CMC History

history

Originally the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the CMC is the oldest center for Electroacoustic music in the United States. Following several years of experiments with electronic music composition at Columbia, the center was founded by Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990) and Otto Luening (1900-1996) with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1958. Ussachevsky served as director of the center from its inception until 1980, followed by Mario Davidovsky, who served as director from 1980 to 1994. Fred Lerdahl and Brad Garton became co-directors on the center in 1994; the center's name was changed to the Columbia University Computer Music Center under the directorship of Brad Garton in 1996.

When the center was founded in 1958, the CPEMC featured four well-equipped tape studios for electronic composition, as well as the famed RCA Mark II Synthesizer, which is still housed at the CMC. Over the years, the center aquired other state-of-the art equipment of the time, including Buchlas, Serge synthesizers, as well as customized electronic equipment. Computer technology was also in use at the center through the 1970s and 80s, and its ever increasing importance was reflected in the center's name change in the mid-1990s. For anecdotal insight into early computer-use at the center, refer to the recollections of Peter Mauzey, Virgil deCarvalho and Howard Eskin compiled by AcIS. For an overview of current equipment in use at the center, see the CMC facilities page.

Milton Babbitt began working at the center shortly after its inception (hence the early Princeton connection). Other composers affiliated with the center during the first 20 years include Jon Appleton, Bülent Arel, Luciano Berio, Wendy Carlos, Charles Dodge, Halim El-Dabh, Daria Semegen, Alice Shields, Pril Smiley, Edgard Varèse and Charles Wuorinen. For a list of current composers and researchers affiliated with the center, see our people page.

Some time in the fall of 1951 a professional Ampex tape recorder arrived to the Department of Music at Columbia University. For several weeks it sat in an imposing packing box under one of the tables without revealing its potential threat to invade the traditional assumption that music is conceived in terms of musical instruments and that composer's obligation ends with presenting a performer or a group of performers with a score which accurately represents his composition. A tape-recorder was, after all, a device to reproduce music, and not to assist in creating it. Having been bought at my instigation to serve in this intended function, it awaited my pleasure to be unpacked. Little did I know that opening the lid of the packing box produced an effect akin to that of Pandora's box. Having been asked on several occasions to describe the effects of this unsettling experience on my creative life (my wife could tell a lot, if asked, on how it felt to live in a company of three tape recorders in a living room) I find it best in this particular instance to restrict myself to a recounting in a most direct way the evolution of my approach to the opportunities to compose music directly in sound. I must insist that what I have done is music to me; it has been kindly received by a good many people whose opinion I respect.
—Vladimir Ussachevsky

The RCA Mark II Synthesizer at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center at Columbia's Prentis Hall on West 125th Street in 1958. Pictured: Milton Babbitt, Peter Mauzey, Vladimir Ussachevsky.

Studio 317, one of four composition studios at the C-PEMC, circa 1970. Clockwise from the center front, Vladimir Ussachevsky (seated), Milton Babbitt, Bülent Arel, Pril Smiley, Mario Davidovsky, Alice Shields, Otto Luening.