Oral History Project · Begun 1996 · Now in the Library of Congress
The Video Archive of
Electro-Acoustic Music
Curated by Eric Chasalow & Barbara Cassidy
About the Archive
The Video Archive of Electro-Acoustic Music began in 1996 out of our desire to capture a first-person history of the pioneering composers, scientists, and engineers from 1950 to the present. Age and illness have since claimed several interview subjects and many other potential subjects. Luciano Berio, Earl Brown, Herbert Brün, David Lewin, and Iannis Xenakis have all died in recent years, underscoring the urgency of this work.
The archive currently comprises over sixty hours of digitally recorded interviews, primarily on American subjects, across a broad spectrum. Bebe Barron is a self-taught composer who collaborated with John Cage, filmmaker Maya Deren, and choreographer Merce Cunningham. David Smith was one of the designers of the MIDI protocol. Mel Powell performed with Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller and then established studios at Yale and CalArts. At Bell Laboratories, John Pierce was instrumental in the creation of computer synthesis and launching the first telecommunications satellites, and also coined the word transistor. Pierce's association with author Arthur C. Clarke led to the singing computer, H.A.L., in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I was fortunate to be part of the last generation mentored by the founders of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. These associations lend an intimate quality to many of the interviews.
Max Matthews — Bell Laboratories
I had the idea that if we could digitize speech…and get it into the computer, that we could simulate the new telephones… then, we went to a Dika Newlin concert…. John [Pierce] looked at me and said, "The computer could do better than this, why don't you write a program?" So I went away and wrote Music I, which did not do better…. And I guess the real question, which I often ask, is why at that time we didn't give up and forget the whole thing. There were two reasons. One was a mathematical theorem of Claude Shannon's, which basically proved that… any sound that the human ear could hear could be made this way…. The other thing was the encouragement of a number of very, I think, perceptive musicians and composers… Edgard Varèse, Vladimir Ussachevsky, and Milton Babbitt.
Dave Smith
Sequential was the first, technically to ship a MIDI synthesizer in December of '82; then at January of '83, at the NAMM show, Roland brought over their JP6 and they plugged it into the Prophet 600, so it was the first MIDI connection, and it worked!
Bebe Barron
For a wedding present somebody gave us a wire recorder, so we were indeed very lucky when we were able to obtain the very first tape recorder in the world…in about 1949… we shot off to New York, moved to the Village. Anyway, we started a recording studio. We built almost all the equipment ourselves because there wasn't any to buy, really. And it turned out the studio became something of a center. John [Cage] brought… Stockhausen, Edgar Varèse. Lou Harrison was around a lot. He gave a name to our first piece… the Heavenly Menagerie.
As Milton Babbitt recounted in his interview, virtually every musician of note who came through New York in the 1950s and '60s visited the Columbia-Princeton EMC, including Stravinsky and Shostakovich. This environment was the catalyst for some of the first convincing and fully conceived electro-acoustic compositions, including the series of ten Synchronisms pieces by Mario Davidovsky. The stories of other studios, notably the San Francisco Tape Music Center, are just as rich in personal and professional detail.
In the fall of 2025, The Video Archive of Electro-Acoustic Music was donated to the Library of Congress, where it is being made accessible to scholars.
Excerpts from the Archive
A selection of short edited excerpts from the archive, produced for educational purposes.
Milton Babbitt on Electronic Music
Recorded 1997 · Columbia-Princeton EMC & the RCA Mark II
Max Matthews on MUSIC I
Recorded 1998 · Bell Laboratories · The beginning of computer music
Pauline Oliveros
On composing her first piece · Interviewed by Peter McMurray · Filmed by Christian Gentry
Ramon Sender
Recorded 1997 · San Francisco Tape Music Center
Dave Smith on MIDI
Recorded 1997 · Napa Valley · On the invention of the MIDI protocol
Full Playlist
All 9 excerpts · Use the playlist menu (⊞) within the player to navigate between interviews
Methodology
The collecting process uses qualitative research methodology. Each interview subject is asked the same roster of questions, ranging from the biographical to the musical. One set of questions focuses on the relationship between scientist and composer. Other questions explore the subject's musical or technical influences.
Interviews are at times organized to capture groups of individuals associated with particular studios. Studios are communities, and the story of any individual artist reflects the aesthetic and technical choices of the studio directors, engineers, and the other artists working in the facility. The early studios were also large musical instruments — each with its own idiosyncrasies. Thus, the history of the studios, both as technology and as artist subculture, is intertwined with the history of the music.
Scholarship on this branch of music has barely begun, yet precious source material is quickly disappearing with the deaths of key innovators. For many subjects, these interviews are the only extant primary source material.
The mission of this archive is to be as inclusive and broad as possible, and no omission (or inclusion) should be interpreted as an indication of an agenda. The collection of such materials is an open-ended process, though this particular archive, having been donated to the Library of Congress, is now closed. We encourage continued efforts to collect oral histories related to the development of electroacoustic music.
Inquiries regarding licensing may be sent to Eric Chasalow. Inquiries regarding scholarly access should be addressed to the Library of Congress.
Curators
Eric Chasalow
Eric Chasalow (b. 1955, USA) is a composer, sound artist, multi-instrumentalist, and professor. Part of the last generation of composers to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, he studied composition with Mario Davidovsky and flute with Harvey Sollberger. He is the Irving G. Fine Professor of Music at Brandeis University, where he directs the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio (BEAMS). His honors include awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, Koussevitzky Music Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Foundation at Harvard, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Barbara Cassidy
Barbara Cassidy is a non-profit management professional in the arts and humanities sector with a rich and eclectic background. She has worked in Public Television documentary production and, before that, as a professional singer, dancer, and actor. She received the BFA from Boston Conservatory and the MA in Women's Studies and Sociology from Brandeis University.