"Electronic music is not one single genre but rather a nexus of numerous genres, styles, and subgenres, divided not only geographically but also institutionally, culturally, technologically, and economically. Because of this breadth of activity, no one single participant or informant can speak about all of electronic music with equal facility."*
Traditionally viewed, electronic composition focuses on the creation of sound
itself via electronic means, i.e., synthesis/sampling/signal processing, both as a
compositional act and as the final artefact. Electronic compositions can and
should be understood from a historical perspective--in the tradition of Pierre
Schaeffer’s musique concrète as well as the electronic music of Koenig, Xenakis,
Radigue, or Stockhausen, or indeed the computer music of the USA from the 1960s
onwards--but the field continues to develop and expand. It includes various new
approaches, many of them hybrid, bespoke, and influenced by fields outside of
music itself, including but not limited to gaming, computer science, and
electronic engineering. The field of live electronics forms a central link
between electronic and instrumental composition and is impossible to overlook in
the contemporary musical landscape. Overall though, the electronic music we focus
on in anenome is art-music in which electronics played a
fundamental and indispensable role in the development of the aesthetic
experience. (Michael Edwards)
* Roads, Curtis. Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (p. xii). Oxford University Press 2015