Wendy Carlos (1939 - ) is a musician and composer known for her revolutionary work in electronic music.
Wendy Carlos was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, on November 14, 1939. She began studying the piano at the early age of six and wrote her first composition at age 10. Not only was she musically inclined, but she was also very interested in studying science and computers. In fact, at 14-years-old, she built a computer that won her the 1953 Westinghouse Science Fair and a scholarship to Brown University. From there, she graduated from Brown University after studying music and physics, and later she earned her M.A. in music composition from Columbia University. After she graduated, she worked as a sound engineer at Gotham Recording Studios in New York until 1968.
In 1968, Wendy Carlos released an album entitled Switched on Bach. This album re-imagined 10 pieces, originally composed by J.S. Bach, on the Moog Synthesizer. This was not an easy feat, due to the fact that the synthesizer was a monophonic device, meaning that only one note could be input at a time. In order to include all of Bach’s harmonies, Carlos had to record each voice separately and layer them over each other. Switched on Bach was a huge commercial success. By 1974, the album sold over 1 million copies, and won 3 Grammy Awards. In 1986, it went platinum, making it the second classical album to ever do so. She is also responsible for composing the soundtracks of iconic movies such as Clockwork Orange (1972), The Shining (1980), and Tron (1982). In doing so, she pioneered the use of vocoders for synthesized singing, and the use of digital and analog synthesizers in film scores.
While Wendy Carlos prefers to keep her personal life private, she is one of the first openly transgender public figures. She began her transition in 1968, but with the success of Switched on Bach, she found herself in the public eye. In this period of her life, she kept her identity hidden, refusing to perform live as herself for fear of endangering her career. In 1979, almost 10 years later, she came out in an interview with Playboy magazine, saying that she was “tired of lying,” and that she was “anxious to liberate [herself].” Later, in 1985, she spoke about her experience with coming out so publicly, telling People magazine, “The public turned out to be amazingly tolerant or, if you wish, indifferent... There had never been any need of this charade to have taken place. It had proven a monstrous waste of years of my life.”
Wendy Carlos is an incredibly accomplished musician and composer, and played a crucial role in the advancement of electronic music, as well as its rise in popularity. You can read more about her work in the links below, and in West Chester’s database of historical newspapers.
Sources and Further Reading:
http://www.wendycarlos.com/biog.html
https://www.classicalmusicindy.org/wendy-carlos-innovator-composer-pioneer/
https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/nv935298c
https://people.com/archive/after-a-sex-change-and-several-eclipses-wendy-carlos-treads-a-new-digital-moonscape-vol-24-no-1/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3cab5IcCy8&ab_channel=automatic_bazooti
http://digital.library.yale.edu/digital/collection/1027_1/search/page/1
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