...the piece was more an essay on the activities of an apparently schizophrenic goods yard than a creative study in sound to be appreciated on its own terms.
Symphonie pour un homme seul by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, 1949-50.
This was given at the first public performance of musique concrète.
Gesang der Jünglinge by Stockhausen 1955-56.
The work that healed the rift between musique concrète and elektronische Musik. It took Stockhausen many, many hours of recording and cutting and splicing pieces of tape. The source material was a mixture of electronic sounds and a boy singing from the Benedicite omnia opera. He discovered that very small sections of vocal sounds showed surprisingly stable tonal structures, some approximating to pitched sounds, others to noise - both of which could be created electronically. This provided the meeting point between the two source elements.
Fontana Mix by John Cage 1959.
Produced at the Milan studio, Fontana Mix was, like many other of Cage's works, composed according to the principles of indeterminacy. [more...pic of score? use a different work?]
Kontakte by Stockhausen 1959-60.
Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco by Jonathan Harvey, 1980.
This magnificent work was created at IRCAM on the CHANT system. It combines the sound of the great tenor bell at Winchester Cathedral with that of the voice of Harvey's son who was a chorister there. It is somewhat reminiscent of Stockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge.