A series of composition machines developed between 1945 and 1961 at White Plains, New York, by an American physics teacher, Burnett Cross (b New York, 7 Aug 1914; d 1996), and Percy Grainger, with the assistance of Grainger's wife Ella (1889–1979). The purpose of the machines, each exploring different technology, was to enable Grainger to realize his ideas of ‘free music’ based on ‘gliding’ tones.
The first ‘free music’ machine (1945–8) consisted of three Melanettes (small monophonic electronic keyboard instruments, later replaced by Solovoxes), tuned a 1/6-tone apart, controlled by the keys of a silenced Duo-Art player piano; the microtonal tuning produced an approximation of a ‘gliding’ tone. The Reed-box Tone-tool (1950–1) consisted of harmonium reeds tuned in ⅛-tones, controlled by holes punched into a roll of brown wrapping paper. The ‘Kangaroo Pouch’ Method of Synchronising & Playing 8 Oscillators, constructed in 1952, had a scroll of brown paper travelling horizontally with four large brown-paper cut-out graphs (‘hill and dale’ pouches) sewn on to each side, along the contours of which rode discs attached to flexible arms that mechanically controlled the frequencies of the oscillators (see illustration); eight smaller cut-out graphs controlled volume. The final machine, begun in 1953, used electronic oscillators based on the newly introduced transistors. Graphic outlines, in parallel tracks for pitch and volume, were painted in erasable black ink on a roll of transparent plastic film. Adjustable ‘tuning sticks’ formed different pitch masks between spotlights and the photoelectric cells past which the roll moved in a process typical of Drawn sound. None of the machines featured timbre control, which was to have been dealt with only when the other parameters could be precisely controlled. Only the first machine was completed.
Two of the machines, the Reed-box Tone-tool and the ‘Kangaroo Pouch’ system, together with part of the last machine (most of which disappeared in transit), are now housed at the Grainger Museum in Melbourne; they were restored by Cross during several visits. The Grainger Museum also possesses a machine from 1950 in which a swanee whistle and two recorders are operated by a roll of paper perforated with holes and slits cut by hand.
B. Cross: ‘Grainger Free Music Machine’, Recorded Sound, nos.45–6 (1972), 17–21; repr. in The Percy Grainger Companion, ed. L. Foreman (London, 1981), 171–5 and The Grainger Society Journal, viii/1 (1986), 3–8
M.H.-L. Tan: ‘Free Music of Percy Grainger’, Recorded Sound, nos.45–6 (1972), 21–38
T.C. Slattery: Percy Grainger: the Inveterate Innovator (Evanston, IL, 1974), 200–10, 291–7
T. Rhea: ‘The Grainger-Cross Free Music Machine’, Contemporary Keyboard, v/10 (1979), 90 only; repr. with the following in The Art of Electronic Music, ed. T. Darter and G. Armbruster (New York, 1984), 43–6
T. Rhea: ‘Burnett Cross, Designer of Free Music Machines’, ibid., v/11 (1979), 82 only
‘Free Music’, The Grainger Society Journal, viii/1 (1986) [whole issue]
C. Hughes: ‘Percy Grainger and the Machines: the History of a Collaboration’, The Grainger Society Journal, ix/2 (1989), 6–28
D. Kahn: ‘The Lyre's Island’, Leonardo Music Journal, vi (1996), 89–93 [with sound examples of second and third machines on accompanying CD]
HUGH DAVIES