Kees Tazelaar’s On the Threshold of Beauty is a wonderful plunge into the history of electronic music in the Netherlands, 1925-1965, including the Philips Pavilion and the World’s Fair, but a whole lot more. It’s free to download now — the perfect beach book if you’re a total nerd. (Welcome home.)
Thanks to the legendary Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner for this tip:
And wow, is it something special. There are even new gems about Varèse, Xenakis, and the Philips Pavilion. There are gorgeous scores, album details, even the odd program code, as well as the requisite lab, studio, and gear shots. Tazelaar starts in the period few know, early in the research at Philips, with the primordial soup of stereophonic sound, radio, film, and fantastic inventions like the Philiolist Loudspeaker Violins.
Many of the lessons in this evolution, like how concerts and sound merged or early conceptions in “ambiophonics,” immersive sound, and reverberation, might spark some fresh ideas about how to approach modern tech. And in addition to new insights into stuff you know, you’ll get a thorough education in composers of the Netherlands that you might not know if your background is predominantly around the UK, US, France, and Germany (for example).
Speaking of music, there’s a companion website with music illustrations — so this can lift right off the page. Yeah, bring those Bluetooth headphones to the beach or poolside (or indoors, hello southern hemisphere).
Indeed, I hope this kind of tome inspires some fresh discussions of titles — past, present, or future — on Argentina, or Japan, or the list goes on…
But how good is this? Curtis Roads gives a glowing review. Details:
| Title: On the Threshold of Beauty: Philips and the Origins of Electronic Music in the Netherlands, 1925–1965 Author: Kees Tazelaar Publication date: November 2013 Revised Digital Edition: October 2020 230 images, full color Language: English Design: Joke Brouwer |
This publication was financially supported by Société Gavigniès and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. The digital version was financially supported by Société Gavigniès and the Konrad Boehmer Foundation.
It’s a screen-ready PDF with a high-res version on demand.
The physical edition is sold out, but it’s kind of them to give us this revised digital edition!
https://www.v2.nl/publications/on-the-threshold-of-beauty-digital-version
Oh, PS — Joke Brouwer, who did the design, is the co-founder and adjunct director of V2_Lab for Unstable Media in Rotterdam. There are some great events coming up in the next weeks if you find yourself passing through. And that sends me down a rabbit hole, because she in turn has some splendid design and curation projects of her own.
And the you wind up at this fascinating project from 1992:
This brings us back to a time when there was more cultural funding and freedom across western Europe, but v2 is at least keeping the flame going. Check their events: