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It’s difficult knowing where
to start on the subject of electronic musical instruments and I mean to distinguish
between electronic musical instruments and electronic music which is another
subject entirely requiring a separate study. One immediately assumes this is
a 20th century subject which I suppose it is - however I would like to make
reference to that famous quote of the 18th century.. “Music is the electric
soil in which the spirit thinks, lives and invents. All that’s electrical stimulates
the mind to flowing surging musical creation. I am electrical by nature” said
not by Stockhausen in one of his former lives but none other than Ludwig van
Beethoven. In fact electricity had a grip on musical production as early as
the 16th century where it is said that in one French monastery monks used static
electricity to trigger bells.
But it was the beginning of the 20th century when electronic circuitry began
to be exploited to produce a new sound world, and this is really the key to
electronic instruments, the quest musicians and composers had to create new
sounds previously unheard.
It all started when ‘futurist’ Luigi Russolo (1885-1947) developed his ‘noise
machines’. The Italian futurist movement which included poets and artists as
well as musicians were of the opinion that their art forms had lost the ability
to surprise and new ideas were needed to expand and push back existing boundaries
of 19th century traditionalism. Russolo documented some of these ideas in his
book ‘The Art of Noises’ and although not electronic, his ideas of motors, power
saws, streetcar sounds, explosions etc. to create new musical canvases paved
the way for the electronic revolution in the early 1920s. Russolo did develop
a keyboard instrument to play some of these sounds mechanically - this ‘Noise
Harmonium’ is often considered to be the precursor of the synthesiser. On the
other side of the Atlantic, Americas’ ‘bad boy of music’ George Antheil premiered
his noise based Ballet Mecanique in Carnigie Hall. The piece is scored for ten
pianos, eight xylophones, four bass drums and four ‘mechanical effects’ persons
playing assorted electric bells, sirens and aeroplane propellers which when
started in the Carnegie Hall performance in 1927 almost literally blew the audience
away!
The first real attempt at a purely electronic instrument was probably the Telharmonium
made by Thaddeus Carhill in 1902. It was a huge structure weighing in at 200
tons and was played across New Yorks’ telephone system. Classical music was
played on its keyboards and sounds were transmitted by 2 huge cog wheeled rotors
over magnets. The whole thing met a somewhat damp end when it was cast into
the Atlantic ocean as it interfered too much with the New York telephone system.
The best known and longest survivor of innovative electronic instruments is
surely the Theremin.
Lev Sergevitch Terman or Leon Theremin as he became known in the west was born
in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1896. After studying physics and astronomy at university
in 1918 he developed an instrument whose sound is still as unique now as it
was then. Initially called a Thereminvox later simply Theremin, the unique aspect
of the instrument is that it is ‘space controlled’ in other words the player
never actually touches or makes contact with it. Volume, dynamics and pitch
are controlled by two antennae generating an electromagnetic field and the sound
is produced from two high frequency oscillators, the early versions used oscillating
(thermionic) valves, the resulting sound being the difference of the frequencies.
To change pitch the player varies the distance between the right hand and the
pitch antenna, and to
change volume, the player varies the distance between left hand and the middle
of the volume antenna. (Full volume occurs when the hand is removed completely
from the antenna). Changes in sound will occur with any bodily movement so it
is essential that the player stands in an almost seance-like state, absolutely
motionless. Like most ingenious inventions, Theremin stumbled upon the sound
by accident when he was working on an experiment with a radio set. In 1927 Theremin
and Clara Reisenberg (later Rockmore) came to America to demonstrate the Theremin.
| Clara Rockmore was a professional violinist in Russia and began collaborating with Theremin after hearing this sensitive wide-ranging musical instrument. In America, Theremin was quick to develop his ideas further by constructing a ‘cello’ Theremin which was held between the knees like a conventional cello but no contact was made with the instrument - hands and fingers moved up and down the fingerboard area to produce any passage that a conventional cello could play. He even set up an entire studio space where dancers would perform and their movements would trigger pitch and volume changes within the space (known as the ‘terpsitone dance platform’) and there was a keyboard electronic timpani, and a keyboard-controlled complex rhythmic pattern generator (could this have been the first drum machine?!). The technology of the Theremin led to other inventions outside of music namely burglar alarm systems where a sensing rod and ‘force field’ would detect any intrusive movement and thereby set off an alarm. Theremins’ life was peppered with controversy, intrigue and ill fate. |  |
Whilst in America
he fell in love and married a young black dancer Levinia Williams which, at
that time in the US was still racially unacceptable and resulted in him losing
favour in many of the social circles he moved in, but perhaps the most incredible
episode in his life came in the mid 1930s when he was forcibly removed from
America and taken back to Russia. Astonishingly people in the west believed
him to be dead, so convinced of this that a German book on modern music lists
a biography of Theremin which states ‘b.1896 - d. 1945’. However the truth was
discovered many years later when Clara Rockmore, the first Theremin virtuoso
travelled to Russia and discovered that he had spent 7 years in a prison/labour
camp and from 1942 to 1967 had been working for the KGB in radio aviation and
un-scrambling politically sensitive tapes for the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Luckily the Theremin continued to gain popularity albeit not always in a way
that Theremin, Clara Rockmore and Theremins’ great niece Lydia Kavina would
have liked. Rockmore always considered the Theremin as an instrument of great
individualality and expressive beauty to be given equal musical status as a
violin or the human voice, in fact there is a Concerto for Theremin and orchestra
by A. Fuleihan which was premiered by Leopold Stokowski in New York in1945,Symphonic
Mystery for theremin and orchestra by Pashchenko, Fantasy for theremin, string
quartet, oboe and piano by Martinu and Rockmore made many arrangements of classical
pieces and produced virtuostic performances of these on the Theremin. Unfortunately
Hollywood in the 40s and 50s saw it as an instrument capable of conjuring up
very eerie nuances for film soundtracks such as The Day the Earth Stood Still,
Spellbound, The Lost Weekend and countless other B-movie classics of the time.
After a short lull in popularity Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys had the bright
idea of using the Theremin in the 1967 hit Good Vibrations. It was in the late
60s that Bob Moog became interested in the Theremin and began building his own
versions. Today the Theremin lives on by the efforts of people like Barry Wooding,
Bruce Woolley, Tony Henk, and Tony Bassett all Theremin enthusiasts and makers
and all British! and Lydia Kavina tours the world giving lecture recitals on
the Theremin. Present day use of the Theremin in the pop world can be found
on albums by Pulp, Blur and Portishead.
Leon Theremin died at the age of 97 the day after a unique documentary film
made by Steve M. Martin was shown on TV here in 1993.
 |
In 1928 the frenchman Maurice Martenot developed the Ondes Martenot whose circuitry was almost certainly based on that of the Theremin (the Onde uses sine and saw tooth wave sources) but whose playing technique was quite different. Like the theremin the Ondes Martenot is monophonic (playing one note at a time) and variations in pitch are obtained either on a keyboard with a range of 7 octaves or by a ‘ribbon’. This ribbon has a ring into which the right index finger is inserted and notes are produced by sliding the finger ring to various contact points which produces a portamento effect between pitches much like a fretless violin fingerboard. However no sound is heard at all until a button known as the ‘touche’ housed in a drawer is depressed with the left hand. This is connected to a variable potentiometer and therefore acts rather like the air blown through a wind instrument - the harder you press the louder the sound will be on the keyboard. Also in this drawer are a number of electronic filters which change timbre and dynamics. These two ways of playing (on keyboard or finger ribbon) possess great possibilities of expression. Both permit a vibrato that is totally dependent on the gestures of the performer. (the keys allow a slight side to side movement to produce vibrato as on a string instrument fingerboard). The sound is amplified through a 3 speaker system one of which has a small gong positioned in front of it producing a very distinctive reverberation. In early models, the resonating speaker was placed in a cabinet that looked not unlike a bishops mitre with sympathetic resonating strings across it. |
Jeanne Loriod
and an early model of the Ondes Martenot.
Various combinations of these speakers can be used at any one time. To quote the composer Vincent D’Indy.. ‘since no automatic factor intervenes, the performance adopts the character of a direct human expression and the player, when he or she is in firm command of the playing technique, gets the feeling that the instrument is part of his nervous system, so true it is to the relation between his musical thought and the resulting sound’. Many composers have written for the Ondes Martenot namely Varese, Milhaud, Chaynes, Jolivet, Honegger, Tessier but most importantly Olivier Messiaen whose sister- in- law Jeanne Loriod became the world virtuoso who now teaches the instrument at the Paris Conservatoire. She also formed a sextet of Ondes Martenots to perform works written solely for them. Britains’ own Cynthia Miller commutes regularly to Hollywood nowadays to perform on film soundtracks featuring the Ondes by the likes of Elmer Bernstein, and composer/performer Tristan Murail continues to explore the wide range of possibilities of newer digital Ondes Martenots. Messiaen features the Ondes in his 3 Liturgies and the mighty Turangalila Symphony where it is featured along side the piano as a solo instrument (as a matter of some interest, the first recorded version of Turangalila Symphony has Maurice Martenot’s daughter Ginette as Ondes soloist). He also uses 3 Ondes Martenots in his opera St. Francis of Assisi and 6 in Fete Des Belles Eaux where in the hands of a master craftsman such as Messiaen the Ondes Martenot is explored to great heights of musical expression.
 |
Malcolm playing a new version of the Ondes Martenot - L'Ondea (L'onde de la nouvelle génération) assisted by Christine Ott. Built out of the need to continue production of an instrument similar to the Ondes Martenot, L'Ondea uses new technology to achieve remarkable similarities in sound and playing technique. More information can be obtained from François Cochet at http://site.voila.fr/ONDEA_ONDESNOUVELLES |
In the hands of virtuosi such as Clara Rockmore and Jeanne Loriod both the Theremin
and Ondes Martenot appear quite easy to play especially the Theremin where no
contact is made on the instrument, but make no mistake, these instruments have
stood the test of time through the synthesiser and digital revolution by pure
musicality of the player. On both instruments you have to find your own pitch
so most players either have or develop perfect pitch and as there are no mechanical
or tactile elements like strings, pistons, membranes etc the means of expression
is instant from body gestures and minute movements of a finger or arm to the
resultant sound.
In 1930 the german Friedrich Trauwein exhibited his newly invented Trautonium
and again the circuitry was similar to that of the theremin but the Trautonium
had extra devices which enabled the player to obtain fixed pitches of the equal
tempered scale. Hindemith wrote a Concerto for Trautonium and orchestra in 1931
but the man who explored the Trautonium in greater depth was Freidrich Trautweins’
collaborator at the radio experimental station of the Berlin Conservertoire,
Oskar Sala. In 1952 Sala designed the mixture-trautonium which had two manuals
made up of two strings stretched over two metal rails, two pedals, registers
providing various tone colours and subharmonic mixtures, electronic percussion
section with generator, relay interrupter and precision controls. Since then
the mixture trautonium has been enlarged by the addition of auxiliary equipment
which comprises magnetic sound delay controls, frequency transduction, resonance
plate and a stereophonic output unit. Visually the Trautonium resembles an old
pipe organ whose keyboards have been ripped out. The sound is produced by the
player depressing curved metal ‘keys’ which make contact with the wire and the
metal rail. Oskar Sala wrote and performed his own Musique Stereo for orchestra,
mixture-Trautonium and studio electronics and composer Harald Genzmer (b.1909)
wrote Cantate for soprano, mixture-Trautonium and studio electronics and Suite
of Dances for electronic instruments.
With the advent of transistors, electronic music and instruments began to take
off in the 1960s.
Since Bob Moog’s initial interest in the theremin he has been the key figure
in the development of the modern day synthesiser and although early versions
were huge great monoliths taking up an entire room, they gradually reduced in
size and improved in quality. One milestone of this development was the VCS-3
synthesiser created by EMS (Electronic Music Studios). Peter Zinovieff, David
Cockerell and others launched the VCS-3 and a little later the Synthi AKS which
was a VCS-3 in a suitcase with a small keyboard, in the mid 60s. Although the
VCS-3 was really an electronic music studio in a box about the size of a stereo
reel to reel tape machine, musicians began to use it to transform other instruments.
One such instrument was the Electrochord developed by pianist/conductor and
composer Peter Eotvos. The electrochord is a Hungarian peasant zither with 15
strings connected to a VCS-3 synthesiser. The sound and the resonance of the
zither are recorded by two contact microphones and modulated by the VCS-3 which
transforms the sound by means of frequency, amplitude, ring modulation and filtering.
Along side the electrochord was the Electronium developed by pianist Harald
Boje. The electronium is a sound generator with special combinations of filters.
Its frequencies extend to both the upper and lower limits of audibility. A keyboard
allows the production of fixed pitches, while a potentiometer produces glissandi.
Sounds can be modulated by a ring-modulator and wah-wah filter. Both the electrochord
and electronium were used extensively by these musicians in much of Stockhausens’
music of the late 60s and 70s.
Curiously there have been some interesting technical and musical relationships
between events of 80 or 90 years ago. One technical aspect is that virtually
the same technology was used in the famous Hammond organ as was used originally
by Carhill in his Telharmonium that is the
rotating cog wheels over magnet mechanism. Also the instrument builder and researcher
Walter Fabeck has come up with several inventions that look back to Theremin
technology: they include the Chromasone and Air -Drums. The Chromasone is a
distance-measuring keyboard installation which can be tilted and rotated to
produce varying responses to the players movements around it. The player can
manipulate sampled and synthesised sounds by ‘muscular memory’ because the keyboard
pattern on the ‘virtual keyboard’ (which is a block of illuminated perspex)
is calibrated exactly to the dimensions of a conventional piano keyboard, although
the hand don’t actually touch it. As with the Theremin, expression is given
to the music by a variety of gestural actions which are often implied by a pianist
but never translated into the final musical result,e.g. the ‘follow-through’
arm movement and finger pressure and movement in the ‘air’ all add to create
minute changes in expression. Musically, looking back to Russolo and his noise
machines and sounds of industry etc immediately brought to mind latter day Steve
Reich in particular his work City Life where he uses the sounds of pile drivers,
street sounds etc. now produced via sampling keyboard technology - I wonder
what Russolo and his futurist chums would make of today’s technology?!
Some selected recordings of early electronic instruments.
(Unfortunately these can be very rare and hard to find but I have listed titles
of works that feature these instruments together with any audio reference I
have).
Theremin
The Art of the Theremin. Works by Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saens, DeFalla, Tchaikovsky
etc. played by Clara Rockmore. Delos D/CD 1014
Various tracks by Radio Science Orchestra are available via the Internet.
Further information on Theremin ‘activity’ can be obtained from Barry Wooding
on
+44-(0)1425-610849 and eMail 101364,522@compuserve.com
Ondes Martenot
Turangalila Symphony (Messiaen) There are now several commercial recordings
of this piece which are readily available.
Trois Petite Liturges de la Presence Divine (Messiaen) Erato. 0630-12702-2CD
Fete des Belles Eaux (Messiaen) with Hexade (Tessier) Ades 14.035 LP
Mixtur-Trautonium
Electronique et Stereophonie Musique Spatiale. Erato STU 70633 LP
Electronium and Electrochord
Various works by Karlheinz Stockhausen including:
Aus den Seiben Tagen
Spiral versions for Electrochord and Electronium
Pole fur Two
Kurzwellen
Prozession. All available from Stockhausen-Verlag
(This article was published as ‘Dinosaus to Digital’ in AVANT magazine issue
5.)
Harry Partch ~ Steve Reich ~ Early electronic Instruments ~ Pierre Boulez ~ Markus Stockhausen ~ Karlheinz Stockhausen ~