Давно задаюсь вопросом, как же появилась электронная музыка?...

I have been wondering for a long time how did electronic music come about? Well, it’s clear that electronic instruments appeared, new technologies and musicians began to use them. But how exactly did this transition from living sounds to synthetic ones take place? Who and how has consistently or revolutionaryly influenced the minds of musicians and composers? What are composers now guided by, placing the artistic and expressive component in new sounds?

To understand these issues, I read several interesting books:

Stephen Fry “The Incomplete and Ultimate History of Classical Music”

It’s definitely not boring to read a book. But is it worth it? Stephen Fry tells the story of classical music from rock carvings of primitive musical instruments to the soundtracks to films of our day. Probably something like this would tell the story of classical music to your friend the musician, walking with you through the bars on Rubinstein. And with each bar, the story would become more frivolous. So Steven Fry, there are parts of the book where he writes incredibly interesting about what he loves, appreciates, considers significant. And right now I want to run to the Philharmonic and listen to all this. And there are parts of the book devoted to musical tales and juicy details of the composers' life: what vomited one of Schubert’s friends, why Berlioz went to Paris in a woman’s dress, how many pairs of stockings remained after Mozart’s death. Now how do you forget all this?

Alex Ross “Further noise. Listening to the 20th Century ”

But this book is not easy to read, but still interesting. Probably, to understand everything that the author wanted to say, you need to have some kind of musical training. The book is entirely devoted to the music that is called classical, its development over the course of a century - from Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler to our contemporaries. This is such a musical chronicle: biographies of composers, musical revolutions, relations between composers and politicians, social factors and much more . After reading, there was a certain interest in listening to a lot, especially since the author at the end of the book gives a list of the most significant works. The book must be read slowly, but rather with “raids” with “interruptions”.

 Hans Ulrich Obrist “A Brief History of New Music”

This book is a collection of interviews by the author with composers - pioneers of electro-acoustic music about experimental avant-garde music at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries, its connection with other forms of art and science, the ratio of sound and space, sound and time. The real discovery for me was an interview with Karhinez Stockhausen. This is an absolutely incredible approach to music, concert halls, work on scores and to his main work - the opera Light. This truth is something incredible: a special perception of the world and music, like Jean-Baptiste Greenay Zyuzkind only in music.
Reading interviews for interviews, you admire every composer. It’s wonderful that such amazing people appear!

Bonus Book:
Friedrich Nietzsche “Nietzsche contra Wagner”
I read it because it became interesting why Nietzsche so radically changed his attitude towards the composer.

# 50bookschallenge

All these books and others about music are on this shelf in the bookmat https://bookmate.com/bookshelves/YlDCaLwl