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Bebe Barron

The 1956 sci-fi thriller Forbidden Planet was the first major motion picture to feature an all- electronic film score a soundtrack that predated synthesizers and samplers. It was like nothing the audience had seen or heard. The composers were two little-known and little-appreciated pioneers in the field of electronic music, Louis and Bebe Barron. Married in 1947, the Barrons received a tape recorder as a wedding gift. They used it to record friends and parties, and later opened one of the first private sound studios in America. The 1948 book "Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine", by MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener, inspired Louis Barron to build electronic circuits, which he manipulated to generate sounds. Bebe's job was to sort through hours and hours of tape. Together they manipulated the sounds to create an otherworldly auditory experience. The Barrons' music caught the ear of the avant-garde scene: In the early 1950s, they worked on a year- long project with composer John Cage. They also scored several short experimental films. The Manhattan-based couple having completed several short experimental film scores, utilizing electronics but had never employed their apartment electronic music studio for a full-length soundtrack. The Barrons described their compositions in an early article as not functioning in a traditionally musical way but instead as non-linear constructions designed to describe a cast of characters engaged in a dramatic plot. Once they decided on the characters' moods and situations, the couple completed a series of electrical circuits which functioned electronically in ways analogous to the human nervous system. Decisions about the circuitry were strongly influenced by their studies of the science of cybernetics which proposes that certain natural laws of behavior are applicable to both animals and more complex modern machinary. The composers employed their noise-producing circuits to emulate such needed characterizations as serenity, anger, and love. The story of Forbidden Planet is a re-telling of Shakespeare's "Tempest" with the modern additions of spaceships, mysterious killer creatures, and the lovable and now famous "Robbie the Robot." The crashing beats of the deadly "ID Monster Theme" coupled with the bubbly mood music designed for Robbie and other electronic sound effects added a creative integrity and believability to the film clearly separating it from much of the more lurid post World War II Nuclear Age horror and sci- fi Hollywood fare. Bebe and Louis' success signaled the beginning of the effective use of electroacoustic music by the modern movie industry.

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Bebe Barron, Scored the Science Fiction Film "Forbidden Planet"

Bebe Barron, Scored the Science Fiction Film "Forbidden Planet"

Source: All About Jazz

Bebe Barron, a pioneering composer who started manipulating sounds after receiving a tape recorder as a wedding present and later scored the 1956 science-fiction film “Forbidden Planet," the first full-length feature to use only electronic music, has died. She was 82. Barron died April 20 of complications related to old age at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said her son, Adam Barron. With her engineer husband, Louis Barron, she created “a soundscape for 'Forbidden Planet' that no one could ...

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Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Forbidden Planet

Verve Music Group
1995

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