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Anthology of Dutch Electronic Tape Music 2
This second and last volume of the Anthology of Electronic Tape Music contains works composed after 1966, during a period when electronic music broadened its horizons and established links with other disciplines, a period when the studios opened their portals to influences and involvement from outside.
Although electronic music from 1966 onwards became very fragmented and manifested itself in many different forms in Holland, the present volume of the Anthology aims merely to give an overall picture of pure tape music. The other movements, such as computer music, and their links with one another are however discussed in detail in the notes. We have also been selective in the choice of works, in that we have tried to find works that were the first of their kind as well as being, if at all possible, among the composer’s first electronic pieces. Volume II therefore presents composers not represented in the first volume. It should be emphasized, however, that many of the composers whose early works are included in Volume I have also done important work in the field of electronic music since 1966.
The Editor (1979)
Original Liner Notes
Electronic music has been the subject of intense activity in the Netherlands since 1955, and the variety of this activity is reflected in the histories of the large number of electronic studios. The aim of Anthology I is to illustrate both the work of the various studios and that of individual composers; we have tried to represent as many composers from each studio as possible with preferably their earliest and most characteristic works. The majority are exercises and étude-like pieces with exception of No. 8, a composition for instruments and tape; No. 5, music for a television play; No. 6, a ballet score; and No. 14, music for a stage play.
In Holland, as in other countries, it was mainly tape music for concerts that was produced until 1966. After that date electronic music expanded: advanced computer techniques were developed, live electronic music received more attention, electronic music penetrated into conservatory and university syllabuses, and above all private studios were set up by and for groups of improvising musicians. The year 1966, the watershed in the history of Dutch electronic music, accordingly marks the limit of this collection: Volume I is built around tape music from 1955 to 1966, and Volume II documents tape music from the ‘open studios’ from 1966 to 1978.
Erwin Roebroeks wrote a review on the anthologies which was published in in Neuw Zeitschrift Musik 2009
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