Kees Tazelaar’s On the Threshold of Beauty: Philips and the Origins of Electronic Music in the Netherlands, 1925–1965 is an extremely well-documented, lavishly illustrated and highly readable study. Based on new and original research, it serves the needs of both specialists and a lay audience. It describes a period of musical history in which an entirely new world of electronic sounds and compositional attitudes was developed and explored, ranging from avant-garde extremes to the earliest experiments in electronic pop; from the music for the iconic Philips Pavilion at the 1958 World’s Fair to electronic soundtracks for film.
For more information, see: http://thresholdofbeauty.com
Curtis Roads: “Kees Tazelaar’s On the Threshold of Beauty is a wonderfully readable story of a fascinating period in the history of music in the Netherlands. Extensively researched, this impressive work of scholarship is very important to the field of electronic music.”
The book is sold out but a PDF can now be downloaded from TU Berlin’s repository.