Otto Luening - Topic

Otto Clarence Luening was a German-American composer and conductor, and an early pioneer of tape music and electronic music.
Luening was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to German parents, Eugene, a conductor and composer, and Emma, an amateur singer. When he was 12, his family moved to Munich, where he studied music at the State Academy of Music. At age 17, he moved to Switzerland and attended the Municipal Conservatory of Music in Zurich and University of Zurich, where he studied with Ferruccio Busoni and Philipp Jarnach, and was also an actor and stage manager for James Joyce's English Players Company. He returned to the United States in 1924, and appeared mainly as a conductor of operas, in Chicago and the Eastman School of Music.
His conducting premieres included Virgil Thomson's The Mother of Us All, Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium, and his own Evangeline.
Luening's 'Tape Music', including A Poem in Cycles & Bells, Gargoyles for Violin & Synthesized Sound, and Sounds of New Music demonstrated the early potential of synthesizers and special editing techniques for electronic music.