Hi
I hope this finds you well.
Thank you for your work on this historical / aesthetic project and the links. The background information is particularly useful for me as I am likely one of the “some” [remaining] members who worked with these instruments. Another [non-member] of note is Paul Pedersen who assumed directorship of the McGill EMS upon Anhalt’s moving to Queen’s University.
This is a publicity picture of Istvan Anhalt in the very cramped [unwired] McGill EMS [possibly around 1966 - before 1969] surrounded by versions of several of the instruments mentioned in the article. The ‘Multi-track’ as it was referred to is on the left. In my ~4 years of working here in ’Studio 1’, I used all of these instruments a some time over this period, and somewhat disassembled most of them to some degree — and reassembled them.
Looking back. very lovingly, from some 55 years later, I now see most of them as having ’steam-punk’ heritage. I only met Hugh about half a dozen times and only worked briefly on one small project with him. Much of my own thought=pattern generation was codified by our few conversations. He was, in my terms, a ‘fundamentalist’. It appears that every question he asked, or answered was reduced to a [modular] question of fundamentals.
For example, in the foreground of this picture is a set of 6 octave-bandwidth filters. One afternoon in October 1970 when he was visiting the class, I asked him a question about ‘the filter bank’. He didn’t answer the question I asked, which was the wrong question. His reply [which took me a while to decode] was, “You see Kevin, everything is amplitude.” His fundamental, simple — but not easy answer, was the codification of my entire framework, in three words.
Born in 1914, as is oft repeated, his mind was set on providing composers with new resources, using the technologies at hand. He was sympathetic to digital developments, and the ELMUS lab at the National Research Council was adjacent to the Man and the Creative Machine, or perhaps Creative Man and the Machine, computer lab. This lab had an amazing computer, one with 16K of core. They did animation — v-e-r-y slowly.
Hugh was an educator for everyone he met. He was interested in what the younger generation would be doing. He only occasionally had the opportunity to experience this in person.
This is Hugh observing a younger generation in an open jam in an eight-channel session in April, 1972. He knew of the EMS Synth-AKS, the grand-daughter of his Sackbut. [MOOG modular was Sackbut’s daughter.]
This was the setup for a performance of my Master’s thesis later that day, a piece for 4-channel tape and live-electronic ‘improvisation’ with the group MetaMusic. The only equipment shared by the two pictures is the 19” rack next to the Scully.
Be well
Kevin
Think globally
Act locally
