Vladimir Ussachevsky

Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911–1990) was born in Hailar, China, to Russian parents and emigrated to the United States to study at Pomona College and the Eastman School of Music, earning a PhD in 1939. He joined Columbia University’s faculty in 1947 and began composing electronic music around 1951, working with tape recorders to transform recorded sound through splicing, speed change, and reverberation. From 1952 he collaborated closely with fellow Columbia composer Otto Luening on early tape works, and in 1959 the two co-founded the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center with Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions, with Ussachevsky serving as its founding director. He contributed to specifying the RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer’s design alongside RCA engineers Harry Olson and Herbert Belar, and in 1965 helped specify the ADSR (attack-decay-sustain-release) envelope, a foundational element of subsequent synthesizer design. His works include Poem in Cycles and Bells (1954, with Luening) and Computer Piece No. 1 (1968). He taught at Columbia until 1980, mentoring composers including Wendy Carlos and Charles Wuorinen.