Electronic music | Definition, History, & Facts

Summary

electronic music, any music involving electronic processing, such as recording and editing on tape, and whose reproduction involves the use of loudspeakers.

Although any music produced or modified by electrical, electromechanical, or electronic means can be called electronic music, it is more precise to say that for a piece of music to be electronic, its composer must anticipate the electronic processing subsequently applied to his or her musical concept, so that the final product reflects in some way the composer’s interaction with the medium. This is no different from saying that a composer should have in mind an orchestra when composing a symphony and a piano when composing a piano sonata. A conventional piece of popular music does not become electronic music by being played on an electronically amplified guitar, nor does a Bach fugue become electronic music if played on an electronic organ instead of a pipe organ. Some experimental compositions, often containing chance elements and perhaps of indeterminate scoring, permit but do not necessarily demand electronic realization, but this is a specialized situation.

Electronic music is produced from a wide variety of sound resources—from sounds picked up by microphones to those produced by electronic oscillators (generating basic acoustical waveforms such as sine waves, square waves, and sawtooth waves), complex computer installations, and microprocessors—that are recorded on tape and then edited into a permanent form. Generally, except for one type of performed music that has come to be called “live electronic music” (see below), electronic music is played back through loudspeakers either alone or in combination with ordinary musical instruments.

This article covers both early experimentation with electronic sound-producing devices and composers’ subsequent exploitation of electronic equipment as a technique of composition. Throughout the discussion it should be clear that electronic music is not a style but rather a technique yielding diverse results in the hands of different composers.

Britannica Quiz

Pop Culture Quiz

Historically, electronic music is one aspect of the larger development of 20th-century music strongly characterized by a search for new technical resources and modes of expression. Before 1945 composers sought to liberate themselves from the main Classical-Romantic tradition of tonal thinking and to reconstruct their thinking along new lines, for the most part either Neoclassical or atonal and 12-tone, in which a composition is built up entirely from a tone row consisting of all 12 notes of the ordinary chromatic scale.

This pre-World War II period was accompanied by substantial experimentation with electrical and electronic devices. The most important outcome for the composer was the development of a number of electronic musical instruments (such as the Hammond organ and the theremin) that provided new timbres and that laid the technical foundations for the future development of electronic music proper from about 1948 onward. The rapid development of computer technology has had its effect in music too, so much so that the term computer music is replacing electronic music as the more accurate description of the most significant interaction between the composer and the electronic medium.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now

Electronic music is represented not only by a wide variety of 20th-century works and not only by serious concert pieces but also by a substantial literature of theatre, film, and television scores and by multimedia works that use all types of audiovisual techniques. Electronic music for theatre and films seems an especially appropriate replacement for a disembodied, nonexistent orchestra heard from a tape or a sound track. Electronic popular music has also won adherents. This mostly has consisted of arrangements of standard popular music for electronic synthesizers, the tentative use of electronic alterations by some of the more ambitious and experimental rock groups, and the preparation of recordings by innovative studio techniques.