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Abstract
In this paper, I review some of the claims about electronic sound synthesis and human subjectivity that were made in the name of RCA’s first electroacoustic sound synthesiser, as it was understood by its various sponsors in the American military-industrial-academic-cultural complex. As described by Harry Olson, head of the corporation’s acoustics research division, RCA’s Mark I synthesiser was intended to be ‘a musical instrument with no limitations whatsoever.’ I argue that the promise of RCA’s limitless musical instrument began at the University of Iowa, with an embryonic effort to define and quantify musical talent. When it emerged fully-formed from RCA’s Princeton-based acoustics laboratory, the synthesiser represented Cold War cultural and economic supremacy by channelling wartime innovations in signal processing, information theory, and cybernetics into the service of a booming American entertainment industry. As centrepiece of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio, the synthesiser was conscripted by the composer Milton Babbitt to realise an ongoing experiment in art and psychoacoustics, linking twelve-tone composition, information theory, positivist epistemology, and psychoacoustics. Babbitt’s ideas about composition as experimentation, I will suggest, supported a vision of human rather than mechanical potential—and of the autonomous artist as a Cold War liberal, a heroic figure more enduring than RCA’s celebrated machine.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on Contributor
The composer Martin Brody is Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music (Emeritus) at Wellesley College. He has written extensively about post-war American composition, focusing especially on the music of Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, and Stefan Wolpe. He is President of the Stefan Wolpe Society, co-director of the arts and conservation organisation, One Landscape, and a trustee of the American Academy in Rome.
Notes
1 Olson (Citation1958) Preface (to the First Edition).
2 Rodgers (Citation2015). See also Olson and Belar (Citation1950).
3 Cary (Citation1922, 376). See Also Grashel (Citation2008, 45–49).
4 Seashore describes the Iowa laboratory in Seashore (Citation1942, 38–69). As he indicated, the Iowa laboratory was modelled after predecessors at Yale and in Leipzig. See Nicolas and Ferrand (Citation1999).
5 Seashore (Citation1899). Also, Seashore (Citation1942, 39). Mills (Citation2011) discusses the development of the Seashore audiometer and its use in testing hearing acuity at the turn of the twentieth century.
6 Seashore’s atomistic approach to the measurement of musical aptitude was contested in the 1940s by psychologists looking for a more holistic testing paradigm. See Tkaczyk (Citation2021) for a discussion of the ‘gestalt-atomistic controversy’.
7 See Cowan (Citation2017). See also Devaney (Citation2019). My thanks to Cowan for sharing his paper.
8 RCA inventory quoted in Kilbon (Citation1964).
9 ‘Electronic Device for Making Music Displayed’, Los Angeles Times, January 31, Citation1955a. Robert K. Plumb, ‘Electronic Device Can Duplicate Every Sound’, Robert K. Plumb, New York Times, February 1, Citation1955b.
10 See Olson and Belar (Citation1955, 595, ff).
11 Quoted in Lemmon (Citation2019).
12 Quoted in Lemmon (Citation2019).
13 Letter from Elmer W. Engstrom to Grayson Kirk, October 30, 1957, in Luening (Citation1900–1996).
14 Ussachevksy to Fahs, March 12, 1953. Quoted in Vandagriff (Citation2016).
15 Letter to the Ambassador, Rome, undated [1955], Luening (Citation1900–1996).
16 Undated letter [1957] from Ernst Krenek to Paul Fromm, Paul Fromm Archive, Houghton Library, (Fromm Citation1943–2019, Storage 290, box 2).
17 Milton Babbitt, with Vivian Perlis (Citation1983), Oral History of American Music, Yale University.
18 Babbitt told Perlis that he was stationed at the same installation as the composer Andrew Imbrie. In Crawford (Citation2000), Imbrie discusses his service as a Japanese translator in Arlington, Virginia during the war. Arlington Hall was the headquarters of Signal Corps cryptoanalysis, working on both Japanese and German coding. As revealed in Fauser (Citation2013), Babbitt wrote to Carl Spivacke, chair of the Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation, in October, 1942 to argue that he should be admitted into the armed services, based on his prior ‘work in secret communications under the direction of the Signal Corps Intelligence’.
19 See Babbitt (Citation1991, 444).
20 See Harker (Citation2008, 336–377) for an extended treatment of this episode.
21 Girard (Citation2010, especially 40–46).
22 Babbitt often acknowledged another composer who worked with Victor. Charles Wuorinen produced one major composition at CPEMC: Time’s Encomium, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970.
23 See also, Girard (Citation2010).
24 Milton Babbitt to Paul Fromm, undated (1975), Fromm Archive, Houghton Library, HMs. Storage 290 box 1.
25 Romig and Babbitt (Citation2002).
26 See, for example, Babbitt (Citation1966). This artifact that deserves extended consideration. Columbia Records also produced a major release of music from CPEMC in 1964, based on a concert held that year at Columbia’s McMillan Theater.