2017/07/12 by Christophe Levaux · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · #Diverse Musicological Studies #Music Technology and Sound Studies #Musicology and Musical Analysis #Flute #Electronic music #Musical #Studio #Computer science #Variety (cybernetics) #Sound recording and reproduction #Visual arts #History of music #Ninth #Musical instrument #Classical music #Music history #History #Art #Telecommunications #Art history #Acoustics #Artificial intelligence
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s1355771817000097
openalex publication_date 2017/07/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
In the literature dedicated to twentieth-century music, the early history of electronic music is regularly presented hand in hand with the development of technical repetitive devices such as closed grooves and magnetic tape loops. Consequently, the idea that such devices were ‘invented’ in the studios of the first great representatives of electronic music tends to appear as an implicit consequence. However, re-examination of the long history of musical technology, from the ninth-century Banu Musa automatic flute to the Hammond organ of the 1930s, reveals that repetitive devices not only go right back to the earliest days of musical automation, but also evolved in a wide variety of contexts wholly unconnected from any form of musical institution. This article aims to shed light on this other, forgotten, history of repetitive audio technologies.