Tod Dockstader

Producing a slim but groundbreaking body of work possessed of a truly musical sensibility typically lacking from the tape constructions of his contemporaries, Tod Dockstader was among America's foremost composers of musique concrète, creating electronic soundscapes informed by genuine drama and mystery. Born May 22, 1932 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Dockstader spent his childhood enamoured of radio broadcasts, intrigued not only by the popular programs of the era but also the static and noise separating stations on the dial. In time he turned to producing his own ham radio broadcasts, and while a graduate student at the University of Minnesota he studied film and painting, funding his education by drawing cartoons for local newspapers and magazines. In 1955 Dockstader relocated to Hollywood, where he was hired as an apprentice film editor at Terrytoons Animation, working alongside future luminaries such as cartoonist Jules Feiffer and director Ralph Bakshi. He soon graduated to writing and storyboarding his own cartoons, earning renown for his "The FreezeYum Story" before relocating to New York in 1958, where he landed a job as an assistant recording engineer at Gotham Recording studios. There Dockstader began collecting interesting sounds, in his off-hours assembling his earliest musique concrète projects. The end result was 1960's Eight Pieces, his first major work; shortly thereafter Gotham purchased its first stereo Ampex recorder, allowing Dockstader to revise piece No. 8 for his first stereo project, Traveling Music. On May 20, 1961, New York's WQXR broadcast the world premiere of Traveling Music on a program also featuring Edgard Varèse's Poeme electronique. That year proved a remarkably productive period in Dockstader's development, as he completed two major works,...