THE MUSIC

IS ELECTRONIC MUSIC 400 YEARS OLD?

How long has electronic music been around? Depends on who you ask. The Techno people will say the 1980s with Detroit and Germany as competing birthplaces. Devotees of House will insist on completely different dates and locations. The Tech-House fanatics or those who prefer other genres and sub-genres (we’ve certainly lost count but there are more than a 100 of them) will present a different chronology altogether. Do a little research online and before you know it you will find hundreds pointing to the emergence of a particular artist, album, instrument or technology as the definitive starting point.

But what if we told you that the earliest recorded reference to what you would today call electronic music dates back 400 years? Don’t believe us? Judge for yourselves.

 

We have also sound-houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies, which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Diverse instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet.  We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make diverse tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds.  We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We also have diverse strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times…and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.

Francis Bacon ~ The New Atlantis ~ 1626

 

Sure sounds like Techno to us. Buy a shirt already, so you can WEAR, DANCE, LAUNDER, REPEAT!