Andrei Smirnov, Liubov Pchelkina: Generation Z: Russian Pioneers of Sound Art and Musical Technology in 1910-1930 (2011) [English/Hungarian]

Variophone, theremin terpsitone, rhythmicon, emiriton, ekvodin, graphical sound – just to mention a few of the amazing innovations of the beginning of the 20th century in Soviet Russia, a country and time turbulent with revolutions, wars and totalitarian dictatorship.

While the history of Russian post-revolutionary avant-garde art and music is fairly well documented, the inventions and discoveries, names and fates of researchers of sound, creators of musical machines and noise orchestras, founders of new musical technologies have been largely forgotten except, perhaps, Leon Theremin, inventor of the first electronic musical instrument, the theremin.

This community of creators, however, was inherently incompatible with the totalitarian state. By the late 1930s it became effectively written out of histories, wiped out from text books.

Many of their ideas and inventions, considered as utopian at that time, were decades later rein¬vented abroad. We still use them today not knowing their origin.

This booklet was produced for the Budapest edition of a traveling exhibition curated by Andrei Smirnov of the Theremin Center and Liubov Pchelkina of the State Tretyakov Gallery.

Publisher OSA Archivum, Budapest, 2011
ISBN 9789638853820
20 pages

exhibition (from the curators)
exhibition (gallery website)

PDF

R. Murray Schafer: The New Soundscape: A Handbook for the Modern Music Teacher (1969)

“Overheard in the lobby after the premiere of Beethoven’s Fifth: ‘Yes, but is it music?’

Overheard in the lobby after the premiere of Wagner’s Tristan: ‘Yes, but is it music?’

Overheard in the lobby after the premiere of Stravinsky’s Sacre: ‘Yes, but is it music?’

Overheard in the lobby after the premiere of Varèse’s Poème électronique: ‘Yes, but is it music?’

A jet scrapes the sky over my head and I ask: ‘Yes, but is it music? Perhaps the pilot has mistaken his profession?’ ” (Preface)

Publisher Berandol Music Limited, Scarborough, Ontario, and Associated Music Publishers, New York, 1969
67 pages
via Charles Turner

PDF (updated to OCR’d version via John Erik Kristensen on 2016-11-11, 2 MB)

R. Murray Schafer: Ear Cleaning: Notes for an Experimental Music Course (1967–) [EN, ES, PT]

The book includes R. Murray Schafer’s notes and exercises which formed part of an experimental music course offered to first-year students at Simon Fraser University.

With an Introduction by Keith Bissell
Publisher Clark & Cruickshank, a division of Berandol Music Limited, Toronto, Canada, 1967
46 pages
via Charles Turner

Ear Cleaning (English, no OCR)
Limpieza de oidos (Spanish, trans. Ricardo Arturo de Gainza, 1982, added on 2014-12-19)
Limpeza de ouvidos (Brazilian Portuguese, 1991, added on 2014-12-19)