In an homage to twentieth-century electronic music, Electrifying Music: The Untold Story of Remi Gassmann celebrates the life and legacy of Remi Gassmann, an American composer and pioneer in electronic sound and music. Best known for his innovative ballet scores and his soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds, Gassmann helped introduce twentieth-century audiences to new musical aesthetics and compositional styles and championed the emerging works of his contemporaries.

Through photos, artifacts, and personal correspondence, the exhibit explores Gassmann’s contributions to the field as well as historical milestones in electronic sound and music, from innovative uses at World’s Fairs to advances in sound editing and the explosion of portable audio players. Highlighting the work of twentieth-century composers, it also features the new types of musical notation made possible by technological advances. An array of visually stunning graphic scores demonstrates different approaches developed by composers to represent their musical ideas.

For more details, see the Remi Gassmann Papers in the UCI Libraries Special Collections and Archives.

Curated by Oliver Brown and Scott Stone

Edited by Christina Acevedo and Cheryl Baltes

Designed by Allan Helmick, Sylvia Irving, and Luisa Lee

Exhibit will be on display in the Langson Library from February through December 2024 during regular library hours. Visit our Exhibit Visitor Information webpage for more details.

Livestream recording of the Electrifying Music exhibit opening program on February 1, 2024: