ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a categorization by discussing some of the observable paradigms of technological ‘extensions’ as found, for example, in works by Mauricio Kagel, Pierre Schaeffer, Bruno Maderna, Renzo Rossellini, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Luigi Nono, Boris Blacher, and Giacomo Manzoni. While opera composers’ interest in working with both visual projection technologies and modern communication media goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, magnetic tape recording and projection technology appears to be an especially prominent feature in operatic scores only after about 1950. One crucial question is what composers ‘made’ out of the possibilities, or, to put it another way, which concrete dimension of the theatrical media context a composer ‘extends’ by the use of new media. Werner Meyer-Eppler had published his influential study on electric sound generation, electronic music and synthetic speech in 1949, and from 1951 onwards, the Cologne Studio fur elektronische Musik offered sound manipulation and recording facilities based on the combination of subtractive synthesis and magnetic tape technology.
