..:: Electronic Music Pioneer Dies ::.. : Thursday, 24 April 2003 : Written by Nicole Hill
Dr. Emmanuel Ghent, a psychoanalyst and composer of electronic music, passed away after a heart attack at 77 years of age on 31 March. Ghent tinkered with computer systems at the Bell Telephone Laboratories to generate music in the 1960's, while on a Guggenheim Fellowship. He adapted a speech synthesizer so that it would produce electronic music, and later developed that system to include synchronized lighting effects. His idea was to coordinate changing light patterns during theater dance works. He is known for a piece called "Phosphones" which, according to the New York Times, was performed 100 times during his life. Later, Ghent became a professor at New York Univeristy where he attempted to broaden the field of psychoanalysis.
