Wendy Carlos
USA, 1968–now
American composer (b. 1939) who proved the synthesizer could be a serious musical instrument. Switched-On Bach (1968) became one of the best-selling classical records ever made, and her scores for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining shaped the sound of electronic music for decades.
MusicRoots documents 3 artists who influenced Wendy Carlos and 3 artists Wendy Carlos influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.
Who influenced Wendy Carlos?
- Vladimir Ussachevsky — Carlos took her master's in composition at Columbia under Ussachevsky, working at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center he had founded — the tape-studio training that came before the Moog.
- Otto Luening — Luening was Carlos's other teacher at Columbia; his tape composition was the discipline she carried over to the synthesizer.
- Johann Sebastian Bach — Bach was the music Carlos chose to prove the synthesizer with: his counterpoint, where every line must stay separately audible, was the hardest possible test and became the substance of Switched-On Bach.
Which artists did Wendy Carlos influence?
- Isao Tomita — Hearing Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach is what turned Tomita to the synthesizer; he bought a Moog and set about doing for Debussy what she had done for Bach.
- Daft Punk — Daft Punk name Carlos as an influence, and scored Tron: Legacy in deliberate answer to her score for the 1982 Tron.
- Giorgio Moroder — Carlos's Switched-On Bach is what made Moroder take the synthesiser seriously; the sequenced Moog pulse he built under Donna Summer on 'I Feel Love' (1977) comes out of it.