The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Pho­to of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen by Kathin­ka Pasveer via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You may hear the phrase “elec­tron­ic music” and think of super­star dub­step DJs in fun­ny hel­mets at beach­side celebri­ty par­ties. Alter­nate­ly, you may think of the mer­cu­r­ial com­po­si­tions of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, the musique con­crete of Pierre Hen­ry, or the oth­er­world­ly exper­i­men­tal­ism of François Bayle. If you’re in that lat­ter camp of music nerd, then this post may bring you very glad tid­ings indeed. Ubuweb—that stal­wart repos­i­to­ry of all things 20th-cen­tu­ry avant-garde—now hosts an extra­or­di­nary com­pi­la­tion: the 476-song His­to­ry of Electronic/Electroacoustic Music, orig­i­nal­ly a 62 CD set. (Hear below Stockhausen’s “Kon­tact,” Henry’s “Astrolo­gie,” and Bayles’ spare “The­atre d’Ombres” fur­ther down.)

Span­ning the years 1937–2001, the col­lec­tion should espe­cial­ly appeal to those with an avant-garde or musi­co­log­i­cal bent. In fact, the orig­i­nal uploader of this archive of exper­i­men­tal sound, Caio Bar­ros, put these tracks online in 2009 while a stu­dent of com­po­si­tion at Brazil’s State Uni­ver­si­ty of São Paulo. Bar­rios’ “ini­tia­tive,” as he writes at Ubuweb, “became some sort of leg­end” among musi­cophiles in the know.

And yet, Ubuweb reposts this phe­nom­e­nal col­lec­tion with a dis­claimer: “It’s a clear­ly flawed selec­tion,” they write:

There’s few women and almost no one work­ing out­side of the West­ern tra­di­tion (where are the Japan­ese? Chi­nese? etc.). How­ev­er, as an effort, it’s admirable and con­tains a ton of great stuff.

Take it with a grain of salt, or per­haps use it as a provo­ca­tion to curate a more intel­li­gent, inclu­sive, and com­pre­hen­sive selec­tion

It’s a fair cri­tique, though Bar­rios points out that the exclu­sions most­ly have to do with “the way our soci­ety and the tra­di­tion this music rep­re­sent works” (sic). And yet, as dis­ci­pli­nary bound­aries expand all the time, and his­to­ries broad­en along with them, that descrip­tion no longer holds. It would be a fas­ci­nat­ing exer­cise, for exam­ple, to lis­ten to these tracks along­side the his­to­ry of women in elec­tron­ic music, 1938–2014 that we post­ed recent­ly, for exam­ple.

Also, there’s clear­ly much more to elec­tron­ic music than either celebri­ty DJs or obscure avant-garde com­posers. Many hun­dreds of pop­u­lar elec­tron­ic com­posers and musicians—like Bri­an Eno, Kraftwerk, Bruce Haack, or Clara Rock­more—fall some­where in-between the worlds of pop/dance/performance and seri­ous com­po­si­tion, and their con­tri­bu­tions deserve rep­re­sen­ta­tion along­side more exper­i­men­tal or clas­si­cal artists.

All that said, how­ev­er, there’s no rea­son you can’t curate your own playlist of the his­to­ry of elec­tron­ic music as you see it—drawing from the astound­ing wealth of music avail­able free at The His­to­ry of Elec­troa­coustic Music. Or con­sid­er this col­lec­tion a ful­ly immer­sive course in “tra­di­tion­al, west­ern avant-garde elec­tron­ic music” from “the area of Europe-Amer­i­ca,” as Bar­rios puts it. As that, it suc­ceeds admirably.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness