotic composition that took the flute far below its natural range."<ref name="urajla" /> Both pieces were created at the home of Henry Cowell in Woodstock, New York. After several concerts caused a sensation in New York City, Ussachevsky and Luening were invited onto a live broadcast of NBC's Today Show to do an interview demonstration—the first televised electroacoustic performance. Luening described the event: "I improvised some [flute] sequences for the tape recorder. Ussachevsky then and there put them through electronic transformations."{{sfn|Luening|1968|p=49}}

The score for ''[[Forbidden Planet]]'', by [[Louis and Bebe Barron]],<ref name="norman2">"From at least Louis and Bebbe Barron's soundtrack for ''The Forbidden Planet'' onwards, electronic music—in particular synthetic timbre—has impersonated alien worlds in film" ({{harvnb|Norman|2004|p=32}}).</ref> was entirely composed using custom-built electronic circuits and tape recorders in 1956 (but no synthesizers in the modern sense of the word).{{Clarify|date=January 2020|reason=Was this done at the Columbia-Princeton Center?}}