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. Alter­na­tive­ly, 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 Bayle’s 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. Bar­ros’ “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 Bar­ros 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.

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 Bar­ros puts it. As that, it suc­ceeds admirably.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

What is Elec­tron­ic Music?: Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

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

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

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


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Comments (9)
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  • Steve says:

    No Doc­tor Who Theme? Like com­pil­ing a his­to­ry of pop music and not includ­ing the Bea­t­les.

  • FeRDNYC says:

    Includ­ing Delia Der­byshire could’ve improved the col­lec­tion’s fem­i­nist bona fide immense­ly, too.

    But by the time I was 1/3 of the way through the list (and already tired of scrolling past the end­less clus­ters of a dozen num­bered vari­a­tions on the same piece), I had already real­ized this was­n’t a his­to­ry of elec­tron­ic music. It’s a his­to­ry of pre­ten­tious twad­dle that hap­pens to have an elec­tri­cal cord attached.

  • Mark-C says:

    Absolute­ly. The Doc­tor Who theme is ground zero for the UK in terms of elec­tron­ic music out­side of acad­e­mia and “high art”

  • UnmixedMaster says:

    Kraftwerk 😮

  • Soso Chocolatchvili says:

    Lis­ten to the three pieces by Stock­hausen, Hen­ry and Bayle, with the same mind­set as you would look­ing at cubist or abstract expres­sion­ist paint­ings by Braque, Pol­lock or Twombly. Delia Der­byshire’s elec­tron­ic treat­ment of the Dr. Who theme is an exam­ple of “fig­u­ra­tive e‑music”- i.e. the objects invoked include the Dalek and Dr. Who’s Tardis :)

  • Tom says:

    Speak­ing of which, no “Rev­o­lu­tion No. 9”?

  • Tamme1971 says:

    Come on man, that’s too easy. Some peo­ple try to take the next step, the next method, the next con­cept, move for­ward, the next way of expe­ri­enc­ing and mak­ing music.

    Per­son­al­ly, I get bored again imme­di­ate­ly when elec­tron­ic music gets a beat or groove. Always those loops and grooves and the shak­ing heads, why can we not get rid of that. That’s a super­fi­cial, very lim­it­ed way of expe­ri­enc­ing music.

    The com­pos­er Varese talked about ‘The Lib­er­a­tion of Sound’. He came from the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Actu­al­ly, peo­ple who make elec­tron­ic music with beats and grooves, are like 125 years ago. They lock sound in, in a strait­jack­et, in grooves. It’s more lim­it­ed than clas­si­cal music, which at least has an elas­tic use of time, in the ser­vice of expres­sion and depth. And that was the music Varese wrote his ‘The Lib­er­a­tion of Sound’ for.

  • johannes says:

    i agree. when you look on the har­mon­ic struc­ture of beat or groove ori­en­tat­ed elec­tron­ic music, its even more than 125 years behind. the prob­lem is,that these peo­ple want to make real music, but focussing on tech rhythms even pre­vents real music, and near­ly nobody is able to see whats real­ly going on and tell a sto­ry about it. I would pre­fer, that thex would leave the nerdy and dis­tract­ing 16th groove out and focus on those sim­ple changes, they can real­ly imag­ine. This would show their bore­dom in a medievil sound, but would be at least hon­est.

  • Subi says:

    The cre­ator of the list: “Take it with a grain of salt”
    The arti­cle: “Here’s some oth­er ways the list may have missed the mark.”
    The com­ments: ‘WHY DIDN“T THEY INCLUDE MY FAVORITE ‘EVERY HOLST SUITE PLAYED ON A MOOG BACKWARD’ ”

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