Ever since the Bremen Radio Broadcast Performance - 20 May 1962 - a broadcast that included Gyorgy Ligeti's 'Volumina', Mauricio Kagel's "Improvisation Ajoutee" and Bengt Hambreaus' 'Interference' - all compositions that exposed a whole new world of texture, timbre and musical possibility, the pipe organ has been reclaiming a position of prominence in contemporary art music. The timbral, technical and musical possibilities exhibited in these compositions and the more recent advent of accessible and portable real time dsp (Digital Signal Processing) has encouraged an ever widening range of composers/ performers to write for the instrument, extending both its timbral potential and inherent spatial possibilities. These developments have changed our expectations and perceptions of what a pipe organ musically can be and do. In this paper I shall provide a brief background to this development, focussing on four significant and recently composed works for pipe organ and electronics. I shall explore how the instrument's apparently static timbral world is dynamically altered, and the means by which this alteration is achieved.
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