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(b Santiago de Chile, June 22, 1922; d Santiago, Feb 3, 1999). Chilean composer and writer. Introduced to music by his father, a cellist, he studied theory and the piano at the Catholic Conservatory from 1935 to 1939. After graduating in civil engineering from the University of Chile (1945), he pursued work in composition with Jorge Urrutia Blondel at the National Conservatory (1948–52). He made his first experiments in electronic music when he was planning music programmes for Chilean Radio (1953–6), and in 1956 created the Experimental Sound Workshop at the Catholic University of Santiago. He taught both at the Catholic University and on the arts faculty of the University of Chile.

Amenábar wrote for the voice, chamber groups, solo instruments, and ensembles, and he composed incidental music for the cinema and theatre. His electro-acoustic music carries special importance: such works as ...

(Eveline )

(b Streetly, Staffs, Dec 17, 1937). British composer and teacher. She studied at Birmingham University between 1956 and 1964 (BMus 1960, MA 1968) and with Alexander Goehr. During the 1960s she worked as a freelance horn player and as a music lecturer at colleges of education; in 1972 she was appointed lecturer at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She was a founder member of the Scottish Society of Composers and the Scottish Electro-Acoustic Music Society and in 1988 formed the contemporary music ensemble Soundstrata. During 1992 she was visiting composer at the Meistersinger-Konservatorium in Nuremberg; in 1996 she was appointed lecturer in music technology at the University of Glasgow. As a composer, she has acknowledged the influence of Bartók, Stockhausen and oriental music, and she was a pioneer of British electronic music. She combines natural and artificially generated or mediated sound, often using tape, as in ...

(b ?Córdoba, before ?1945). Argentine composer and teacher. After study at Córdoba University and Conservatory, she studied with César Franchisena, Zlatko Topolsky, Nicolás Alfredo Alessio, Alfredo Luis Nihoul, Ornella Devoto and Francisco Kroepfl. Castillo has dedicated herself primarily to composition and to the dissemination of 20th-century music. Considered a pioneer in the production of electro-acoustic music in Argentina, her works have been performed in many national and international festivals and congresses. She began to create musique concrète and electronic music at the centre for experimental music at Córdoba University, of which she was a founding member. Later, she used computers to combine electro-acoustic music with traditional instruments. She is a founding member of the Córdoba Composers' Association, the Córdoba Argentine Federation of Electro-Acoustic Music and the Agrupación Nueva Música of Córdoba, of which she is president. Her works have been performed in Argentina and abroad. She is professor of composition and musical analysis at Córdoba University....

(b Mexico City, Nov 28, 1955). Mexican composer and teacher active in the United States. Feldman began his musical studies (piano) with Joaquín Amparán. In 1970 he attended the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, studying with Mario Lavista, Leonardo Velasquez, Daniel Catán, and Jesús Villaseñor. He moved to the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1982 after receiving a scholarship from the Ahmanson Foundation, later earning his doctorate in composition from UCLA. Feldman has garnered recognition from the ASCAP and has received Meet the Composer awards in 1986, 1988, and 1992. Heavily invested in the diffusion of electronic music, Feldman was president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. He was a faculty member at CalArts until 1989 and later became director of the music department at the College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California. Feldman’s catalog of works is diverse, moving from symphonic and chamber compositions to works for tape and computer. He has also collaborated with other artists and composed incidental music for theater and film....

(b Hastings, New Zealand, Oct 10, 1954). New Zealand composer and teacher. Her studies began in 1973 at the University of Canterbury, where she subsequently became computer music research assistant. In 1978 she attended summer schools in Europe with John Cage and Iannis Xenakis. After experience as a computer programmer, composer, broadcaster and music journalist she held teaching positions at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, and at the University of Auckland. She has published papers on computer music and produced radio programmes on new music; she has also written poetry. She sees music and theatre as one entity ‘functioning to transform the people within the society’ and ‘real art [as] a transformative thing’. As a composer Frykberg has specialized in electro-acoustic music theatre. Several of her works (e.g. The Garden, Woman and House) deal with feminist issues. Saxarba examines aspects of women’s spirituality, while Caroline Herschel is Minding the Heavens...

(Rainer)

(b Breslau [now Wrocław, Poland], Dec 30, 1943). American composer. The son of a German rocket scientist, he emigrated to the USA in 1953, took American citizenship in 1958, and studied philosophy at Yale University (BA 1965) and music at University of California, Berkeley (1965–7). He then moved to Cologne to become Karlheinz Stockhausen’s assistant and a member of his ensemble (1967–70). He was a co-founder (in 1969) of the Feedback Studio Verlag, Cologne, a performance centre and later publishing company (1971) devoted to new music. He has lectured at the Ferienkurse für Internationale Neue Musik, Darmstadt (1974, 1976), and at Dartington College of Arts, England (1976–7), and was a founding member of the Electro-Acoustic Music Association of Great Britain (1979). He has also carried out research at IRCAM, which culminated in the first digital reproductions of ‘three-dimensional’ sounds (...

(b Stockholm, Jan 29, 1928; d Montreal, Sept 22, 2000). Swedish composer, teacher and broadcaster. He studied the organ with Linder, composition with Raphael (both 1944–8) and organ acoustics with Ernst Karl Rössler (beginning in 1949). In 1947 he began academic studies at the University of Uppsala, graduating in 1950 with a degree in musicology, art history and religious studies. He completed his doctorate in 1956. In 1957 he became a producer for Swedish Radio, being promoted to head of the Chamber Music Department in 1964 and head of Music Production in 1968. In 1972 he was appointed professor of composition at McGill University, Montreal, where he was named Emeritus Professor in 1995.

His compositional output included operas, orchestral works, chamber music, choral works, electro-acoustic music and pedagogical pieces. His contributions to contemporary organ music were of particular importance: in Interferenzen (1962), for example, he elevated timbre – organ stop registration – to the importance of rhythm and pitch; his ...

(b Castejón, Oct 13, 1952). Spanish composer and teacher. He studied at the Madrid Conservatory and the Orff Institute in Salzburg, where he specialized in music teaching. From his formative years he was interested in bringing music closer to ordinary people through performing, composing, teaching and writing. His strong sense of humour is manifested in his espousal of the whistle and the tiny plastic trumpet, of which instruments he is an outstanding virtuoso. He has commissioned and given premières of works by notable Spanish composers and performed in several festivals of contemporary music.

As a composer, he was active in all the avant-garde trends in Madrid in the 1970s and 80s. An excellent craftsman, his language is mainly eclectic, as it is shown in pieces written for genres as diverse as electro-acoustic music (Un millón de pasos), technically demanding works for whistle and plastic instruments (...

(b Havana, Dec 27, 1951). Cuban composer and teacher. He studied in Havana under Roberto Valera, began composing in the 1970s and graduated in composition from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 1983. He was a member of various instrumental groups and in 1978 became a musical consultant to Cuban television, with special responsibility for children’s programmes. From 1980 he taught at the National School of Arts and the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory, Havana. In 1984 he became a record producer for the Cuban company EGREM, specializing in classical music. The première of Masa (1974) marked the start of his composing career. In 1984 he joined the Estudio Electroacústico, now the Laboratorio Nacional de Música Electroacústica (LMNE) under the direction of Juan Blanco, and in 1984 won an award at the first international electro-acoustic music competition in Bourges, France, for Halley 86. In 1987 he won awards at competitions in Canada and Mexico for ...

(b Johnstown, PA, June 26, 1945). American composer of electro-acoustic music. He studied English literature (BA 1967) and musicology (MA 1970) at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served as an organist at Heinz Chapel; while in Pittsburgh, he studied composition with Robert Griswold (1965–7) and Subotnick (1969–70). In 1970 he moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts (MFA in composition, 1971), where he became a member of the composition faculty. He has also taught at California State University (1975–8) and at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1996). Schrader founded and directed Currents, a series of international electro-acoustic music programmes held in Los Angeles (1973–9), was director of the CalArts Electro-Acoustic Music Marathon (1983–7) and has participated in various festivals overseas. He has received awards from the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges, ASCAP and other organizations, and in ...

(b Los Angeles, April 14, 1933). American composer and teacher. He attended the University of Denver (BA 1958) and Mills College (MA 1960), where he studied composition with Milhaud and Kirchner. He was in the US Army from 1955 to 1957. In 1959 and 1960 he was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies, Princeton University. He founded and directed the San Francisco Tape Music Center (1961–6), and performed extensively as a clarinettist and conductor. His teaching career includes positions at Mills College (1959–66), New York University (1966–9) and the California Institute of the Arts since 1969, where he directs the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology (CEAIT). He has won numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Grants, Meet the Composer grants, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Kunsterprogramm (DAAD) grant and the 1998 SEAMUS award for work in electro-acoustic music....

(b Leeds, Oct 11, 1946). English composer and writer on music. He studied at Oxford University (BA 1968), the University of Nottingham (MA 1969) and the University of York (PhD, composition, 1973). Subsequently he remained in York working as a freelance composer, and has lectured at many institutions worldwide, with extended stays in Australia, Canada, USA, Sweden and the Netherlands as well as at British universities. His reputation among contemporaries is that of a radical innovator. His early works involve improvisation with found objects, environmental events, performance and installation art and participatory games and workshops designed to involve audiences in the creative process. In later works he has sought to extend the vocal repertory through the exploration of new vocal sounds (Anticredos and the Vox series) and pioneered the art of composing directly with sound, or ‘sonic art’ (see Electro-acoustic music, §2). This music moves between the pure manipulation of sonority and what he calls ‘cinematographic use of soundscapes’, employing sophisticated signal processing instruments of his own design to control the internal quality and the evolution of sounds themselves. His writings, particularly ...