Vladimir Ussachevsky

Listening Guide. Disembodied Piano. Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990), Sonic Contours (1952).

Ussachevsky was born in Inner Mongolia, China and moved to the US in 1930. Although he began his career writing neo-Romantic music, Ussachevsky switched to electronic works in the 50s and founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1959. Sonic Contours is one of his earliest electronic pieces, comprising distorted collections of piano sounds floating in a disembodied manner through aural space before coalescing into a scalic pattern with extensive reverberation, so that new sounds and echoes enter into counterpoint.