KlangSpektrum – Klangexperimenten Unser Zeitgenossen (1916–2013)

KLANGEXPERIMENTEN 

UNSER ZEITGENOSSEN 

1916-2013 

Kuratiert von Laurent Fairon

Carl Stumpf 

Ernst Toch 

Rudolf Steiner 

Lucie Bigelow Rosen 

Francis Mazière 

José Val del Omar 

Jocy de Oliveira 

Halim El Dabh 

Jean Françaix 

Wilhelm Keller 

John Herbert Leach 

Lodewijk de Boer 

Kelly Gates 

Manolo Diaz 

Roger Luther 

Otto Bernstein 

Ingrid Wiener 

Aton Kaapeli 

Klaus Ager 

The Beetham Tower 

This is a collection of little known musics 

from various epochs of the 20th century, all 

featuring sound experiments of one kind or 

another. Stylistically varied, their common 

denominator is a will to experiment with 

whatever technology was available at the time, 

forming a wonderful tapestry of noises 

representative of a noisy century. They've been 

gathered in this collection as examples of a 

particular spirit of discovery and some of these 

recordings are quite rough, being documents 

and explorations rather than fully polished 

pieces of music. Admittedly, the flavor of 

analog overcomes the sheen of computer 

music. 

Most of the tracks compiled here are 

hard to come by. Some come from library 

archives (Carl Stumpf, Francis Mazière), some 

come from specialist blogs or YouTube videos, 

some from artists' websites. Some have 

never been available on the web before and 

were culled from the compiler's own record 

collection (Wilhelm Keller, Halim El Dabh, 

Manolo Diaz, Otto Bernstein, John Herbert 

Leach). 

The choice is entrirely personal and 

doesn't reflect main musical trends of the 

20th century like jazz, electronic-, tape- and 

computer music, etc, which have been 

documented elsewhere. Rather, this 

compilation examines the quiet revolutions 

taking place during the 20th century, while 

individuals started thinking out of the box, 

when sound experiments flourished in 

places where innovation was least expected: 

children's musical education, anthroposophic 

circles, tropical jungles, stage music, 

film soundtrack, commercial ads, etc. 

Similarly, musical notes started emanating 

from unusual objects or apparatus like 

phonograph cylinders or flexi discs ; 

architecture was sonified ; numbers 

eventually became sound carriers. 

In the past centuries, music innovators 

have always been curious and adventurous, 

but their number was limited. During the 

20th century, however, statistics exploded 

and the sheer number of sound innovators 

rocketed, leading to a myriad of experiments 

inside or outside traditional music circles. 

KlangSpektrum seeks to reflect this 

multiplicity. 

Duration: 73mn 

Researched, produced and designed by L. Fairon 

Paris, France, April–May 2018 

Marc Matter 

Niko Mihaljević

Track n°1 

CARL STUMPF 

(1848–1936, Germany) 

Track n°2 

ERNST TOCH 

(1884-1964, Austria) 

Track n°3 

RUDOLF STEINER 

(1861–1925, Austria) 

Vowel Experiments from 

the Phonogramm-Archiv 

(1914–1916) 

2:42 

German philosopher and psychologist 

Carl Stumpf researched the psychology 

of tones in several important essays like 

Tone Psychology in 1883. In 1914–16, he 

conducted vowel experiments recorded 

on phonograph cylinders, confronting 

human phonemes with pure tones 

produced by a tuning fork or other fixed 

pitch device – as in the exerpt included 

here. Stumpf was also a pioneer of 

comparative musicology and ethnomusicology 

in his 1911 essay The Origins 

of Music and in the creation of the 

Phonogramm-Archiv, a collection of folk 

music recordings on cylinders established 

by Stumpf in Berlin in 1900. 

Die Chinesische Flöte 

(1921) 

6:30 

Known for his post-Romantic music and 

Hollywoood film sound tracks, Austrian 

composer Ernst Toch was also an 

experimentalist whose works were regularly 

premiered in the Donaueschingen festival 

in the 1920s until the Nazi upheaval 

in Germany in 1933. His Fuge aus der 

Geographie of 1930, a spoken word 

cantata for choir, is an early exemple 

of sound poetry. Composed for voice 

and orchestra, The Chinese Flute features 

entire instrumental passages based 

on the examination of contiguous tones, 

announcing works of the Spectralism 

movement in the 1970s (Tristan Murail, 

Gérard Grisey). 

Vier Mysteriendramen 

(1928) 

2:30 

Written in 1909–1913, the Four Mystery 

Dramas by Austrian philosopher Rudolf 

Steiner were only premiered after his 

death, with accompanying music by 

German composer Adolf Arenson 

(1855–1936), including vocal parts in 

sprechgesang and angular, almost Cubist 

piano music. The Mysteriendramen are 

esoteric plays involving human creatures 

and their relation to the supernatural. 

This is an excerpt from a performance at 

the Goetheanum in Dornach, near Basel, 

Switzerland, in 2010. 

– 3 –

Track n°4 

LUCIE BIGELOW ROSEN 

(1890–1968, USA) 

Track n°5 

FRANCIS MAZIÈRE 

(1924–1994, France) 

Track n°6 

JOSÉ VAL DEL OMAR 

(1904–1982, Spain) 

The Space Controlled Instrument 

(ca1940) 

3:16 

A patron of the arts, Lucie Bigelow Rosen 

sponsored Leon Theremin when he resided 

in the U.S. As a theremin performer, she 

toured the U.S., Europe and India in 

the 1930s–50s, playing solo with piano 

accompanyment as well as with Theremin’s 

Carnegie Hall Ensemble of 10 theremin 

instruments. She played a Space Controlled 

Instrument – also called the September 

Theremin–, custom-build in 1938 by Leon 

Theremin. In a November 1934 article for 

The New York Times, Rosen wrote the 

instrument "reflects the whole nervous 

and emotional system." The sound excerpt 

included here is a practice recording of 

Mortimer Browning's 1939 Concerto in F, 

perhaps with husband Walter Rosen at the piano. 

Tumuc Humac – Musique 

de la Haute Forêt Amazonienne 

(1952) 

4:07 

After WWII, French archeologist and ethnologist 

Mazière lived several years among Amazonian 

indians of French Guyana. In 1951, he organized 

an expedition southward toward the 

Tumuc Humac mountains which marks 

the frontier with Brazil, in order to find traces 

of Raymond Maufrais, a French ethnologist 

who had disappeared in the region in 1950. 

Mazière never find him, but he documented 

his trip in books, films and record, the 

“Musique de la Haute Forêt Amazonienne” 

10 inch album. The disc is remarkable for 

its montage of environmental sounds of the 

Amazonian forest with rare performances 

of Boni indians of the Maroni river singing 

mourning songs, lullabies, work songs, 

children songs, as well as the Maraké 

Aguaespejo Granadino OST 

(1955) 

5:08 

Spanish avantgarde film maker Val del Omar 

was a pioneer of custom-build optics, 

enhanced image and sound synchronicity, 

radical sound montage and collage 

technique. His 1955 film Aguaespejo 

Granadino (Water-Mirror of Granada) is 

a Surrealist and mystic homage to his 

birthplace Granada, and the Alhambra 

water fountains and canals build by the 

Islamic occupant during the Al Andalus 

era. Aguaespejo Granadino have been 

appropriately dubbed an “aquatic symphony”. 

The soundtrack is particularly striking 

with its music concrete passages, sound 

collages, found sounds, poetry reading 

and tape manipulations. 


Track n°7 Track n°8 Track n°9 

JOCY DE OLIVEIRA 

(b.1936, Brazil) 

HALIM EL DABH 

(1921–2017, Egypt/USA) 

JEAN FRANÇAIX 

(1912–1997, France) 

Um Assalto No Morumbi 

(1959) 

1:56 

Two Egyptian Themes 

(1961) 

2:20 

Insectarium – I. La Scolopendre 

(rec. 1963) 

1:05 

Before turning to avantgarde in 1960, Brazilian 

contemporary pianist and electronic music 

composer Jocy de Oliveira (born 1936) published 

an album titled A Música Século XX De Jocy 

[The 20th Century Music Of Jocy], a collection 

of playful, original bossa nova songs with 

inventive arrangements, minimal instrumentation 

and occasionally rather elliptic lyrics. The same 

year (1959), she published a book of poems 

titled “O 3º Mundo” with drawings by Flávio 

de Carvalho. 

In 1961, Egyptian avantgarde music composer 

Halim El Dabh was a US resident, working 

at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music 

Center and composing scores for Martha 

Graham's ballets of the time. He also 

contributed two short, ancient Egyptian 

melodies to the George Delerue score for 

“Ici a commencé l'histoire”, an outdoor, 

multimedia performance involving full 

symphonic orchestra, choir, dancers, light 

show and speakers performing amid the 

pyramids of Cairo. These melodies are short, 

colourful themes, nicely contrasting with 

Delerue's rather grandiose film music – 

think Cecil B. DeMille. 

French neo-classic composer Jean Françaix 

wrote the short cycle Insectarium for solo 

harpsichord in 1953, comprising six short 

compositions each named after an insect. 

It was premiered in 1957 by the legendary 

harpsichord player Wanda Landowska. It is 

here interpreted by German harpsichordist 

Marga Scheurich, a JS Bach specialist and 

member of Stuttgarter Collegium Instrumentale 

at the time. The lively, hopping 

opener La Scolopendre describes a female 

Scolopendra, apparently. 



JOHN HERBERT LEACH 

(1931–2014, UK) 

WILHELM KELLER 

(1920–2008, Austria) 

LODEWIJK DE BOER 

(1937–2004, The Netherlands) 

The Plague 

(1970) 

1:45 

Ludi Musici 2 - Schallspiele 

(1971) 

2:52 

Spectator OST 

(1970) 

3:30 

British film music composer and dulcimer 

player John Herbert Leach published many 

library music LPs on KPM and Music De Wolfe 

between 1968–89. The lugubrious Plague 

theme is from one of these, a haunting, 

repetitive melody for string ensemble. 

A disciple of Carl Orff, Austrian educator 

and musicologist Wilhelm Keller published 

several books on German Catholic publisher 

Fidula-Verlag, as well as three LPs for their 

phonographic branch, Fidula Fon, between 

1970–72. These records are an update on the 

Carl Orff's Schulwerk method, popularized 

in many Musik für Kinder (Music for Children) 

records. Keller's own method included music 

with found objects, sound poetry, music 

concrete explorations, an initiation to atonality 

through gently dissonant musical exercices, 

etc, all performed with children from an 

Austrian school. 

Dutch Lodewijk de Boer was first a viola player 

with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in the 1960s, 

before turning to the stage as a playwright 

and director of the Toneelgroep Studio in 

1968. His collaboration with film director 

Frans Zwartjes included appearances as actor 

and several soundtracks like in Spectator, a 

classic of avant-garde cinema also starring 

Moniek Toebosch. Drenched in tape noise, an 

electric organ loop with few embellishments 

recurs obsessively for the entire duration 

of the film, to mesmerizing effect. 



KELLY GATES 

(USA) 

MANOLO DIAZ 

(born 1941, Spain) 

ROGER LUTHER 

(born 1940?, USA) 

Cafe in The Sky 

(1962) 

2:14 

Robot 

(1970) 

1:37 

Sleeper OST 

(1980) 

1:55 

This song comes from a special promotional 

postcard disc issued during Seattle World's 

Fair in 1962 to celebrate the Eye-of-the-Needle 

restaurant (now: “SkyCity”) located at the 

rotating top of the Space Needle monument in 

Seattle, Washington. Kelly Gates is an assumed 

name and the record was credited to “Kelly 

Gates with Dez And Larry” in the official 7inch 

disc published by Nolta Records the same 

year. In this song, electric guitar and electronic 

arrangements exhude a radiant optimism for 

the future while the singer's charming voice 

makes one surrender to whatever technology 

is at stake. 

After being part of several Spanish bands 

during the 1960s, folk singer Manolo Diaz 

formed the Aguaviva group with José Antonio 

Muños in 1967. Their pop and folk songs 

repertoire was mainly composed by Diaz 

and Pepe Egea while lyrics were taken from 

Spanish poets like Garcia Lorca or Rafael 

Alberti, with obvious political undertones 

close to the anti-Franco resistance. 

Consisting of electronic sounds, noises 

and backward vocals, the experimental song 

Robot was the openner of Aguaviva's first 

album, Cada vez más cerca, 1970. 

US electronic music composer Roger Luther 

joined the Moog Company in 1972 and 

eventually became its General Manager 

during the 1980s. His track Sleeper was used 

as the soundtrack to Ed Mellnik's abstract 

film of the same name in 1980. Sleeper was 

later included in one of Ken Moore's Anvil 

Creations compilations titled I.E.M.A. Collective 

Tapes in 1982, while another of his compositions 

was also used in 1985. Luther now 

manages the MoogArchives.com website 

as well as Asylums of New York State 

at nyasylum.com. 



OTTO BERNSTEIN 

(Germany) 

INGRID WIENER & CHOR 

(b. 1942, Austria) 

NOKIA KAAPELI 

(ca.1980-85) 

Glasmusik Toncollage 

(ca. 1980) 

4:49 

Moritat von der Eisenbahn 

(1984) 

2:34 

ATON ® Cables flexi disc 

(ca. 1980-85) 

3:00 

The track “Glasmusik Toncollage” is a music 

concrete composition based on manipulated and 

processed glass sounds German composer 

Otto Bernstein recorded at a Rosenthal 

manufacturing facility in Franconia, Germany. 

Rosenthal GmbH is a porcelain and glass 

manufacturing company founded in 1879 

and based in Nuremberg. Glasmusik 

Toncollage was featured on a promotional 

7inch record fostering the Rosenthal 

Studio-Line collection of the time – date 

unknown but record outlook indicates 

the early 1980s. Rosenthal celebrated their 

centenary in 1979 with several publications. 

The disc also features a lecture by Prof. 

C. J. Riedel about glass as material 

and sound source on the B-side. 

Austrian contemporary artist Ingrid Wiener 

emigrated to Berlin during the 1970s with 

husband Oswald Wiener. Prior to that, 

she had been a member of Die Wiener Gruppe 

– the Vienna Group. As part of her multimedia 

art, she made a number of records since 1979, 

notably with Valie Export and Monsti Wiener. 

This is the A side of a 7in single published by 

Exil-Schallplatte, an emanation of Exil bar, 

an artists' bar frequented by Austrian expats 

and German artists in Berlin during the 1980s. 

Composed for a vocal ensemble, this classic 

call & response song features a male choir 

of German artists supporting the solo voice 

of Ingrid Wiener reciting lyrics by Gerard Rühm 

& Konrad Bayer, both members of the Vienna 

Group. 

Finnish promotional flexidisc to the glory 

of the Aton “new generation cable clamp” 

(Uuden sukupolven kaapelitolppa) from the 

Finnish Cable Factory (Suomen Kaapelitehdas 

Oy), who later merged with Nokia Oy (forest 

industry) to give birth to Nokia Electronics. 

The flexi contains futuristic electronic sounds 

with bland salesman speech as follow: 

“Aikamme musiikkiin kuuluu atonaalisuus, 

se kumoaa käsitykset sävelten suhteista. Aton on 

uudistaja, aurinko, voima. Elämme atonaalista, 

uutta ja uudistuvaa aikaa.” (We live in an era of 

atonality where the melody is no more related 

to the tune. Aton is the innovator, the sun, 

the power. This is the time of Aton, innovation 

and regeneration.) 



KLAUS AGER 

(b. 1946, Austria) 

THE BEETHAM TOWER 

(2006, UK) 

MARC MATTER 

(b. 1974, Germany) 

Bibyké für Tonband 

(1991) 

7:40 

Howling sounds 

(2006–2012) 

5:22 

L'oeil Ecclatante 

(2013) 

4:09 

Contemporary music composer Klaus Ager 

is a key feature of the Salzburg musical 

scene as conductor, educator and president 

of the Austrian Composers’ Association. 

In addition to his classical music studies, 

Ager also studied abroad with Pierre Schaeffer 

and Olivier Messiaen in Paris in the first half 

of the 1970s and at the EMS Elektronmusikstudion 

in Stockholm in 1974. Composed in 

1991, Bibyké für Tonband is an accomplished, 

atmospheric and poetic work for electronic 

sounds, tape manipulation, found objects, 

subtle use of ring modulator and spoken 

word. 

Otherworldly, humming and howling sounds 

emitted by the 47-storey, 554-feet tall 

Beetham skyscraper, built in 2006 by 

architect Ian Simpson, who lives on the top 

floor. In stormy weather, the wind passes 

over glass fins of the hollow blade atop the 

building, producing these ghostly eerie 

sounds. The average frequency thus 

produced is around 247 Hertz. This track 

features excerpts sourced from YouTube 

amateur videos. 

Swiss-born, Cologne-based sound artist 

and researcher Marc Matter is a resident DJ 

at Salon des Amateurs Club in Düsseldorf, 

a member of Institut für Feinmotorik and an 

experimentalist sound poet in his Voiceover 

project since 2010, a development of his 

interest for Henri Chopin and OU Review. 

For L'oeil Ecclatante, Matter manipulated 

dubplates with various recorded sounds 

of his own voice, thus experimenting with 

impossible phonemes, elongated syllables 

and sustained breathing sounds. 


Track n°22 

NIKO MIHALJEVIĆ 

(born 1985) 

References 

01 Carl Stumpf – Vowel experiments, phonograph cylinder, Ethnologisches Museum Berlin SPK, Phonogramm-Archiv, 1914–16. Virtual Library of the Max Planck Institute for 

the History of Science, Berlin. http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/library/data/lit8526/index_html?pn=2&ws=1.5 

02 Ernst Toch – Die chinesische Flöte op.29, chamber symphony for 14 instruments and soprano singer, after poems by Hans Bethge, 1921 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhH6Mlh4jg 

03 Rudolf Steiner – 4 Mysteriendramen, 1928, from a performance at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 2010. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jBdT9HGMNA https://anthrowiki.at/Die_Mysteriendramen_Rudolf_Steiners 

04 Lucie Bigelow Rosen – Mortimer Browning: Concerto in F for theremin and orchestra, 1939. Dutch East Indies Radio Company broadcast, ca.1940. Source: Thorwald 

Jørgensen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjKUXn3WI2E 

05 Francis Mazière – Tumuc Humac - Musique de la Haute Forêt Amazonienne, 10inch LP published by BAM (Boîte A Musique), Paris, France, 1952. Sound excerpts on 

BNF-Gallica: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k88149554/f2.media 

06 José Val del Omar – Aguaespejo Granadino, soundtrack excerpts, 1955. Source: https://soundcloud.com/val_del_omar 

07 Jocy de Oliveira – Um Assalto No Morumbi, from A Música Século XX de Jocy, LP, Copacabana, Brazil, 1959 

https://woodstocksound.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/jocy-de-oliveira-a-musica-do-seculo-xx-1961/ 

08 Halim El Dabh – Two Egyptian Themes, from Georges Delerue: Ici A Commencé L'histoire - Pyramides Et Sphinx, LP, Ministry Of Culture And Information, Cairos, Egypt, 1961 

Magneticae Taeniae - Tape Loop 01 

(2012) 

1:37 

Croatian graphic designer Niko Mihaljević 

studied in the Netherlands before returning 

to Zagreb to work as a freelance and 

educator, and to launch the Alluvial Gold 

cassette label in 2012 with the release of his 

own Magneticae taeniae de Carpe Diem (Tape 

Loops 01–12), a compilation of tape loops 

from cassettes found in a thrift store in 

Arnhem named Carpe Diem. The excerpt 

included here is the openning track, Tape 

Loop 01, and is a perfect, dreamy conclusion 

to this compilation. 

09 Jean Françaix – Insectarium I - La scolopendre, Marga Scheurich: harpsichord, from 7inch single released by Da Camera, Germany, 1963 

https://continuo.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/jean-francaix-linsectarium/ 

10 John Herbert Leach – The Plague, from The Muzik Makers: Prehistoric, Ancient And Period, LP, Music De Wolfe, UK, 1970 

https://www.discogs.com/Muzik-Makers-Prehistoric-Ancient-And-Period/release/2982016 

https://continuo.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/john-leach-prehistoric-ancient-and-period/ 

11 Wilhelm Keller – Ludi Musici 2 - Schallspiele, 10" LP, Fidula Fon , Germany, 1971 

https://www.discogs.com/Wilhelm-Keller-Ludi-Musici-2-Schallspiele/release/3033471 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Keller_(Komponist) 

12 Lodewijk de Boer – Spectator OST, 1970 

http://continuo-docs.tumblr.com/post/68241400930/frans-zwartjes-spectator-1970-starring-moniek https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=45&v=64ARnFi3DuQ 

13 Kelly Gates – Cafe in The Sky, from postcard record, published by Bolmin Publ. Co., USA, 1962. 

Also on “Kelly Gates with Dez And Larry”, 7inch disc, Nolta Records, USA, 1962. 

https://www.discogs.com/Kelly-Gates-with-Dez-And-Larry-Cafe-In-The-Sky/release/10520891 

http://musicformaniacs.blogspot.fr/2011/08/i-want-to-play-on-that-gayway-postcard.html 

14 Manolo Diaz & Aguaviva – Robot, from Cada Vez Más Cerca, LP, Acción, Spain, 1970. https://www.discogs.com/Aguaviva-Aguaviva/release/5210034 

15 Roger Luther – Soundtrack to Ed Mellnik's film Sleeper, 1980. Included in I . E . M . A. Group Tape #3 by Anvil Creations (Ken Moore): 

https://anvilcreations.bandcamp.com/album/i-e-m-a-group-tape-3 http://ihatethisfilm.tumblr.com/post/172643878212/sleeper-ed-mellnik-1980-music-by-roger-luther 

16 Otto Bernstein – Rosenthal Glasmusik Toncollage, b/w Anmerkungen mit them Glas, 7inch published by Rosenthal Studio Line, Germany, ca1980 

17 Ingrid Wiener & Chor – Moritat Von Der Eisenbahn b/w Vermutlich, 7in single released by Exil-Schallplatte, Germany, 1985 

Choir – Bruno Brunnet, Helmut Middendorf, Oswald Wiener, Reinald Nohal, Stephan Landwehr, Thomas Hornemann, Tom Re, Werner Többen, Wolf Fuchs. 

https://www.discogs.com/Ingrid-Wiener-Chor-Moritat-Von-Der-Eisenbahn-Vermutlich/release/722082 

18 ATON ® cables by Nokia Kaapeli, flexi disc published by Nokia Kaapeli, Finland, ca1980-85 

Source: http://phinnweb.blogspot.fr/2008/10/aton-flexi-disc.html https://www.kaapelitehdas.fi/en/info/history 

19 Klaus Ager – Bibyké für Tonband, op. 61, texts by Friedrich Hölderlin, voice: Katharina Boehme, Salzburg 1991. Source: artist webiste at http://www.klausager.at/audio.htm 

20 The Beetham Tower Howling Sounds (2006). SimpsonHaugh and Partners, Ian Simpson, architect. Located on 301-303 Deansgate, Manchester, UK. Montage of various 

YouTube videos. 

21 Voiceover (Marc Matter) – L'oeil Ecclatante, from s/t CD-R, released by Chocolate Monk UK, 2013 

https://www.discogs.com/Marc-Matter-Voiceover-L-oeil-Ecclatante/release/5773703 

22 Niko Mihaljevic – Magneticae taeniae de Carpe Diem (Tape Loops 01–12), cassette, Alluvial Gold, Croatia, 2012 

https://www.discogs.com/Niko-Mihaljevi%C4%87-Magneticae-taeniae-de-Carpe-Diem-Tape-Loops-0112/release/6615602 

https://soundcloud.com/alluvialgold/tape-loops-01-12-excerpt-a1-a9 

http://www.alluvialgold.net/

KlangSpektrum – Klangexperimenten Unser Zeitgenossen (1916–2013)

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?