120 Years of Electronic Music
The 'Clavier à Lampes' (1927) The 'Orgue des Ondes" (1929),
The Piano Radio-Électrique (1929), The 'Givelet' (1930)
The 'Clavier à Lampes'
Armand Givelet , an engineer and physicist at the radio laboratory
at the Eiffel Tower in collaboration with the organ builder Eduard
Eloi Coupleaux produced their first instrument the 'Clavier à
Lampes' in 1927. The 'Clavier à Lampes' was a monophonic vacuum
tube oscillator instrument.
In 1928 Givelet demonstrated his technique of 'silent recording'
or direct injection. This was a solution to the problem of recording
music with microphones for radio broadcast, the microphones of
the day being of very low quality, Givelet's solution was to connect
his electronic instruments directly into the radio transmitter
or sound recorder.
Armand Givelet and his "wave Organ" 1933
The 'Orgue des Ondes" (1929)
Givelet and Coupleaux's second instrument was the 'Orgue des Ondes'
or 'Wave Organ' in 1929 . The wave Organ was designed as a cheap
replacement for pipe organs used to play the popular music of
the day and as a way of getting around the problem of recording
and transmitting radio broadcast music using microphones - microphones
at this time were still crude and unsuitable for recording music,
the "Wave Organ" could be plugged straight into an amplifier or
radio transmitter, bypassing microphones completely.
Givelet's instrument was based on the same technology, vacuum
lamp oscillators, as the Theremin and Ondes-Martenot but the "Wave
Organ" had an oscillator for each key therefore the instrument
was polyphonic, a distinct advantage over its rivals despite the
amount of room needed to house the huge machine.
The organ had over 700 vacuum oscillator tubes to give it a pitch
range of 70 notes and ten different timbres - for each different
timbre a different set of tubes was used. The Organ may have used
as many as 1,000 tubes in total for oscillators and amplifiers.
The sound of the organ was said to be particullarly rich due to
small variations in the tuning between each note creating a chorus
like effect - infact, the organ was capable of an early type of
additive (addition of sine or simple waveforms) and subtractive
(filtering comlex waveforms) synthesis due to its number of oscillators
and distortion of the sine waves produced by the LC oscillators.
The "Wave Organ" eventually succumbed to the popularity and portability
of the American built Hammond Organ.
The multiple oscillators of the "Orgue-des-ondes"
The Piano Radio-Électrique (1929)
The Piano Radio-Électrique was a small electric organ type instrument
equipped with the player piano mechanism of the Orgue-des-ondes
controlling a set of oscillators mounted in a separate cabinet,
it could be accompanied on the piano played manually or using
a second electropneumatic system controlled by the player piano.
The Coupleaux -Givelet Organ' or 'Givelet' (1930)
The keyboards of the 'Givelet'
Givelet and Coupleaux's last know instrument was the 'Coupleaux
-Givelet Organ' or 'Givelet'. The Givelet was a unique instrument
that combined vacuum tube oscillators with a sound control system
using a punched paper roll in a way similar to a player piano
to define the sound synthesis. Pitch, volume, attack, envelope,
tremolo and timbre could be controlled by cutting and splicing
paper rolls and like the "Wave Organ", the Givelet was polyphonic.
The technique of using punched paper "programs" was not exploited
until fifteen years later in the 1950's with the
RCA Synthesiser.
Givelets and Coupleaux's instrument was designed to be a commercial
and cheap replacement for pipe organs and utilise the ability
for 'silent recording'. The Givelets were installed in churches
around France and at a broadcasting radio station in Paris. The
Givelet eventually lost out commercially to the American Hammond Organ
Sources:
A.J.Givelet: 'Les Instruments de Musique à oscillations électriques:
Le Clavier à Lampes ', Génie civil, xciii (1928)
© 120 Years Of Electronic Music 2005
