ABSTRACT
By the early 1950s, two general tendencies had become preeminent. The first was based on the need for mathematical control of the various parameters in totally serialized contexts, the other motivated by an interest in new possibilities for radical expansion of timbre. Despite technological advancements in electronic instruments operated manually beginning in the 1920s and continued interest in music organized by noise since the pre-World War-I experiments of the Italian futurists, both tendencies had remained unfulfilled for the most part until after World War II. A crucial factor that permitted great strides in these areas of mathematical control and timbral expansion after 1950 was the invention of magnetic tape.
