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The University of Michigan Record

January 9, 1989
Its legacy: A musical revolution.
Stearns Collection home to first commercial Moog
By Rhett Stuart
News and information Services

The first commercially produced Moog synthesizer has been acquired by the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments, housed at the School of Music.
"The Model One Moog is truly a unique instrument," says William P. Malm, director of the Stearns Collection. "It is to the music world what the Wright brothers' airplane is to aviation."
It all began in October 1964, when Robert A. Moog, experimenting in the basement of his Trumansburg, N.Y, home with prototypes of instruments that could make music electronically, received a telephone call from organizers of a convention for audio engineers. An exhibitor had cancelled, and they asked Moog to fill in.
He did and was approached by a member of the Aiwin Nickolai Dance Theater of New York, who was astounded by the new synthesizer. Nickolai, after hearing of Moog's display, examined the instrument and commissioned one on the spot, becoming Moog's first paying customer and buying the instrument that has been acquired by the Stearns Collection. Nickolai composed on the synthesizer, recorded the sounds, and played the audio tapes as accompaniment to the dances of his performers.
Although synthesizers had been invented before Moog's version, they often were not available to mainstream composers. Most were located in electronic music studios, usually at universities, and were used by experimental composers who wrote for specialized audiences.
The original Moog was not a performance instrument, but it was the first commercially available synthesizer, and its legacy was a musical revolution. No longer restricted to academicians and avant-garde composers, the instrument became a favorite among musicians of all genres. By the late 1960s, the synthesizer could be used in a live performance, finding popularity among rock 'n'roll bands. Eventually the Moog synthesizer spawned numerous advances in electronic instruments, the most popular of which is the electronic keyboard.
The Moog synthesizer joins several other modem musical innovations at the Stearns, bringing the collection closer to its goal of documenting the history of 20th-century musical instrument developments. These include a theremin, a monophonic electronic instrument developed in the Soviet Union; a novachord, one of the first commercial organs for home use; and a solovox, a small keyboard that can be attached to a piano to make it sound like an organ.
An exhibition featuring these instruments and the Moog synthesizer is being planned for this year.