ï~~The Institute of Electroacoustics and Experimental Music at the Vienna
University of Music.
Tamas Ungvary & Peter Mechtler
Institute for electroacoustics and experimental music
Univ. of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna
[email protected] &
[email protected]
A brief history.
The composer Karl Schiske (1916-1969) and the pianist and producer Karl Wolleitner (b. 1919) already
in 1955 planned to establish a studio for "Elektronische Musik" at the "Vienna Academy of Music".The
installation of the Viennese studio was definitively completed by Wolleitner in 1958/59, being perhaps the
first Studio to be established at a School of Music in Europe.
In 1959/60, the first significant electroacoustic composition ever realized in Austria was produced in
this studio, the ballet "Fantasmata" from Anestis Logothetis (1921-94) with the technical assistance of the
sound enginneer Helmut Gottwald (b. 1938). The piece, tending to the French "musique concrete" approach
already anticipates the future aesthetic development of the studio.
In the academic year of 1963/64 the course of electroacoustic music has been founded. In the same year,
Gottwald started to build an electronic instrument which could be regarded as a forerunner of the voltage
controlled synthesizer. This instrument, called AKAPHON as hommage to the "Musikakademie", was used
for many years as a source for electronic sounds and is now is a part of the collection in the Museum of
Technology in Vienna. In the next year other electronic instruments, the AKAPIEP and the AKASCHIEB,
were build. The first was a rhythm machine which allowed the production of unusual polyrhythmic
structures. The second a kind of third filter bank graphic equalizer.
During the sixties aproximately 20 pieces have been produced by avantgarde composers like Karl Heinz
Gruber, Gtinter Kahowez, Peter Kotik, Friedrich Cerha and Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. The last two
were latter sucessively appointed institute directors.
In 1970 the composer Dieter Kaufmann (b. 1941), former student of Schiske, came back from a period
of studies in Paris, where he attended the classes of Olivier Messiaen and Rene Leibowitz, as well as the
course offered by the GRM (the "Groupe de Recherches Musicales") under guidance of Pierre Schaeffer and
Francois Bayle. His engagement as head of the course of electroacoustic music in the Viennese studio, now
raised to the status of an institute inside the school of music, gave a new impulse to the spreading of the
new form of music in Austria, also beyond the academic sectors.
In 1978 a digital system for real time sound processing controlled by a graphic interface., AKA 2000,
was build by Peter Mechtler.
The catalogue of works realized at the Institute increased in the seventies in more than 70 compositions
from Austrian and foreign composers. To mention some names: Kaufmann, Wilhelm Zobl, Camila
Soederberg, John Maryn, Wolfgang Danzmayr, Logothetis, Riszard Klisowski, Bruno Liberda, Gunther
Rabl, Christian Teuscher, Mayako Kubo.
The Institute moved to a new location and the composers Haubenstock-Ramati, Erich Urbanner and
Francis Burt sucessively took the direction of the Institute in the eighties.Under the direction of F. Burt,the
Institute received a generous extraordinary endowment from the Ministry of Science and Research in 1992
in order to renew all of the facilities.
The Institute of Electroacoustics and Experimental Music has nowadays 25 persons in his staff and
more than 100 students. It occupies presently two floors of the Riendsslgasse 12 with 3 studios dedicated
to applied music (each with a 8-track Digidesign Protools based work stations for video and film
syncronisation), 3 studios for Sound Engineering (an analog and a digital 24-track studios and an 8-track
Protools system) and 4 studios for elecroacoustic/computer music (a 24-track mixing studio, an
Next/ISPW based 8-track live-electronic studio, an 8-track Protools system, NEXT, Macintosh, Atari
based CDP stations as well as IBM and Silicon Graphics INDIGO 2 systems).
The institute hosts the certificate courses for "Electroacoustic Music" and "Sound Engineering" as well
the lectures and practical work on Electronic and Computer Music for students attending the
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