Old iron: electronic tools that are lost in the depths of history
Electronic musical instruments have a rich history. True, many, including the extremely curious, are consigned to oblivion. Recall some of them.
Meet the: electric, optophonic piano and super piano .
Photo by Martijn Nijenhuis / CC BY-ND
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Before becoming an electronic music enthusiast, the German Jörg Mager was a teacher and organist. One hot day, he discovered that the heat had slightly altered the sound of the organ. This phenomenon captured Jörg Mager and was the cause of his fascination with microtonic music and rhythm bands containing quarter-tone intervals. He wrote a scientific work on this topic and in 1912 he developed a quarter -tone harmonium , capable, as the name implies, to make sounds in quarter-tone increments.
A few years later, Mager did not leave his passion for microchromatics and joined a group of musicians led by Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (Ferruccio Busoni), who sought to go beyond the limits of the European 12-speed uniformly tempered system. Jörg was sure: to achieve this goal, there is no sense in modifying classical tools, it’s better to create your own.
As a basis for the tools of the new era, he proposed the use of radio tubes. Mager was a utopian and idealist and had no doubt that the future of music lies in radio technology. So, in 1921, the electronic appeared.
It was a monophonic instrument, the principle of which resembled the theremin . He used two 50-kilohertz oscillation oscillators, the frequencies of which overlapped each other. As a result, a signal was formed in the range distinguishable by the human ear.
Later, Jorg completed his instrument - he added a second knob, the movement of which interrupted the constant glissando with another note, as well as two pedals to control the volume of both sounds. The modified instrument became known under a different name - spherophone .
In the summer of 1926, at the music festival in Donaueschingen, Mager played on his spherephone, and the instrument began to gain fame in professional circles. For example, Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov, the grandson of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, wrote for him a series of experimental quarter-tone studies, and the German composer Paul Hindemith strongly advocated the continuation of Mager's developments.
And Jörg continued to improve his invention. For example, I replaced the knobs with two rows of keys and got a spherophone with a keyboard. Later he added three more rows to transfer timbres of various orchestral instruments with their help, and called the new device the scoreboard . However, he was not destined to gain wide popularity.
In 1930, the world saw the trautonium (we talked about it last time ) - the invention of the German engineer Friedrich Trautwein (Friedrich Trautwein), who overshadowed his tool Mager. Troutonium used format filters and provided the widest timbre variety. Plus, Troutwein did not lock on microtonic music, which nevertheless remained the lot of a narrow circle of connoisseurs.
Then the Second World War began, and not a single tool of Mager survived.
In 1916, avant-garde artist Vladimir Baranov-Rossine began developing an instrument in which he tried to combine music and light. This is how the optophone was born - a small piano with a three-octave keyboard, where the sound, like in the case of an electric phone, was produced by the difference of two high-frequency signals.
At the same time, the musical instrument not only made sounds, but also projected the image onto flat surfaces. A set of glass discs and filters that the artist painted himself answered for the “optical function” of the apparatus: simple monochrome prisms, lenses, mirrors were obtained.
The instrument could be heard mainly at the exhibitions of Baranov-Rossin himself. In Russia he gave two concerts on it - at the Meyerhold Theater and at the Bolshoi, but more often he performed in Europe. Subsequently, the optophone nevertheless found itself on the verge of history: the concept of synthetic art, with the unification of light and music, remained in the space of art experiments and did not become the property of the general public.
In 1927, the Austrian architect and inventor Emmerich Spielmann (Emmerich Spielmann) patented superpiano - an instrument, the sound extraction in which was based on a photo-optical system. A beam of light in it fell through a rotating glass disk on the photoelectric element. Due to regular interruptions of the beam, an oscillating sound arose.
In the construction of super-piano, black celluloid disks arranged in two rows, 12 pieces each, were used. Holes of various shapes were made in the disks, grouped in seven centric circles (each corresponded to one octave). With a combination of pure tone and harmonics, the sound was lively and deep.
Photo: 120years.net / PD / Superpiano
In 1929, Spielmann presented a superpiano on the Viennese radio RAVAG, giving a lecture on the topic “Light can speak, light begets music”.
The inventor planned to sell his creation for $ 300 . It was supposed to be a tool for home music and simple sampling: it was possible to make holes in celluloid disks, which hypothetically made it possible to imitate the whole range of orchestral instruments.
A little later, Shpilman developed another instrument with a similar principle of action - the symphony . It combines the sounds of various musical instruments, from wind instruments to strings, and there were fifteen combinations of timbres.
With the onset of World War II, the project of Shpilman faded away, and the super piano never went on sale. Only one copy of this instrument survived the war - in 1947 it was exhibited at the Technical Museum of Vienna.
Shpilman himself moved to New York, where he continued to work on his instrument, but apparently it was eclipsed by a light-sound organ , the brainchild of Edwin Welte. And later on, the Hammond organ took over the market for home music making (we told about it in our blog ).
The history of electronic tools is the history of ideas that were in the air and the will of chance. Not all inventions, even if they were original and promising, became famous or became commercially successful, but the innovations of their creators are truly inspiring.
Additional reading - from the "World Hi-Fi" and Telegram-channel "Audiomania":
Go
Sound on the wire: the story of the telegraph
Bobinniki: a brief history of reel tape recorders
"Highway Hi-Fi": the history of record players for cars
Meet the: electric, optophonic piano and super piano .
Photo by Martijn Nijenhuis / CC BY-ND
')
Electrophone and musical instrument
Before becoming an electronic music enthusiast, the German Jörg Mager was a teacher and organist. One hot day, he discovered that the heat had slightly altered the sound of the organ. This phenomenon captured Jörg Mager and was the cause of his fascination with microtonic music and rhythm bands containing quarter-tone intervals. He wrote a scientific work on this topic and in 1912 he developed a quarter -tone harmonium , capable, as the name implies, to make sounds in quarter-tone increments.
A few years later, Mager did not leave his passion for microchromatics and joined a group of musicians led by Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (Ferruccio Busoni), who sought to go beyond the limits of the European 12-speed uniformly tempered system. Jörg was sure: to achieve this goal, there is no sense in modifying classical tools, it’s better to create your own.
As a basis for the tools of the new era, he proposed the use of radio tubes. Mager was a utopian and idealist and had no doubt that the future of music lies in radio technology. So, in 1921, the electronic appeared.
It was a monophonic instrument, the principle of which resembled the theremin . He used two 50-kilohertz oscillation oscillators, the frequencies of which overlapped each other. As a result, a signal was formed in the range distinguishable by the human ear.
Mager's innovation was that the pitch was not adjusted by pressing the keys, but by moving the metal knob. A plate-semicircle with markings on a chromatic scale was located under the handle. A continuous sound was extracted from the telephone and the possibility of reproducing a glissando was provided.
Later, Jorg completed his instrument - he added a second knob, the movement of which interrupted the constant glissando with another note, as well as two pedals to control the volume of both sounds. The modified instrument became known under a different name - spherophone .
In the summer of 1926, at the music festival in Donaueschingen, Mager played on his spherephone, and the instrument began to gain fame in professional circles. For example, Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov, the grandson of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, wrote for him a series of experimental quarter-tone studies, and the German composer Paul Hindemith strongly advocated the continuation of Mager's developments.
And Jörg continued to improve his invention. For example, I replaced the knobs with two rows of keys and got a spherophone with a keyboard. Later he added three more rows to transfer timbres of various orchestral instruments with their help, and called the new device the scoreboard . However, he was not destined to gain wide popularity.
In 1930, the world saw the trautonium (we talked about it last time ) - the invention of the German engineer Friedrich Trautwein (Friedrich Trautwein), who overshadowed his tool Mager. Troutonium used format filters and provided the widest timbre variety. Plus, Troutwein did not lock on microtonic music, which nevertheless remained the lot of a narrow circle of connoisseurs.
Then the Second World War began, and not a single tool of Mager survived.
Optophonic piano: instrument and art object
In 1916, avant-garde artist Vladimir Baranov-Rossine began developing an instrument in which he tried to combine music and light. This is how the optophone was born - a small piano with a three-octave keyboard, where the sound, like in the case of an electric phone, was produced by the difference of two high-frequency signals.
At the same time, the musical instrument not only made sounds, but also projected the image onto flat surfaces. A set of glass discs and filters that the artist painted himself answered for the “optical function” of the apparatus: simple monochrome prisms, lenses, mirrors were obtained.
As a result, the instrument reproduced music and simultaneously projected kaleidoscopic patterns onto the surface. It turned out something like a multimedia installation. Later, the artist developed his idea and in 1920 made a version of an optophone , where each key corresponded to a certain sound and color, and its brightness was changed by filters.
The instrument could be heard mainly at the exhibitions of Baranov-Rossin himself. In Russia he gave two concerts on it - at the Meyerhold Theater and at the Bolshoi, but more often he performed in Europe. Subsequently, the optophone nevertheless found itself on the verge of history: the concept of synthetic art, with the unification of light and music, remained in the space of art experiments and did not become the property of the general public.
Super piano and symphony
In 1927, the Austrian architect and inventor Emmerich Spielmann (Emmerich Spielmann) patented superpiano - an instrument, the sound extraction in which was based on a photo-optical system. A beam of light in it fell through a rotating glass disk on the photoelectric element. Due to regular interruptions of the beam, an oscillating sound arose.
In the construction of super-piano, black celluloid disks arranged in two rows, 12 pieces each, were used. Holes of various shapes were made in the disks, grouped in seven centric circles (each corresponded to one octave). With a combination of pure tone and harmonics, the sound was lively and deep.
In 1929, Spielmann presented a superpiano on the Viennese radio RAVAG, giving a lecture on the topic “Light can speak, light begets music”.
The inventor planned to sell his creation for $ 300 . It was supposed to be a tool for home music and simple sampling: it was possible to make holes in celluloid disks, which hypothetically made it possible to imitate the whole range of orchestral instruments.
A little later, Shpilman developed another instrument with a similar principle of action - the symphony . It combines the sounds of various musical instruments, from wind instruments to strings, and there were fifteen combinations of timbres.
With the onset of World War II, the project of Shpilman faded away, and the super piano never went on sale. Only one copy of this instrument survived the war - in 1947 it was exhibited at the Technical Museum of Vienna.
Shpilman himself moved to New York, where he continued to work on his instrument, but apparently it was eclipsed by a light-sound organ , the brainchild of Edwin Welte. And later on, the Hammond organ took over the market for home music making (we told about it in our blog ).
The history of electronic tools is the history of ideas that were in the air and the will of chance. Not all inventions, even if they were original and promising, became famous or became commercially successful, but the innovations of their creators are truly inspiring.
Additional reading - from the "World Hi-Fi" and Telegram-channel "Audiomania":
Go
Sound on the wire: the story of the telegraph Bobinniki: a brief history of reel tape recorders "Highway Hi-Fi": the history of record players for carsSource: https://habr.com/ru/post/445518/
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