On the Threshold of Beauty

Book excerpt: On the Threshold of Beauty' is an exciting and detailed reconstruction of the emergence of electronic music in the Netherlands. Author Kees Tazelaar, composer and head of the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, grippingly relates its turbulent history from the earliest beginnings. This history begins around 1930 with the studio of the Philips Physics Laboratory and the plans for the Philips pavilion at Expo 58 in Brussels. The goal was a lightand- sound demonstration for the general public, but the involvement of Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis and Edgard Varèse gave this project a highly avant-garde turn. The result, Poème électronique, was considered by many to be much more experimental than the music of the research laboratory. In 1960 Philips divested itself of the studio. It was absorbed into a new studio at Utrecht University, where Gottfried Michael Koenig became artistic director in 1964. Tazelaar also looks in detail at the influence wielded by the Contact Organization for Electronic Music during this period. -- Publisher.