Though synthesisers as we recognise them today only came into existence in the late-1950s and early-’60s, electronic music has played a vital role in cinema almost since the invention of synchronised sound. Prototypical electroacoustic instruments like the ondes Martenot and the theremin found use in some of the earliest talkie scores; the transitional 1931 Russian sound film Alone, for example, featured theremin warbles as part of a larger orchestrated score composed by none other than Dmitri Shostakovich.
As instruments began to evolve, the cost and space demands of early devices made studios one of the few places where one might have access to emerging technology. Thus film music anticipated later commercial electronic recordings and has remained in dialogue with the broader music industry, to the point that composers have shaped pop and pop artists as varied and unlikely as German New Agers Tangerine Dream and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor have become preeminent film composers.
Because the story of electronic music is as much one of technological progress as individual artistic vision, following the arc
