Inventor Name
Le Caine, Hugh
Repository
Library and Archives Canada
395 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0N4
CANADA
Reference: 613-996-5115 or 1-866-578-7777 (toll free in Canada and the US)
Physical Description
4 m of textual records 597 photographs 54 slides 59 negatives 346 audio reels 1 audio cassette 6 audio discs
Summary
Born in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay, Ontario), Hugh Le Caine received a dual education as a physicist and a musician. In 1937 he designed an electronic organ, and in 1952 worked on the manufacturing of other instruments of original design, this time for the National Research Council, where he headed the electroacoustic music laboratory for some 20 years. One of his creations was the electronic sackbut (begun in 1945), which he used in a number of his compositions. He also had a role in the installation of the first electronic music studio in Canada in 1959 at the University of Toronto, and in that of another, in 1964 at McGill University in Montréal. In 1978, the members of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble of Toronto set up the Hugh Le Caine Project to publicize the achievements of this pioneer of electroacoustic music. The fonds contains records illustrating the musical and scientific activities of Hugh Le Caine. In addition to his musical works, his design of electronic instruments and search for new sounds reveal Le Caine's avant-gardism. The fonds consists of: biographical records; correspondence; memorandums (National Research Council); notebooks; personal diary; writings; course and lecture notes; patents; notes on compositions and instruments; press clippings; drawings (spirograph) by Le Caine; diagrams and scores; photographs of the composer and his instruments; sound recordings of compositions and experiments in electroacoustic music.