Werner Meyer-Eppler

Werner Meyer- Eppler ( born April 30, 1913 in Antwerp, † July 8, 1960 in Bonn ) was a German physicist, information theorists, communication researchers, phoneticians and pioneer of electronic music.

He received his Ph.D. on February 22, 1939 in physics and stayed until December 31, 1945 Assistant Professor at the Physics Institute in Bonn. On 16 September 1942 he completed his habilitation at the Faculty ibid mathematics and science. Immediately after the war, he was informed about the state of research in the United States. As early as 1947, he joined the phonetic Institute of Arts, where he officially became a research assistant on 1 April 1949. He has published essays on synthetic speech generation and introduced the American inventions such as the coder, the vocoder, the Visible Speech device. He was co-developer of Electrolarynx, which is used as the larynx replacement of total laryngeal surgical patients. In 1952, he received another teaching license, this time for phonetics and communication research. In 1954, he received an invitation to membership in the French Committee for phonetics and grammar. In 1956 he was given a diet lectureship in 1957 an extraordinary professorship. In 1957, he was Professor of Phonetics and Communication Research. 1959 Meyer- Eppler published his major work, "Fundamentals and applications of information theory ". On July 8, 1960 died Meyer- Eppler at the consequences of chronic kidney disease.

Through his research came Meyer- Eppler as one of the very few people even during the Second World War with the techniques of electronic sound synthesis into contact, because he had access to the latest technology, such as the tape recorder. In his publications for the first time the term appears electronic music in the German language.

He held many lectures on electronic sound production and electronic music at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, and later on the radio. This musicians like Herbert Eimert and Robert Beyer were interested in the new possibilities. In this episode the first Electronic Music Studio of the NWDR arose, Meyer- Eppler here played a substantial role. Just because he was not insider in the music scene, he could judge aptly about the difficulties of the music industry. His counter-proposal was electronic music. But because the trivialization of electronic means in music was vorhersehrbar, he put strict requirements: "Music is not already then " call to electronically "if electronic means she uses because it not sufficient for this purpose, the existing world of sound or even an existing transfer music to electroacoustic. " Among his students were well-known musicians such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, others such as Werner Kaegi have rezipiert only his writings and lectures. The thinking - also the Musical - a generation was influenced decisively. Meyer- Eppler effect reached far beyond the narrow circle of specialists.

Writings

• Electronic sound generator: Electronic Music and synthetic speech. Ferdinand Dümmlers, Bonn 1949
• Statistical and psychological sound problems ( The series, 1: Electronic Music ), 1955 Even English under the title Statistic and Psycho Logic Problems of Sound, 1958..
• Fundamentals and Applications of information theory. Communication and Cybernetics in drawings. Volume 1 Springer -Verlag, Berlin 1959. 2nd edition, ed. by Georg Heike and K. Löhn. Springer, Berlin et al 1969