Biography
Composer Jon Appleton helped pioneer electro-acoustic music. Attracted by the new sonic possibilities of electronic music, he collaborated with Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones to invent the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer equipped with built-in sampling and recording functions. As an educator, Appleton spent more than forty years, with some interruptions, at Dartmouth College, where he created one of the earliest electronic music studios on any campus.
Born in Los Angeles on January 4, 1939, Appleton grew up with parents employed at film studios; his father departed soon after his birth. When he reached the age of six, his mother remarried a bassist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic whose playing became Appleton’s first musical inspiration. Although he took piano lessons as a boy, he soon turned to composing and performing his own pieces, encouraged by his stepfather and uninterested in the music assigned to him. He first studied at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, writing works for fellow students, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, where Andrew Imbrie taught him composition and he joined writer Willard Bain on musical comedies. Appleton pursued graduate work at the University of Oregon under Homer Keller and Henri Lazarof; there he constructed an electronic music studio, began experimenting in the medium, and received an invitation from Vladimir Ussachevsky to attend the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
After accepting and then leaving a post at Oakland University in Michigan, Appleton joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1967. With a substantial gift he founded the Bregman Electronic Music Studio. In the early 1970s he joined Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones to develop first the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer and then the Synclavier, the earliest commercial digital synthesizer. He traveled across American universities demonstrating the instrument and presenting compositions written for it. His pieces gained recognition at European electronic music festivals throughout the 1980s, and he became a founding member of the International Confederation for Electro-Acoustic Music. He also helped launch the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) and later served as its president. In 1989 Appleton and composer David Evan Jones established Dartmouth’s graduate program in electro-acoustic music.
During the 1990s Appleton taught for three years at Keio University in Tokyo and made regular visits to Moscow, where he advised Andre Smirnov on founding the Theremin Center at the Moscow Conservatory. At the same time he resumed writing instrumental and choral music, producing the operas HOPI: La Naissance du désert and Le Dernier Voyage. He maintained an active schedule of composing and teaching into the twenty-first century and retired from Dartmouth in 2009, the year he published the essay “How I Became a Russian Composer.” Appleton died at his home in White River Junction, Vermont, on January 30, 2022.
Born in Los Angeles on January 4, 1939, Appleton grew up with parents employed at film studios; his father departed soon after his birth. When he reached the age of six, his mother remarried a bassist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic whose playing became Appleton’s first musical inspiration. Although he took piano lessons as a boy, he soon turned to composing and performing his own pieces, encouraged by his stepfather and uninterested in the music assigned to him. He first studied at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, writing works for fellow students, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, where Andrew Imbrie taught him composition and he joined writer Willard Bain on musical comedies. Appleton pursued graduate work at the University of Oregon under Homer Keller and Henri Lazarof; there he constructed an electronic music studio, began experimenting in the medium, and received an invitation from Vladimir Ussachevsky to attend the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
After accepting and then leaving a post at Oakland University in Michigan, Appleton joined the Dartmouth faculty in 1967. With a substantial gift he founded the Bregman Electronic Music Studio. In the early 1970s he joined Sydney Alonso and Cameron Jones to develop first the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer and then the Synclavier, the earliest commercial digital synthesizer. He traveled across American universities demonstrating the instrument and presenting compositions written for it. His pieces gained recognition at European electronic music festivals throughout the 1980s, and he became a founding member of the International Confederation for Electro-Acoustic Music. He also helped launch the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) and later served as its president. In 1989 Appleton and composer David Evan Jones established Dartmouth’s graduate program in electro-acoustic music.
During the 1990s Appleton taught for three years at Keio University in Tokyo and made regular visits to Moscow, where he advised Andre Smirnov on founding the Theremin Center at the Moscow Conservatory. At the same time he resumed writing instrumental and choral music, producing the operas HOPI: La Naissance du désert and Le Dernier Voyage. He maintained an active schedule of composing and teaching into the twenty-first century and retired from Dartmouth in 2009, the year he published the essay “How I Became a Russian Composer.” Appleton died at his home in White River Junction, Vermont, on January 30, 2022.
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