EARLY US TAPE MUSIC + FILM

Tape Music emerged in the United States at the end of the 1940s in tandem with the development of musique concrète in Paris and Elektronische Musik in Cologne.

Louis and Bebe Barron were among those who produced the first known studies on the creative use of magnetic recordings or tapes. They were interested in making film music, such as Bells of Atlantis, for example, or the soundtrack for the film Forbidden Planet. John Cage also worked in the Barrons’ studio. In 1951, he founded the Music for Magnetic Tape Project along with the composers Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, David Tudor and Christian Wolff, experimenting with the recording of both electronic and natural sounds and combining them with instrumental music, dance and visual arts. The MaerzMusik screening in Berlin’s Arsenal cinema presents some of the most interesting compositions and documentary material from this project.

The Electronic Music Center of Columbia University in New York and Princeton in New Jersey was the centre of the music for tape movement. There, composers Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening instructed their students on the creative use of the latest sound technology. Ussachevsky’s Sonic Contours was one of the pieces that was presented in the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1952, in a concert that was broadcast on radio. This was the first time that music for tape reached a wider audience.