Artist Profile of Wendy Carlos
Classical Musician Reinvents Bach for the Synthesizer
An introduction to the work of Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos), "The original synth." Colleague of Robert Moog and creator of "Switched-On Bach."
Childhood
Wendy Carlos showed talent in both music and computers at an early age. A homemade computer, created at age 15, won the Westinghouse Science Fair prize. Carlos's musical activities started even earlier, with piano lessons at age 6. By age 10, she was already composing music for the piano.
Education and Electronic Music
Carlos studied music and physics at Brown University, but started real work with electronic music during graduate work at Columbia. Carlos worked with another important electronic music pioneer, Dr. Vladimir Ussachevsky, at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center where she graduated with an MA in Music Composition.
Work with Robert Moog on the Modular and Minimoog
While working for Gotham Recording Studios in New York, Carlos met Robert Moog during the AES trade show in 1964. Moog was there to sell oscillators and other parts for what became the Moog Modular series of synthesizers. The synth parts were just what Carlos had been looking for to continue work with electronic music.
The meeting proved to be a fateful one. Carlos and Moog had a very fruitful friendship, with Moog supplying Carlos parts for a synthesizer and Carlos giving Moog design ideas for the Moog Modular series of synthesizers. Carlos's input was especially helpful with the keyboard design, a very advanced one for the time, including velocity and aftertouch. Carlos also contributed design advice for the Minimoog.
Release of Switched-On Bach
In 1968, after four years of working with Robert Moog refining the synthesizer, Carlos released her first and probably still most famous album, Switched-On Bach. Carlos chose Bach's music partly because of technical limitations, but the result was the one of the first electronic albums that was more listenable than experimental electronic noise.
Some critics had negative reactions, but that didn't stop it from becoming the greatest-selling classical album of the time and inspiring a host of imitators. Switched-On Bach brought the sound of Moog synthesizers to the masses. Many other albums of classical music recorded on synthesizers followed, but none managed the success of the original, largely due to Carlos's dedication and talent.
Carlos followed the release of Switched-On Bach with another collection of classical pieces called The Well-Tempered Synthesizer, a play on Bach's collection of keyboard works, The Well-Tempered Clavier. Unlike the last album, this included works by other classical artists (Monteverdi, Scarlatti, and Handel) in addition to Bach.
Film Work: A Clockwork Orange, Tron, The Shining
Carlos didn't release any albums until 1972, but made up for the three years of silence by releasing her first album of original work, Sonic Seasonings, and the groundbreaking soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. The Clockwork Orange soundtrack was the first album to feature synthesized singing. Carlos also composed the Tron soundtrack and contributed pieces to another Kubrick film, The Shining.
New Synthesizers, New Music
Technology advances rapidly and Carlos has always been one to take advantage of it. Each of her recordings used the most advanced synthesis of the time. By the late '70s, Robert Moog was no longer running Moog Music. She began to explore music outside of the Western scale when synthesizer technology made it possible. The result of many of these experiments was 1986's Beauty In the Beast, one of Carlos's most personal works and Bob Moog's favorite album.
Carlos is still alive and well in New York City. She maintains the informative and detailed Wendy Carlos website. She has re-issued much of her older work that was not available. She continues working and collaborating on new music.
For further reading about sythesizer music origins, read A History of Moog Synthesizers.
