ABSTRACT
Composer and musicologist Herbert Eimert became interested in electronic musical instruments as an evolution of serialism, a mathematically governed composition process with roots in twentieth-century Austria and Germany. The link between Meyer-Eppler and Eimert was a sound engineer named Robert Beyer, who collaborated with Meyer-Eppler in 1950 to present a series of lectures on the possibilities of what they termed elektronische Musik. The availability of tone and white noise generators greatly influenced the nature of early examples of elektronische Musik. The ability to work with pure sine tones led naturally to experiments with tone mixtures without a dominating, fundamental frequency. In spite of whatever serialism techniques may have been applied to the composition of a piece, the audio results were often indistinguishable from works created more directly with the sound medium, as in musique concrete. Telemusik was also important because it was designed to join composed elements of electronic music with elements that could be performed in a live setting.
