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Stories about new musical instruments are often told as quests for new kinds of sounds. The Composer's Black Box asks, What happens when new musical instruments produce not only new sounds but also new dynamics of musical agency and control? And what consequences do those new dynamics have for musicality beyond sound? With a focus on five key figures—Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Donald Buchla, Alvin Lucier, and Sun Ra—this book explores how scientific and technological developments in mid-twentieth-century America galvanized musicians to reconfigure their conceptions of sociality, freedom, and the creative self. Theodore Gordon shows how cybernetic thinking in a range of disciplines, from experimental music to jazz and electrical engineering, has shaped musical techniques and technologies and changed what it means to be a composer—or, more broadly, a music-making human—in an increasingly informational world.
"A valuable corrective to the utopian ideals of Subotnik and other cybernetic acolytes, who viewed electronic music within a framework of smooth technological progress and human advancement."
“Gordon's tone is not nostalgic: built between his bookends of Alexander Weheliye and Sun Ra, he shows how cybernetic dreams of freedom through communication technology always break down into exercises of control. This is an eerily relevant topic—-amidst the returns to power of various technofascisms—which makes his book timely and potent beyond music studies.”
“An academic study of the synthesizer’s earliest days. . . . Gordon stretches the black-box . . . as far as it will go. . . . Its many transformations keep the book lively.”