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Hugh Le Caine

Hugh Le Caine (May 27, 1914 – July 3, 1977) was a Canadian physicist, composer, and instrument builder.

Le Caine was brought up in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay) in northwestern Ontario. At a young age, he began making musical instruments. In youth, he started imagining "beautiful sounds". He attended high school in Port Arthur at Port Arthur Collegiate Institute (P.A.C.I.). After completing his master of science degree from Queen's University in 1939, Le Caine was awarded a National Research Council of Canada (NRC) fellowship to continue his work on atomic physics measuring devices at Queen's. He worked with the NRC in Ottawa from 1940 to 1974. During World War II, he assisted in the development of the first radar systems. On an NRC grant he studied nuclear physics from 1948 to 1952 in England. Le Caine wanted to devise new ways to produce those "beautiful sounds", so he established his own electronic music studio where he began to build new electronic instruments after World War II.

Life[edit]

He was married to Trudi Le Caine, born Gertrude Janowski, a music educator.


Le Caine died in 1977 from injuries in a motorcycle accident at age sixty-three.[3]

Le Caine, Hugh. "A report from the International Conference of Composers, held at the Stratford Festival [1960]." The Modern Composer and his World. Edited by John Beckwith and Udo Kasemets. University of Toronto Press, 1961, pp. 109–116.

Hugh Le Caine, "Touch-Sensitive Organ Based on an Electrostatic Coupling Device", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, XXVII, 4, July 1955. 781.

H. Le Caine, "Electronic Music", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, XLIV, 4, April 1956, 457

Hugh Le Caine, "Some Applications of Electrical Level Controls" in Electronic Music Review No. 4 October 1967 pp 25–32

[1]

Holmes, Thom (31 March 2008). . Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis (published 2008). pp. 165–169. ISBN 978-0-415-95781-6.

"Early Synthesizers and Experimenters"

"." Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. Historica Foundation of Canada. Accessed on January 13, 2016.

Le Caine, Hugh

Young, Gayle. The Sackbut Blues: Hugh Le Caine, Pioneer in Electronic Music. Ottawa: National Museum of Science and Technology, 1989,  0660120062

ISBN

_____. "." Website. 1999. Accessed on July 20, 2005.

Le Caine: An Inventor’s Notebook / Carnet sur l’inventeur

Hugh Le Caine website by Gayle Young

at Queen’s University Archives

Hugh and Trudi Le Caine fonds

Hugh Le Caine bio by Pablo Freire