When did recorded performance detach from live performance?

I just put them together for myself. It’s basically everything I could find in this realm on YouTube, excepting two discs on order. I also have 3 early stereo discs in my collection (including the two 1931-32 Bell Labs records), so as far as I can tell, I have pretty much everything that can be found from 1901-1954.

If anyone ever finds the 200+ stereo concert reels recorded in Nazi Germany and hauled off by the Russians, I’ll have to add another shelf.

 

"By somebody at some point" — but that "point" came only when technology became widely available that permitted the live performance of something that was wholly created in the studio for the first time. In most cases, this was many years after the fact.

I mentioned the backwards guitars on "I'm Only Sleeping." Absolutely impossible to reproduce these in a live concert setting until a few years ago. I don't know when delay pedals first began incorporating the "reverse" option, but I think they're a relatively recent development.

Same with the tape loops in "Tomorrow Never Knows." I'm sure there's some kind of electronic gadgetry than enables you to at least simulate them (although that's what it would be — a simulation).

The wide-ranging discussion of electronic or other experimental music in this thread has been interesting — but it should be pointed out that the audience for this genre was, and remains, quite small. Not that this makes it unworthy of discussion, but I don't think it's wrong to also look at the OP's question in the context of actual "popular" music.

As I've also said, I don't believe The Beatles invented everything, as the snide accusation on this board often has it. But I've asked a couple of times for candidates (in the realm of popular music) earlier than Revolver, and there have been relatively few truly realistic answers.

Actually, The Chipmunks may prove to be the best one. I wish I had thought of that!

 

Yes what about it indeed! It is clear that conceptual music and musique concrete are closely related. It seems that after musical compositions (and their performances) initially “detached from live performance” via the techniques innovated by Halim El Dabh and Pierre Schaeffer in the 1940’s, it was inevitable that a conceptual composer like John Cage would then “reattach” such compositions to live performances by including them within greater compositional wholes.

 

I understand now. You said "output its' audio" at first, and I was taking you at your word. Thanks for the clarification.

 

Yes, otherwise it becomes an arrogant exercise that is quite out of touch with reality.

Yes it is a snide accusation. But it’s ok, I forgive you all.

And it’s true, there have been relatively few truly realistic answers in the realm of popular music earlier than Revolver. In any case, we can certainly credit Revolver for introducing avant-garde/experimental music to a far more massive audience than previously.

 

Okay, that has clarified it: you really are just interested in everybody agreeing with you that the Beatles were first, and will change the terms of the discussion whenever anybody comes up with examples that don't agree with the answer you want.

Here's the question you actually asked in your first post:
"A music history question:
What was the first musical composition to be in recorded form but not in a form intended for live performance?"

No mention of a "popular music" constraint, no requirement that it had to have a "massive audience".

Okay, we will grant you that the Beatles were the first to record "Tomorrow Never Knows." Now can the rest of us get on with our very interesting discussion?

 

And by recording “tomorrow never knows”, they were already showing how the new technology could be abused (by adding those silly, cheesy sound effects.)

 

I also stated this in my OP: “The earliest instance that I know of is whatever song was completed first on Revolver by The Beatles.”

I never said I knew the answer, or that the Beatles were first. Although I offered suggestions, I never mentioned any constraints or requirements about it being popular music or having mass appeal. And I was simply stating a fact that Revolver brought this form of music to a much larger audience, for better or for worse.

 

Actually Cage was doing mixed performances with live electronics using radioa in the 30s. One of his big interests was indeterminancy so I suspect the planned orderliness and fixed nature of makinf purely electronic music.for a fix medium didn't appeal to him as much though he dis do a realization of Williams Mix.

 

Just wanted to correct the record on my own faulty memory. Imaginary Landscape 1 was an early electroacoustic performance piece for two variable-speed turntables used to play test frequency recordings and muted piano and cymbal. Imaginary Landscape #4 was the one in the series for radios, and that wasn't until '51. I don't think there are any period recordings of Imaginary Landscapes No. 1. Here's a later recorded performance that was an attempt to recreate the original '39 performance, which was performed on radio. Obviously a performance piece, not a non-performed electronic realization, I just didn't want the incorrect info hanging out there.

 

Sure you can — who is putting any constraints on you doing so?

But you ought to acknowledge that your "very interesting discussion" would bore most of the rest of the world to tears. I'm not saying that's happening here — I myself used the term "interesting" in alluding to it. Just be a little realistic about the extent of its appeal.

In addition, I said that it would also be useful to have this discussion in the context of popular music as well as the more esoteric stuff. And some have chosen to do that.

The "rest of you" — however high-toned you may imagine your tastes to be — don't get to dictate the terms of the discussion in here. It will proceed in its own way in spite of whatever stomping of your little feet you choose to do.

 

I thought the discussion topic at hand was "When did recorded performance detach from live performance?" specifically "What was the first musical composition to be in recorded form but not in a form intended for live performance?" not "What was the first such instance in popular music?"

Pop music us almost always a laggard in musical innovation. As often happens, more often than not, though not exclusively, new ideas are developed by avant garde artists and then are adopted by the mainstream. It's basically the definition of avant garde.

And the popular artists tend to be more aware of and conversant in the creative ideas of their time outside of their pop field than fans. I mean, George Martin worked in the classical music department in the 1950s at EMI, when electronic music and the indeterminate works of Cage, etc were all the rage; John Lennon, for goodness sakes, married a Fluxus artist who had met John Cage when he was teaching composition at the New School, she let La Monte Young put on concerts at her loft.

Pop music fans tend to have much more limited and narrow musical taste and experience than pop musicians and creative people. But even among fans, back in the 1950s and 1960s, classical music, including even the avant garde, was a much more visible part of mainstream cultural life than it is now. Varese' Poeme Electronique, one of the the early masterpieces of electronic music, was composed for an installation by the Philips Corporation at the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. That World Fair had 40 million visitors over it's six month run.

 

It's not entirely accurate to say that Pierre Schaeffer's music wasn't composed for live performance - because some of it actually was, using turntables. The fact is people were doubtful it was music at all - and so was Schaeffer at times - so showing the pieces performed, in a traditional concert setting, was a way of publicizing and normalizing this type of music.

Schaeffer was not a musician, by the way, which didn't help in gaining acceptance for his compositions.

 

The question of first compositions appears to have been answered already by you (and very well I might add). It was El-Dabh and Schaeffer in the 40’s.

The first such instance in popular music doesn’t appear to have been answered yet, although there have been several candidates.

 

Well, I think in part because it's a creeping thing, in part because of the question of what is popular music (is Soothing Sounds for Baby popular music?), in part because the line between "performed" or "intended for performance" is blurry. In 1967, Morton Subotnick composed Silver Apples of the Moon with a Buchla synth, in a piece commissioned by the record company expressly for two sided LP. But he also performed it. Charles Wuorinen wrote Time's Encomium on RCA Mk II as a record label commission, but years later he went back and scored a version of the piece for traditional orchestra. "Tomorrow Never Knows," of course, has been performed too.

 

A lot of this seems awfully contingent on the fact that the Beatles had decided to stop playing live and, this hasn't been pointed out yet, were allowed to by their record company/ management/ commercial interests. That and the fact that they were given unlimited studio time to, more or less, do what they want. These are two factors that were not and had not been available to the vast majority of artists in popular music. Only someone like Joe Meek, who had his own studio, was able to spend hours speeding tapes up or down or recording toilets flushing and reversing the tape or whatever.

 

Everything you say is true, but none of it need preclude exploration of this same topic with regard to popular music as well — particularly when participants make it clear that they're doing it in this context (and when more posters are able to make a meaningful contribution).

I don't recall any post that read "Those of you who are pointing to examples in electronic or avant-garde music are wrong."

As for "all the rage" and your Brussels World's Fair examples, you're still talking about a very limited number of people who pursued any further interest in this particular form of music. The vast majority of those "40 million visitors" passed by the installation you refer to and said "Oh, isn't that curious?" — and never gave it another thought.

None of this is to say that this musical form is without merit or unworthy of discussion — I'm just talking about being realistic in terms of who cares about it or who can participate in such discussions.

As for this thread — sorry, but I have little patience for those who engage in finger-wagging about hewing very strictly to a thread topic, particularly when such finger-wagging is accompanied by an unwarranted dollop of arrogance. It's the nature of online discussion that one thing leads to another. Would it truly have been better to have just closed the thread once a couple of examples of electronic or mystique concrete had been identified?

Hell, if that had happened, we would never have had the example of The Chipmunks!

 

Of course, conversations go where they go, but I will say, when the history of electronic music is discussed -- and back when I was an undergraduate, though I was not a music major, I took a course in the music dept. on the history of electronic music in connection with the famous Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center with composer Arthur Krieger -- mention of David Seville and The Chipmunks is not so unusual! (The Beatles also do get mentioned, as does Frank Zappa)

(And also, to this question of who had access to the ideas and equipment, Ross Bagdasarian, aka David Seville, developed the Chimpunk thing with a $200 home recorder he bought with personal savings. He wasn't a musician either, he was an actor. It was a medium for inventors and tinkerers as much as for composers or academics or professional musicians.)

I will also say, many, many people are interested in the history of electronic music -- especially as EDM and ambient electronic music have become popular forms -- and in music that isn't just the most popular music. I mean, around here, many participants reflexively eschew any discussion of the most popular music (unless it's the most popular music of their childhoods, I guess). Anyone can participate in a discussion of it, even if they weren't previously aware of it. It is an opportunity to learn.

 

I think what your actually referring to is the advent of multitrack recording, as everything before that would’ve technically been ‘live’.

Multitrack recording

Obviously before that there could’ve also been editing so bits of separate recordings were spliced together.

 

To borrow again from MikeM above, the vagueness of “intended for live performance” clears up when “intended” implies “practical at the time.” Otherwise there is no practical answer to the question!

And then there was Cage who thought that any composition which is impractical to perform live (before the necessary technology exists to perform it live off record) may be performed live simply by pressing play. (As you all know, we hear this theory applied in much of the “live” popular music of our time). But I think Cage, brilliant as he was, was something of a practical joker in much of his conceptual work (as was Duchamp in visual art).

Related to this is Vangro’s comment above that many doubt whether musique concrete (not to mention much music influenced by it) is music at all. I myself had doubts, which is actually why I did not cite it as an example in my OP.

As for the line between popular and classical, yeah that can be blurry. But most of the time it isn’t. When it is blurry, perhaps the only way to resolve the dilemma is by placing such music in a separate category lying between both popular and classical.

 

Composing for tape, but not performance, and before that for wire recorder, predates multitracking. Here's an important early one, not musique concrete but music make specifically for tape using purpose created sound sources, not recordings of found sounds or performed material that's manipulated. Robert Beyer & Herbert Eimert's Robert Beyer, Herbert Eimert's Klang im unbegrenzten Raum

 

Even in the 1950s, people were doing live electronics, or things like combining tape music and performed music, and by the time the Beatles were doing something like "Tomorrow Never Knows," combine performed music and tape music and electronic manipulation in performance wasn't all that rare whether it was stuff like Varese's Deserts from '54, or Mauricio Kagel's Transicion II from the late '50s. It's quite possible that even in its day "Tomorrow Never Knows" could have been presented live as electoacoustic music. It's not necessarily, I think, a matter so much of what is/was practical as it is a matter of intent.



FWIW, I don't think today people with knowledge of music history ever debate whether or not musique is music or part of the history and development of music. That was more a dilemma of its day, as is often the case with new ideas that don't conform to old modes and methods.

 

First, correction: I said Vangro mentioned above that “many doubt...” That sentence should have been in past tense.

Sure, from a historical point of view, it is not debatable. But I do know classically trained musicians from top conservatories who know little about musique, do not believe it is music, and avoid it like the plague. Although not classically trained myself, I fall into that camp, yet at the same time I try not to hold grievances against history. What has been has been.

 

Sandy Bull's 1963 Fantasia and 1965 Inventions were both done with primitive overdubbing, which he tried to recreate live by playing against tapes as best as one could during the 60s.

 

Since yesterday, this one came to mind; use of feedback in the mid-40s to represent a "nightmare."
Lightnin' Hopkins,