László Dubrovay: The Hungarian composer who pioneered electronic experimental music
Today, electronic music exists firmly within the mainstream and can be heard on virtually every track in the singles chart on any given week of the year. However, this has not always been the case; there was once a time when electronic music was exclusively reserved for underground composers and obscure music scenes. Without trailblazing composers like the Hungarian experimental artist László Dubrovay, the landscape of electronic music might look very different.
Dubrovay’s output could easily be placed next to fellow experimental electronic composers of the period or even the post-war period of musique concrète. He was consistently pushing the boundaries of what was achievable within electronic music, paying little attention to anything else other than an endless need for experimentation with music and its construction. What makes his work more impressive than others, however, is that he was operating largely within the restricted music scene of Soviet-era Hungary.
Born in Budapest in 1943, it was clear from a young age that Dubrovay was destined for musical greatness, though his geographic position would force the young composer to reckon with a variety of political struggles before realising his artistic ambitions. In his native Hungary, Dubrovay got the chance to study alongside the likes of István Szelényi and Ferenc Szabó, veterans of Hungarian classical music and composition. However, the young Dubrovay became more and more entranced by the blossoming world of experimental music.
Studying music in the early 1960s, when multiple composers around Europe were challenging the conventions of classical music and composition in general, Dubrovay, too, had his eyes opened to the potential of new technologies and their role within music. The advent of the synthesiser, for instance, ushered in a new age of musical experimentalism, forming the earliest roots of electronic music as we know it today.
It was during his time studying in West Berlin during the early 1970s that Dubrovay was first exposed to the potential for electronic experimentation and synthesisers, spurred on by his mentors, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans-Ulrich Rumpert, who were both essential figures in the development of electronic music. Through the first half of the 1970s, Dubrovay performed groundbreaking experimental compositions across West Germany before returning to his home nation of Hungary to espouse the joys of electronica.
At the time, Hungary was under the control of the Soviet Union, whose authoritarian policies seemed to severely limit the music output of the nation. Any musician who did not conform to the state’s ideas of what music should be – classical, placid, and usually celebratory – arose suspicion from government officials. Indeed, many emerging modern styles like rock and roll, punk, and new wave were repressed by the state, as they saw them as being in opposition to Soviet society.
Dubrovay was never one to conform to generic classical music, but he was one of a number of composers starting to challenge the conventions of composition in Hungary during the 1970s. A rising movement of electronic composition and experimental work began to emerge during the period, and Dubrovay was certainly at the forefront. His 1979 record Oscillations Nos. 1-3 was particularly revolutionary in its output, using a synthesiser and a varying voltage to alter its sound and operation.
You only need to read the liner notes of the record to realise how complex and original the record was. “The triangular voltage fluctuation (wave) fed into the sequencer of the synthesiser, or the wave form motion of an oscillator produce changes in the original sound of the instrument,” Dubrovay wrote in the liner notes, “Which, according to the given wave shape, affect their frequency composition, timbre, dynamics and form of motion (Articulation).”
This description of his work sounds as if it would only make sense to an expert in both electronics and the inner-workings of synthesisers, but it helped to create some of the greatest experimental pieces of the 20th century, forever altering the landscape of Hungarian music and composition.
Following the fall of communism in the East, Dubrovay continued to create and teach music in Hungary, though he all but abandoned his electronic era during the 1990s, instead reverting back to traditional Hungarian classical music. Nevertheless, those incredible electronic records he had recorded years prior continued to act as inspiration for revolutionary artists around the world.
Initially, his work did not reach mass audiences outside of Hungary, largely as a result of being published exclusively on the Hungarian state-owned record label Hungaroton. However, in recent years, his stunningly original work has been rediscovered and rightly celebrated for its innovative and experimental quality.
