László, Alexander
László, Alexander
László, Alexander, Hungarian-American composer; b. Budapest, Nov. 22, 1895; d. Los Angeles, Nov. 17, 1970. He was a student of A. Szendy (piano) and Herzfeld (composition) at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. In 1915 he went to Berlin, where he was active as a pianist and worked in radio and films; he also taught in Munich. He constructed a “color piano” (Farblichtklavier) for the purpose of uniting tones with colors, which he demonstrated at the Kiel music festival (June 14, 1925). To establish a correspondence between the proportional wavelengths in both acoustic elements and light waves, he invented an instrument he called the Sonchromatoscope and a new system of notation he called Sonchromography. His book Die Farblichtmusik (1925) discusses his new technique. In 1938 he emigrated to the U.S. and in 1945 settled in Los Angeles, where he composed film and television scores. In addition to his many works for the Sonchromatoscope, he wrote stage music and orch. scores.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire