The following is a guest blog by Andrew Northrop (Film and Media Technician, Slade School of Fine Art, University College London). He outlines recent research findings related to the Buchla 100 modular synthesizer held by the Library’s Music Division.
When the MEMS Project and I facilitated the repair of the Buchla 100 synthesizer at the Library of Congress in March 2024, we worked with 3 additional modules that came not from Morton Subotnick and Michael Czajkowski, but from another famous electronic music composer—Vladimir Ussachevsky. The Music Division holds the Vladimir Ussachevsky Collection, containing manuscript music, correspondence, photographs, academic papers, business papers, programs, promotional materials, clippings, technical materials, notes, and other published materials
The modules in question were the “red panel” variant of the Random Voltage Source 165 and two 200 series modules from the early 1970s; the Quad Voltage Controlled Envelope Generator Model 284 and the Quad Lopass Gate Model 292.
Ussachevsky founded Columbia-Princeton’s Electronic Music Center in 1959, and the department was known for acquiring and developing influential pieces of hardware. Alongside Subotnick, Ussachevsky purchased one of the first Buchla 100 systems in the late 1960s, and it still resides there with later Buchla 200 modules.
We presumed the outlying modules were from there, but we hadn’t seen any photos of the Electronic Music Center that showed them. During my most recent visit to the Library of Congress, Senior Music Specialist Kate Rivers assisted me in finding a few boxes in the Vladimir Ussachevsky Collection that might provide answers. What I found supported our suspicions and gave us some further context.
In correspondence between Don Buchla and Ussachevsky, as well as others at the Electronic Music Center, I saw a few order sheets penned in, presumably, Ussachevsky’s hand in the mid-1970s. Here we see modules 165 and 292 on order:
Later in the 1984, Ussachevsky wrote Don Buchla requesting schematics so he could troubleshoot both a 292 and a 284 module. This request may explain why those modules were separated from the rest. Don Buchla had moved on to other designs in the 1980s, and the inventor was notorious for not providing much, if any, support for purchased equipment.
I then spotted the 284 module between the two Buchla 100 touchplates in a photograph of the main Columbia-Princeton studio, attached to what appears to be the power supply mentioned in the letter (under the desk).
I noticed the red panel (pictured above in color) in a busy black and white photograph of a smaller studio, hidden in plain sight in a Buchla cabinet to the left. We’ve always noted how the module has a ring shape of sticker residue on it, with one hypothesis being that a large contact mic had been placed there to capture the sound of the in-built relays. It was interesting to see the corresponding sticker in the picture, though we’re still not sure what it’s for. We also haven’t found anything that indicates why the red panel was separated from the rest of that system.
In the same folder, I found two photographs of composer and singer Alice Shields with the Columbia-Princeton Buchla 100. It’s nice seeing someone actively working with the Buchla in that time period, and they are some of the clearest photographs of those two cabinets, which remain in a very similar configuration at Columbia University to this day.
Ussachevsky’s paper archive is a vast collection in which anyone interested in Ussachevsky could lose themselves for days. My experience with the collection was quick and with eyes on finding the Buchla-related materials, but there is so much more to see. Thanks to Kate Rivers and Seth Cluett.