TY - CONF

T1 - The Stockholm Studio EMS during its Early Years

AU - Groth, Sanne Krogh

PY - 2008

Y1 - 2008

N2 - I will present my Ph.D. project EMS: Two music cultures – one institution. Swedish electro-acoustic music from 1965 to the late 1970s. EMS, an institution in Stockholm with studios for producing electro-acoustic music and sound art, was first established in 1965 under the Swedish Radio, where an old radio-theatre studio was opened up to composers and sound artists. The first studio (the “Sound Workshop”) was intended solely for contemporary work. Very high investments were allocated to a prestigious and, for its time, highly advanced computer music studio, which opened in 1970. This studio was even before its opening very famous, but also difficult to work. The Sound Workshop was available to the artists 24 hours a day and much easier to handle, and therefore most pieces were produced here. In the early 1970s a conflict emerged between the composers and the studio director Knut Wiggen. In his eager and idealistic search for “the music of the future” he believed in continuing the earlier experiments within musique concrète and elektronische Musik through research into sound and sound perception. Most of the composers, mainly from the Swedish “Text Sound” milieu, wanted to produce pieces that could be performed “here and now”. They were too impatient to wait for Wiggens’ results and wanted investments to update the Sound Workshop. Wiggen did not agree, so the composers boycotted the studio and Wiggen was dismissed (1975). The music produced at the institution during these years varies from so called abstract electronic music to political performance-related text-sound pieces. So far there has been very little academic writing about this. Going into the conflict and the very heterogeneous material, questions appear which I believe haven’t been raised properly in earlier writings on electro acoustic music. To the extent they have been dealt with, it has been within separated traditions of historiography and analysis.

AB - I will present my Ph.D. project EMS: Two music cultures – one institution. Swedish electro-acoustic music from 1965 to the late 1970s. EMS, an institution in Stockholm with studios for producing electro-acoustic music and sound art, was first established in 1965 under the Swedish Radio, where an old radio-theatre studio was opened up to composers and sound artists. The first studio (the “Sound Workshop”) was intended solely for contemporary work. Very high investments were allocated to a prestigious and, for its time, highly advanced computer music studio, which opened in 1970. This studio was even before its opening very famous, but also difficult to work. The Sound Workshop was available to the artists 24 hours a day and much easier to handle, and therefore most pieces were produced here. In the early 1970s a conflict emerged between the composers and the studio director Knut Wiggen. In his eager and idealistic search for “the music of the future” he believed in continuing the earlier experiments within musique concrète and elektronische Musik through research into sound and sound perception. Most of the composers, mainly from the Swedish “Text Sound” milieu, wanted to produce pieces that could be performed “here and now”. They were too impatient to wait for Wiggens’ results and wanted investments to update the Sound Workshop. Wiggen did not agree, so the composers boycotted the studio and Wiggen was dismissed (1975). The music produced at the institution during these years varies from so called abstract electronic music to political performance-related text-sound pieces. So far there has been very little academic writing about this. Going into the conflict and the very heterogeneous material, questions appear which I believe haven’t been raised properly in earlier writings on electro acoustic music. To the extent they have been dealt with, it has been within separated traditions of historiography and analysis.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - elektroakustisk musik

KW - Wiggen

KW - Ungvary

KW - Hanson

KW - text sound

KW - Schaeffer

KW - Electro acoustic music

KW - Wiggen

KW - Hanson

KW - text sound

KW - Schaeffer

M3 - Paper

ER -