WIRELESS FANTASY

Vladimir Ussachevsky

tape piece realized at Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center

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There is no score for this work found in the archives of American Composers Alliance.

from New World Records liner notes:

Wireless Fantasy (1960) has a notable historical background. It was commissioned by a group of early radio buffs and researchers known as the De Forrest Pioneers, named for Lee De Forrest whose invention of the vacuum tube made modern radio and recording possible. The piece is meant to evoke the early period of radio communication by using wireless code as a primary sound source. For this purpose, Ussachevsky recorded signals tapped out by an early radio pioneer, Ed G. Raser, on old spark generators in his W2ZI Historical Wireless Museum in Trenton, NJ. The following signals can be heard extensively in the piece: QST, a stand-by call meant to alert listeners to a forthcoming broadcast or announcement of note; DF, the ID call of the Manhattan Beach radio station, one of the best known of the early broadcasters with a range from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean; WA NY for the Waldorf-Astoria Station which started broadcasting in 1910; DOC DF, De Forrest’s own code nickname; and, finally, AR for “end of message” and “GN” for good night. Under the montage of wireless signals, we hear a fragment of Wagner’s Parsifal, electronically treated to sound like a short-wave transmission. With this, Ussachevsky is evoking the fact that Lee De Forrest used the music-drama, then being heard for the first time outside of Germany, for his first musical broadcast.


Authored (or revised): 1960

Duration (minutes): 4:37


SKU

ACA-USSA-027
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