Electronic music / 电子音乐
Technological advances in the 20th century enabled composers to use electronic means of producing sound. The first electronic instrument was invented in Russia in 1919 by Leon Theremin, and was called the theremin. Some composers simply incorporated electronic instruments into relatively conventional pieces. Olivier Messiaen, for example, used the ondes martenot in a number of works.
Other composers abandoned conventional instruments and used magnetic tape to create music, recording sounds and then manipulating them in some way. Pierre Schaeffer was the pioneer of such music, termed Musique concrète. Some figures, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, used purely electronic means to create their work. In the United States of America, Milton Babbitt used the RCA Mark II Synthesizer to create music. Sometimes such electronic music was combined with more conventional instruments, Stockhausen's Hymnen, Edgard Varèse's Déserts, and Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms offer a few examples (although Déserts is sometimes performed today without the tape part).
Oskar Sala, created the non-musical soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds, using the trautonium electronic instrument he helped develop. Morton Subotnick provided the electronic music for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Some well known electronic works generally regarded as in the classical tradition include "Film Music" by Vladimir Ussachevsky, A Rainbow in Curved Air and Shri Camel by Terry Riley, "Silver Apples", "The Wild Bull", and "Return" by Morton Subotnick, Sonic Seasonings and Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos, "Light Over Water" by John Adams, Aqua by Edgar Froese, and Poème électronique by Edgar Varèse.
Iannis Xenakis is another modern composer who used computers and electronic instruments, including one he invented, in many compositions. Some of his electronic works are gentle ambient pieces and some are savage sonic violence. Composers such as Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Tudor created and performed live electronic music, often designing their own electronics or using tape. A number of institutions sprung up in the 20th century specialising in electronic music, with IRCAM in Paris perhaps the best known.
The influences of minimalists such as Steve Reich (in particular 'Drumming') are clear in much of the work of DJ Spooky showing a perfect example of the crossover between 20th century classical, and electronic music such as trip-hop and even trance and drum n bass.