from the booklet:

For many years Slovak music of the 20th century has been developing under the pressure of a totalitarian system. Anything new and unconventional in comparison with the set bounds of the culture of the socialist society threatened its strength and safety of the aesthetic criteria in the eyes of the dogmatic cultural policy and therefore was expelled to the margin of the social interest, culture, even beyond the borders of arts. This "modus vivendi" has made itself felt in attitudes to the avantgarde in arts, to trends in artistic and creative efforts in the world, especially to events beyond the "iron curtain". Everything coming from there or resembling it was considered strange, undesired and deserving denouncment, hence suppressed. Not surprisingly, the same distain was also imposed for the area of New Music that had been waking up interest in new music material, new forms of its organization, new ways of music notation, production and presentation especially among young composers since the second half of the 1950s. For a culture that abandoned progressive trends of the development of the arts in the first decades of the 20th century and that made impossible any contacts with current events in the world, everything that had not reached the interest of general and professional public was considered new; for the "people" the development had ended with the late Romanticism, spiced with Impressionism or Neo-folklorism at the most and at the "socialist realism". The new was strange, exotic and extravagant and it had to make its way both to the audience and to the powers of our culture. The same was true also for the electroacoustic music that was stigmatized with "alienation", "dehumanization", "technicism" and therefore pushed out to the margins of the arts.

Conditions for the electroacoustic music to enter the music events in Slovakia were difficult and they influenced its fight for its right for life for many years. In the middle of 1960s an a priori negative evaluation of this music could be still found in the press and public events. No material and technical conditions were created for its existence and development. Organized on the initiative of several Czech and Slovak composers, musicologists and technicians on the premises of the Research Institute of Radio and Television the first (and the only one) Seminar on Electronic music held in 1964 in Plzen appealed to many persons interested in this kind of music creativity as a miracle, as a liberation. It was for the first time in our cultural context that a seminar manifested and dealt seriously with issues of electronic music that had already gone through the initial phase of its formation - interest of composers and theorists, first experiments and compositions for film and TV.

In the second half of 1950s the Slovak music life was enriched by a young generation of composers showing an intensive interest in a confrontation with current world events, with music trends in "the West", with penetration into composition techniques of the 20th century. Among them there were also some composers daring to resort to untraditional sound sources and in primitive home and later studio conditions they created their first "tape recorded" and electronic compositions. Along with theoretical and composers' reflection preconditions for the formation of professional studios were created which were given space in television and radio, mainly thanks to composers and sound engineers working there (in the Czechoslovak Television in Bratislava they were mainly Ilja Zeljenka, Jan R?cka and Ivan Stadtrucker, in Bratislava Radio Peter Kolman, Peter Janik and Jan Backstuber). It was the effort made by the composer Peter Kolman that succeeded in acquiring the statute of an experimental workplace for one of the studios in Radio Bratislava in 1964, followed in 1965 by the formation of an Experimental Studio of the Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava linking up with the form of studios in Cologne and in Warsaw. This choice was not a coincidence. German centres (Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, Cologne etc.) and Warsaw with its only festival of contemporary music in "Eastern Block" at that time (the Warsaw Autumn) were creating bridges for our music with the world. Starting with personal composers' participation and contacts through radio and television programmes a basis was created for confrontations of studio production linking up well with Darmstadt composer school and Polish "timbre music" with aspects of a workplace using analogue studio equipment.

In the middle 1960s in Czechoslovakia was published a representative survey on electronic music written by a Czech musicologist Vladimir Lebl, followed by his translation of the book "La Musique concrete" by Pierre Schaeffer. As soon as in 1965 several compositions of the classicists of concrete, tape and electronic music appeared in radio broadcasting and in 1966 the first (and until recently the only one) LP of electronic music by both domestic and foreign composers was published so that general public was given a possibility to confront Slovak and world production. On the initiative of a musicologist Peter Faltin and composers Peter Kolman and Ladislav Kupkovic at late 1960s International Seminars on New Music were held at Smolenice castle near Bratislava. The first three seminars (1968-1970) brought to Slovakia Stockhausen, Kagel, Ligeti, Lutoslawski but also compositions by Cage, live electronics of Cardew and Kotik and others and they opened an important space for presentation of wide range of domestic music production to the world. It seemed that there was a way open to electronic and experimental music. Unfortunately, the new political situation of early 1970s pushed more strongly than ever before this (and not only this) area of creativity far beyond the borders of cultural events and it required a lot of effort to keep it alive. A range of composers was forced to be in a quiet corner, the established contacts were lost, public interest in experimenting decreased.

In 1970s electronic production in Slovakia was losing its acquired position and after emigration of some of its protagonists, especially Peter Kolman, the head of the Experimental Studio for many years, its existence and development were in jeopardy. In order to survive the studio, now under the name "Electroacoustic Studio" extended its activities by producing sophisticated radio programmes for other radio departments (literary-dramatic, symphonic, folklore...). The less space for authentic compositions was left the more intensive it was used and it is not surprising that a number of compositions of this period have been successful in international competitions and on stage. Beside the nestors of the Slovak electronic music there are activities of a new generation of authors along with some Czech and Moravian composers and in the studio composing guests from Hungary, Germany, Romania, Finland ... With the coming of a new generation of sound engineers and through the efforts of young composers along
During the profiling of Slovak electroacoustic production, permanently struggling for its justified and reasonable existence, the Experimental Studio has come to an autonomous and authentic programme and activities in a close cooperation with the role of the radio in Slovak and international cultural context. It initiated and served as a base for the formation of the Centre for Electroacoustic and Computer Music in Slovakia - CECM. One of the outcome of its initial activities is also this selection of compositions in a form of the first collection of electroacoustic and computer music from the production of the Experimental Studio of the Slovak Radio in Bratislava summarizing its activities for more than 25 years.

Milan ADAMCIAK, August 10, 1992