Come anticipate Johann Merrich's "Le Pioniere Della Musica Elettronica," about female electronic composers

Coming October 5th, and only in Italian as far as I know, but featuring: Teresa Rampazzi, Bebe Barron, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Pauline Oliveros, Daria Semegen, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel, Alice Shields, Doris Norton. Couldn't find anything on the web about this other than the blurb that got posted to Facebook last night.

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/stckhlmcnd/pioniere.jpg

this is the publisher: http://www.auditoriumedizioni.it/

don't want to see this thread die, so here are some videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-42hkAfkkvs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9AkSI_UbIE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vTRZPLyKX0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC8O5HPvfsg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msg4m8pzHoE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s-Flvsdclw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6lUC6K4VQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1e1zco6-yU

i really recommend doris norton's raptus -- kind of a midpoint between devo's new traditionalists and maybe early '80s tangerine dream. that seesaw between new wave and new age.

Would be very interested in theories/explanations regarding electronic music's seemingly uncommonly balanced division of gender amongst its seminal founders and practitioners.

enjoying doris norton! the theme does kind of remind me of a TD song from the sorcerer soundtrack, can't say which one since of course i don't know any of the song titles.

my best guess is that a lot of these musicians/composers have classical/art school training, and that's a world where there's not so much stigma about being a female player. electronic music is similar to postpunk -- embracing creativity and expression more than tude-for-its-own-sake. not that that 'tude doesn't exist, but it's not the only path you have to take in order to get recognized. i might be totally talking out of my butt here, but that's my take.

laurie spiegel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=TzOJtZYsGSA&NR=1

one of my favorite subjects, precisely because everyone's always asking-complaining about 'where are the women in electronic music' when in fact there was an explosion of female composers from the very beginning of the medium, and the music is astounding and in many cases far more contemporary and listenable and relevant than a lot of the bloopy neo-serialist pointillism that are usually listed as the hallmark works, and it doesn't take all that much work or research to find and hear this music

http://soundcloud.com/phthalorecords/phpod04_women-in-electronic-music-1938-1982/s-NxDuI

Clara Rockmore – Vocalise (Rachmaninoff) (recorded 1987)
Johanna M. Beyer – Music of the Spheres (1938, recorded 1977)
Louis and Bebe Barron – Forbidden Planet / Main Titles, Overture (1956)
Daphne Oram – Bird of Parallax (1962-1972)
Delia Derbyshire – Dr. Who / Blue Veils and Golden Sands / Zizwh (60′s)
Else Marie Pade – Faust and Mephisto (1962)
Mirelle Chamass-Kyrou – Etude 1 (1960)
Pauline Oliveros – Mnemonics III (1965)
Ruth White – Evening Harmony / Sun (1969)
Micheline Colulombe Saint-Marcoux – Arksalalartoq (1970-71)
Pril Smiley – Koloysa (1970)
Alice Shields – Study for Voice and Tape (1968)
Daria Semegen – Spectra (Electronic Composition No. 2) (1979)
Annette Peacock – I’m The One (1972)
Wendy Carlos – Timesteps (1972)
Ruth Anderson – DUMP (1970)
Priscilla McLean – Night Images (1973)
Laurie Spiegel – Sediment (1972)
Eliane Radigue – Adnos III (1980)
Maggi Payne – Spirals (1977)
Maryanne Amacher – Living Sound Patent Pending: Music Gallery, Toronto, 26 Feb 1982

Coming in part 2:
Cathy Berbarian, Maddalena Fagandini, Annea Lockwood, Joan LaBarbara, Beatriz Ferreyra, Michele Bokanowski, Laurie Anderson, Hildegard Westerkamp, Jacqueline Nova, Tera de Marez Oyens, Beverly Grigsby, Emma Lou Diemer, Ann McMillan, Jean Eichelberger Ivey, Sorrel (Doris) Hays, Barbara Kolb, Megan Roberts, Monique Rollin, Mireille Chamass-Kyrou, Suzanne Ciani, Jocy de Oliveira, Laetitia Sonami, and more

Would be very interested in theories/explanations regarding electronic music's seemingly uncommonly balanced division of gender amongst its seminal founders and practitioners.

this is far closer to the point, but basically: it always took a certain personality type to be a composer; essentially you're telling everyone else what to do, from telling the musicians the dynamic indications of every note they're to play, to telling everyone in the audience what to feel. to get your pieces performed took a certain set of skills that typically skewed in a gendered way. from the beginning, when recordings replaced sheet music as the site of the composition, and electronic instruments allowed for one person to create a new orchestra, composers could finally complete and hear a finished work on their own terms without having to climb to the top of an institution and tell huge groups of people what to do, and suddenly, bang, a huge expansion in the number of female composers (few people mention this, but the very first piece of electronic music composed in the United States: 'Heavenly Menagerie' by Louis and Bebe Barron, 1949-1951ish)

of course, the female composers were less pushy: Else Marie Pade is one of my favorite examples of someone who was just as well known by her peers like Cage Berio Stockhausen Maderna etc but simply wasn't as good as self-promotion (or, to put it frankly, as much of a blowhard), and so it is taking her music longer to get out. but these unassuming qualities are also present in the music; while all the guys were busy writing densely edited pieces pushing the twitch-per-second ratio higher, many of these pieces were exploring deep-listening drones, some 20-30 years before 'ambient' became a term -- not to gender-essentialize too much in the other direction. while any composer would be allergic to be lumped in with each other merely because of sharing a gender, the reason to listen to early electronic by women is because it is different

& I will also say this: die schactel has been ruling it on the archival front in this area the last year

http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/franca+sacchi.html
http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/catherine+christer+hennix.html
http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/gruppo+nps.html
http://www.mimaroglumusicsales.com/artists/teresa+rampazzi.html

Huge thanks for this, Mr. Parker. (And thx for a truly fabulous gig last week!)

sorry: die schachtel

xp ty

laurie spiegel tweeted a link to this thread! she says she hears there will be an english version of the book.

http://www.flavorwire.com/335503/10-female-electronic-music-pioneers-you-should-know?all=1

i saw that earlier! i'm glad the book is coming out because there's so much more to be said about these women than can be conveyed in breezy listicle form. also, as commenters pointed out, no doris norton, eliane radigue, etc.

seeing how much I usually hate top 10 listicles, I was kind of happy about this one

sort of can't believe there aren't more books on the subject. I have these two -- haven't read the first one yet, the second is packed with great interviews

Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner - Women Composers And Music Technology in the United States: Crossing the Line (2006)
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Composers-Technology-United-States/dp/0754604616

Tara Rodgers - Pink Noises - Women on Electronic Music and Sound (2010)
http://www.amazon.com/Pink-Noises-Women-Electronic-Music/dp/0822346737/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1349734823

http://www.factmag.com/2012/09/27/my-teenage-dream-ended/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/arts/music/rediscovering-the-electronic-music-godmothers.html?smid=tw-share

So close! I chipped in a hundred, I really hope this gets made

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1270350100/electronic-sound-artist-laetitia-sonami-a-document

Any Italian ILXOrs who've read this? Assuming its not out in English..

of course, the female composers were less pushy: Else Marie Pade is one of my favorite examples of someone who was just as well known by her peers like Cage Berio Stockhausen Maderna etc but simply wasn't as good as self-promotion (or, to put it frankly, as much of a blowhard), and so it is taking her music longer to get out. but these unassuming qualities are also present in the music;

That doesn't scan to me...most electronic music was a 'failure' in the classical hall unless you wrote it alongside music for acoustic instruments. Then there were other opportunities offered by radio stations, TV, cinema, dance so why bother w/the daily grind of making contacts, not least because so much time had to be spent in the bunkers making this stuff.

They may be 'unassuming' but of course you achieve just as much if not more control with an electronic piece than you would with a serial piece to be played by a human being. If anything this stuff explodes a lot of myths about male and female musis being different. You'd be hard pressed to come up w/concrete sensibilities that are expressed through gender.

hey milton, do you have any suggestions for Laetitia Sonami beyond "What Happened"? she is amazing.

she is probably my favorite bay area musician who has never put out her own album! serious perfectionist and always arguing the live performance aspect is inextricable, though I think her sounds & composition are amazing in and of themselves -- they don't require the gestures to click. Robert Ashley tried producing a solo record of hers for Lovely about 15-20 years ago but she couldn't make herself happy. there's also her 70's electronic works, made when Eliane Radigue loaned her her Arp; once those come out, I recommend those. or just somehow seeing her live. or hopefully someday another cool label will just set her up.

the documentary I linked did end up getting made: http://earsoundfilm.com/

'What Happened' is kind of her greatest hit, but a collaboration -- I definitely recommend the album it's from: https://www.discogs.com/Melody-Sumner-Carnahan-The-Time-is-Now/release/9398695

thanks for typing that up! yeah, i knew her recording history was surprisingly thin. her perfectionism is kind of interesting, given that the functionality of the Lady's Glove seems to involve giving up so much control (or at least it appears that way in the performances i've seen online). but sometimes perfectionism can be narrowly focused on only certain aspects of one's life and work. i'll definitely be watching out for anything of hers that does end up seeing release!