EMS(ii) [Elektronmusikstudion] (Swed.: ‘electronic music studio’)
EMS(ii) [Elektronmusikstudion] (Swed.: ‘electronic music studio’)
- Hugh Davies
- , revised by Anne Beetem Acker
The Swedish national centre for electronic music and sound art, in Stockholm. It was preceded by a smaller studio run by the Worker’s Society of Education from 1960. EMS was established by Swedish Radio in 1964 under music director and composer Karl Birger Blomdahl (1916–68), who hired the composer and performer Knut Wiggen (b 1927) to take charge of creating the studios. In 1965 an old radio theatre studio called the klangverstan (‘sound workshop’) opened for composers. Construction of a new facility was begun, but after Blomdahl’s death EMS became independent, funded only in small part by Swedish Radio, and otherwise by Fylkingen (a society for experimental music and arts) and the Swedish Royal Academy of Music.
Wiggen envisioned EMS as both a place to produce electro-acoustic music and a research institution that would give the composer ‘the possibility of describing sounds in psychological terms’. The studio was equipped accordingly. The sound sculpture Musikmaskin I was a preliminary study. Many Swedish and guest composers utilized the facility in the 1960s and early 70s. Between 1966 and 1968 a substantial synthesizer unit and control console were installed; in 1970 a PDP 15/40 computer was added, making EMS the first fully computer-controlled electronic music studio and the most advanced studio in the world at that time. A later addition was a digitizer for graphic input controls. In 1982 a more powerful VAX 11/750 computer was introduced, linked to a special-purpose ‘number-crunching’ computer, as the first step in the replacement of the earlier system.
In the 1970s EMS lost much of its status and funding and many composers left. In 2006 efforts began again to make EMS an important international resource. Since then the number of composers working there has increased dramatically, and the Swedish government and Kulturkontakt Nord (Nordic Culture Point) have recognized EMS’s role as a production and training resource for Scandinavia. As of 2012 EMS had six studios (two with multi-channel surround sound) using Apple computer systems running Pro Tools software. They offer required courses for composers wishing to use their system.
Bibliography
- K. Wiggen: ‘The Electronic Music Studio at Stockholm: its Development and Construction’, Interface, vol.1 (1972), 127–65.