The ‘Baldwin Organ’ Winston E. Kock & J.F. Jordan, USA, 1946

Early Model of Winston Kock's Baldwin organ
Winston Kock’s Baldwin Organ Model Five 1947

The Baldwin organ was an electronic organ, many models of which have been manufactured by the Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. since 1946. The original models were designed by Dr Winston E. Kock who became the company’s director of electronic research after his return from his studies at the Heinrich-Hertz-Institute, Berlin, in 1936. The organ was a development of Kock’s Berlin research with the GrosstonOrgel using the same neon-gas discharge tubes to create a stable, affordable polyphonic instrument. The Baldwin Organ were based on an early type of subtractive synthesis; the neon discharge tubes generating a rough sawtooth wave rich in harmonics which was then modified by formant filters to the desired tone.

Tone modifying circuits of the Baldwin organ
Tone modifying circuits of the Baldwin organ

Another innovative aspect of the Baldwin Organ was the touch sensitive keyboard designed to create a realistic variable note attack similar to a pipe organ. As the key was depressed, a curved metal strip progressively shorted out a carbon resistance element to provide a gradual rather than sudden attack (and decay) to the sound.  This feature was unique at that time, and it endowed the Baldwin instrument with an unusually elegant sound which captivated many musicians of the day.

“How did it sound? I have played Baldwin organs at a time when they were still marketed and in my opinion, for what it is worth, they were pretty good in relative terms.  That is to say, they sounded significantly better on the whole than the general run of analogue organs by other manufacturers, and they were only beaten by a few custom built instruments in which cost was not a factor.  It would not be true to say they sounded as good as a good digital organ today, but they compared favourably with the early Allen digitals in the 1970’s.  Nor, of course, did they sound indistinguishable from a pipe organ, but that is true for all pipeless organs.  To my ears they also sounded much better and more natural than the cloying tone of the more expensive Compton Electrone which, like the Hammond, also relied on attempts at additive synthesis with insufficient numbers of harmonics.”

From ‘Winston Kock and the Baldwin Organ; by Colin Pykett

Electronic Generator of the earlt model Baldwin Organ
Electronic Tone Generator of the early model Baldwin Organ showing neon gas-discharge tube oscillators.

Kock’s 1938 Patent of the Baldwin organ

Winston Kock playing an early experimental design for an electric instrument
Winston Kock playing his early experimental electronic instrument 1932

Winston E. Kock Biographical Details:

Winston Kock was born into a German-American family in 1909 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Despite being a gifted musician he decided to study electrical engineering at Cincinnati university and in his 20’s designed a highly innovative, fully electronic organ for his master’s degree.

The major problem of instrument design during the 1920’s and 30’s was the stability and cost of analogue oscillators. Most commercial organ ventures had failed for this reason; a good example being  Givelet & Coupleux’s  huge valve Organ in 1930. it was this reason that Laurens Hammond (and many others) decided on Tone-Wheel technology for his Hammond Organs despite the inferior audio fidelity.

Kock had decided early on to investigate the possibility of producing a commercially viable instrument that was able to produce the complexity of tone possible from vacuum tubes. With this in mind, Kock hit upon the idea of using much cheaper neon ‘gas discharge’ tubes as oscillators stabilised with resonant circuits. This allowed him to design an affordable, stable and versatile organ.

Kock's Sonar device during WW2
Kock’s Sonar device during WW2

In the 1930’s Kock, fluent in German, went to Berlin to study On an exchange fellowship (curiously, the exchange was with Sigismund von Braun, Wernher von Braun’s eldest brother –Kock was to collaborate with Wernher twenty five years later at NASA) at the Heinrich Hertz Institute conducting research for a doctorate under Professor K W Wagner. At the time Berlin, and specifically the Heinrich Hertz Institute, was the global centre of electronic music research. Fellow students and professors included; Jörg Mager, Oskar Vierling, Fritz Sennheiser, Bruno Helberger, Harald Bode, Friedrich Trautwein, Oskar Sala and Wolja Saraga amongst others. Kock’s study was based around two areas: – improving the understanding of glow discharge (neon) oscillators, and developing realistic organ tones using specially designed filter circuits. 

Kock worked closely with Oskar Vierling for his Phd and co-designed the GrosstonOrgel in 1934 but disillusioned by the appropriation of his work by the newly ascendant Nazi party he decided to leave for India, sponsored by the Baldwin Organ Company arriving at the Indian Institute of Music in Bangalore in 1935.

Returning from India in 1936, Dr Kock became Baldwin’s Director of Research while still in his mid-twenties, and with J F Jordan designed many aspects of their first electronic organ system which was patented in 1941.

NASA
Winston E Kock (L) as the first Director of Engineering Research at NASA

When the USA entered the second world war Kock moved to Bell Telephone Laboratories where he was involved on radar research and specifically microwave antennas. In the mid-1950’s he took a senior position in the Bendix Corporation which was active in underwater defence technology. He moved again to become NASA’s first Director of Engineering Research, returning to Bendix in 1966 where he remained until 1971 when he became Acting Director of the Hermann Schneider Laboratory of the University of Cincinatti. Kock Died in Cincinatti in 1982.

 Winston Kock was a prolific writer of scientific books but he also wrote fiction novels under the pen name of Wayne Kirk.

Acoustic lenses developed by Winston Kock at the Bell Labs in the 1950's
Acoustic lenses developed by Winston Kock at the Bell Labs in the 1950’s
Acoustic lenses developed by Winston Kock at the Bell Labs in the 1950's
Acoustic lenses developed by Winston Kock at the Bell Labs in the 1950’s
lenses
Acoustic lenses developed by Winston Kock at the Bell Labs in the 1950’s

Sources:

Hugh Davies. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

http://www.pykett.org.uk/drkock.htm

The ‘Multimonica I & II’, Siegfried Mager, Germany, 1951.

1953 Multimonica II. Image: Reverb Music Auction 2019. www.reverb.com
The Multimonica I, originally named the Mager-Straube-Kleinorgel (or sometimes Multimonica System Mager) designed in Germany the late 1940s and commercially available sometime around 1951, was one of the first mass-produced portable electronic musical instruments. The Multimonica was designed by Siegfried Mager, the son of the famous self styled ‘Father of German Electronic Music’, Jörg Mager and manufactured by the Straube Harmonium Company in Lich, Germany. 1Heyde, Herbert.(1994) Musical instrument making in Prussia. Hans Schneider, 221.
The factory of the Straube Harmonium Company, Lich, Germany circa 1950 where the Multimonica I ( Mager-Straube-Kleinorgel) was manufactured. Image: Wirtualnym Muzeum Zabytkowych Instrumentów Muzycznych – https://zabytkoweinstrumenty.wordpress.com/
The Multimonica II, based on Mager’s original design was later (1952?) licensed and manufactured by the German company Matthias Hohner AG in Trossingen, Germany, well known at the time for their acoustic harmoniums and mouth-organs.
1953 Multimonica II. Image: Reverb Music Auction 2019. www.reverb.com

The Multimonica was a portable hybrid electronic/acoustic instrument with two keyboards; the lower one a 41 note wind-blown reed harmonium instrument,  and the upper, an electronic monophonic sawtooth synthesiser. Housed in a modernist, streamlined black and white Bakelite casing, the instrument features a loudspeaker, tube-generated electromechanical vibrato, (The circuits were based on the Philips 13204 X, Philips EL41, Telefunken EF41 tubes in the Multimonica I, and EL41; ECC40; EF40 tubes for the Multimonica II ) 6 pre-set synth sounds, 2 switches for harmonic filtering, and 3 switches for the vibrato speed and amplitude, as well as a knee lever for volume control. Some versions of the Multimonica I had a medium wave radio built in to allow the owner to play along to broadcast music. The Multimonica II released in 1953 featured one loudspeaker and provided more types of harmonics filtering than the earlier Multimonica I, and the electro-mechanical vibrato was changed to a more sophisticated neon-gas-tube-based design.2 Davies, Hugh.(2014) The Multimonica, The Grove dictionary of musical instruments, New York : Oxford University Press, 529.

Neue elektronische Musikinstrumente. Funkschau Magazine 1953. 3Neue elektronische Musikinstrumente, FUNKSCHAU
1953/Heft, 18.

The Multimonica System Mager is a portable instrument that is placed on the table while playing. It has two manuals with 41 keys each. The lower one is operated, similar to an accordion i.e. vibrating tines excited by wind pressure for full-fledged polyphonic playing. The air is supplied by an electric operated fan. With a register arrangement you can set seven different tones.

The second manual above is used for purely electronic sound generation. By pressing the buttons, capacitors are connected in parallel to a constantly oscillating feedback tube generator, so that the individual tone frequencies are created. They are played back by speakers in the device. This manual enables unison playing. The sound colour can be changed electrically using conveniently arranged tilt registers and by switching the built-in speakers on and off. Vibrato tones can also be generated through frequency modulation. Each manual has a knee lever as a volume control. — In addition to these two playing options, the device contains a built-in radio receiver for the local or district station, with the electronic registers being used as sound panels..

The demonstration [that we saw] showed that a very versatile style of playing is possible on this instrument, whose particular strength comes into its own through harmonious and organ-like handling. The instrument can therefore be used on its own or as an orchestral instrument, whereby the reed manual can serve as an accompanying and filling instrument, while the electronic arrangement takes over solo parts. Price of the Multimonica: 1080 DM,

TV Newsreel of the Multimonica II at the Frankfurt Spring Fair 1952

Images of the Multimonica II


References:

  • 1
    Heyde, Herbert.(1994) Musical instrument making in Prussia. Hans Schneider, 221.
  • 2
    Davies, Hugh.(2014) The Multimonica, The Grove dictionary of musical instruments, New York : Oxford University Press, 529.
  • 3
    Neue elektronische Musikinstrumente, FUNKSCHAU
    1953/Heft, 18.

The Electrophon (1921), Sphäraphon(1924), kurbelsphärophon (1926), Klaviatursphäraphon(1928), Partiturophon (1930) and Kaleidophon(1939). Jörg Mager, Germany.

Jörg (Georg Adam) Eichstätt Mager born November 6, 1880 Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Died Aschaffenburg 1939
Jörg (Georg Adam) Eichstätt Mager born: November 6, 1880 Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Died: Aschaffenburg 1939

Jörg Mager, the German inventor and self proclaimed ‘Father of German Electronic Music’ was an important figure in the development of electronic musical instruments. 1 Schenk, Jörg Mager – dem Deutschen Pionier der Elektro Musikforschung, 8. From around 1921 until his death in 1939 he created a family of electronic instruments that included  the Electrophon (1921), Sphäraphon(1924), kurbelsphärophon (1926), Klaviatursphäraphon(1928), Partiturophon (1930) and Kaleidophon(1939). Central to Mager’s design concept was the pursuit of a utopian perfect musical instrument, one that could deliver on the microtonal promises outlined in Ferrucio Bussoni’s influential text Entwurf einer neue Ästhetike der Tonkunst (‘Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music’, published in Germany in 1907 and 1917, and in English translation in New York in 1911). Busoni argued that music needed new instruments to provide a new sonic palette – instruments that had a wider tonal and timbral range than the classical instrumentarium: “So narrow has our tonal range become, so stereotyped its form of expression”.2Busoni, Ferruccio. (1911). Sketch of a new esthetic of music. New York (State): G.
Schirmer, 23. 

Jörg Mager’s lifelong fascination with micro-tonal music began accidentally during the hot summer of 1911 when he heard an out of tune organ playing notes beyond the fixed tempered scale. Fascinated by the instruments strange sounds he began to explore the concepts of half and quarter tone music which he eventually self-published in his Vierteltonmusik of 1915. At the same time he began to design an instrument that was capable of delivering micro-tonal and quarter tone scales, the first of which was an acoustic harmonium, the Vierteltonharmonium (Four-Tone harmonium)  in 1912.

After his participation in the failed 1918 communist coup in Bavaria, Mager left for Berlin. Here he joined a small circle of microtonal musicians (Mager, Alois Hába, Richard Stein, Ivan Wischnegradsky ) under the wing of renowned composer and theorist Ferrucio Bussoni. This circle of musicians were united in their aim to liberate music from the tyranny of fixed-tonality, however, rather than adapt existing instruments, Mager decided to create an entirely new instrument based on the emerging radio technology of the time.

To survive in post WW1 hyper-inflationary Berlin, Mager accepted any unskilled labour he could find. It was while working in a radio vacuum tube factory that he hit upon the idea of using vacuum tubes as the basis for his first electronic microtonal instrument, the Electrophon in 1921. The Electrophon was a simple monophonic instrument based on the same heterodyne principal as that of the Theremin; a method by which two frequencies are combined within the radio frequency spectrum (not perceptible by the human ear) to produce a third frequency that is equal to the difference between the latter two frequencies and that itself is within the audible spectrum humans. In case of Electrophon two  50 Khz frequency oscillators were used. The novel feature of the Electrophon was that rather than being controlled by a fixed tone manual, notes were instead triggered by rotating a metal handle, creating a glissando type effect on a continuous tone. Under the handle was a semicircular plate marked with chromatic scale intervals. Changes in  timbre could be applied through various filters. Further developments of the Electrophon were christened the Sphärophon after the Pythagorean legend of the music of the spheres.

“The music of the future will be attained by radio instruments! Of course, not with radio transmission, but rather direct generation of musical tones by means of cathode instruments! […] Indeed, the cathode-music will be far superior to previous music, in that it can generate a much finer, more highly developed, richly coloured music than all our known musical instruments! ”
Jörg Mager: ” Eine Neue Epoch Der Music Durch radio” (Berlin 1924)

Mager’s proposal in ” Eine Neue Epoch…” was that the medium of radio should be used to create and deliver a new type of utopian ‘free’ music by means of new electronic cathode-ray musical instruments, rather than just a means of transmitting mass content:

“…Radio firms have mobilised more energy for transmission of a radio-music but have hardly shown any interest in the most important problem: the production of music itself.”

“…the music of the future will be implemented largely by radio instruments not only in the sense that they can be easily transmitted, but especially that musical sounds can be produced directly through cathode-ray instruments . “

Mager’s fellow Microtonalist Czech composer Alois Hába added:

 “This is a new era in the development, not only in building instruments, but in music in general . “

Further developments of the Sphärophon lead to the kurbelsphärophon unveiled at the 1926 Donaueschingen summer music festival (alongside Leon Termen’s Theremin). This adaptation added a second manual dial that allowed the player to interrupt the instrument’s continuous output and avoid the continuous glissando of the Sphärophon  by queuing up another note and added two pedals to control each note’s volume and envelope.

Mager playing the kurbelsphärophon
Mager playing the Kurbelsphärophon

Though mostly ignored at the time,  Mager’s instrument quickly gained notoriety throughout Germany; the composer Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov (Grandson of the Russian composer) composed some quarter-tone experimental pieces and Paul Hindemith enthusiastically  endorsed Mager’s instrument. This support lead to the the formation in 1929 of the ‘Studiengesellschaft für Elektro Akustische Musik’  (‘Society for Electro-acoustic Music) in Darmstadt to support his research (funded by the city of Darmstadt, the Heinrich Hertz Institut für Schwingungsforschung and the Reichsrundfunk radio station) . The society was housed in a large, luxurious castle in Darmstadt and staffed with skilled technicians including the future electronic instrument designer Oskar Vierling.

The Klaviatursphäraphon
The Klaviatursphäraphon

With this resource at his disposal Mager continued to develop his instrument design, creating the Klaviatursphäraphon in 1928. In this model he replaced the handles of the Kurbelsphäraphon with two short keyed monophonic keyboards – the shorter keys allowing the player to play both keyboards simultaneously thereby producing a duophonic tone. It was also possible by adjusting the capacitance of the sound generating circuit to alter the intervals between each key and scale the acoustic length of the keyboard. An octave could be made as small as a major second, so that each successive step represented an interval of a 12th tone. Additional tone colour was added by mechanical resonators, series of filters and specially formed resonant speakers.

Jorg Mager and the The Partiturophon
Jorg Mager and the The Partiturophon

By now, Mager’s focus was moving from micro-tonality towards audio timbre. The “Partiturophon” (from the German ‘Partitur’ or musical score, reflecting his aim of capturing the varied combinations of orchestral timbre) was a four (in later models, five) keyboard and five voice version of the Klaviatursphäraphon produced in 1930. This instrument allowed the player to play four (or five) voices at once, one voice per keyboard:

“Mager produced today and organ with many registers on which four voice playing is possible. So far there is only one difficulty; that is, that each voice must have its own keyboard, thus the four voice movement must be played on three manuals and the pedal. For this reason the manuals must be close to each other and the keys short, so that one can easily play on several manuals with one hand. For this reason the keys are somewhat narrower than those on a regular organ or piano keyboard. Apart from these difficulties, which require a special adjustment to the playing of the new instrument, it is surprising in its infinite multiplicity of sound possibilities, through dynamic wealth of shading and through the possibilities of expression in the tones”

The critic and historian Frederick Prieberg on the Partiturophon

1932 marked the high point of Mager’s success. He had become a household name in Germany and  received commissions, from Winifred Wagner herself, to provide the sound effects for the annual Beyreuth Wagner festival, and he was also commissioned to mark the centenary of Gothe’s death with a micro-tonal piece  for thirty theatrical interpretations of drama Faust , which took place in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. Other plaudits came from  composers and conductors Arturo Toscanini and Wilhelm Furtwängler , the latter the director of the orchestral interpretation of Parsifal in 1931.

The Kaleidophon
The Kaleidophon

Yet this success was short lived. A new electronic instrument had emerged in 1930; Dr Friedrich Trautwien’s ‘Trautonioum’. In contrast to Mager’s amateur enthusiasm, Trautwien was a trained engineer and managed to produce an instrument that was both novel, reliable and wasn’t shackled by the complexity of Mager’s devotion to micro-tonality. The final blow to Mager came in 1933 when Hitler’s National Socialists took power. Experimental music was labelled  ‘Entartete’ or ‘degenerate’ and un-German; the great flowering of German musical innovation had come to an abrupt end. Mager tried to ingratiate himself into the new party “to get on the gravy train” but became increasingly paranoid and irritable, driving away many of his collaborators and supporters. In the struggle to develop the Partiturophon as a commercial domestic instrument, the contract for the  ‘Studiengesellschaft für Elektro Akustische Musik’ lapsed and funding dried up. Mager spent the rest of his life leading an impoverished semi-nomadic existence. His state of health was increasingly precarious due to diabetes and growing disorientation and mental confusion. His daughter Sofie, brought him back to Aschaffenburg, where he died on April 5, 1939, at the age of 59.

spite the oppressive new political climate, Mager was commissioned to create sound effects with the Partiturophon in the 1936 film "Stärker Paragraphen als" by Jürgen von Alten , with music by Rudolf Perak.
spite the oppressive new political climate, Mager was commissioned to create sound effects with the Partiturophon in the 1936 film “Stärker Paragraphen als” by Jürgen von Alten , with music by Rudolf Perak.

None of Mager’s instruments are known to have survived the Second World War, The castle at Darmstadt was heavily bombed by the Allies, obliterating the last traces of the Partiturophon and it’s predecessors. The last of Mager’s family of instruments was the Kaleidophon completed in 1939 and only survives in notes as “…a monophonic electronic instrument with kaleidoscopic sound mixtures following the tonal precepts of Arnold Schoenberg and Ferruccio Busoni.”

Mager's colleague Alois Hába playing the Partituropohn
Mager’s colleague Alois Hába playing the Partituropohn

Mager’s instruments ultimately failed because of, on one hand, Mager’s single minded devotion to microtonality which had virtually no repertoire and was little accepted even by the avant garde of the time ( even Mager’s close circle of friends Hába, Wischnegradsky and Stein never realised their promises to compose  for the instruments) and on the other, the fact that the instruments were in continual development, unstable and never completely finished making it difficult to become anything more than an interesting curiosity.


Sources

Jörg Mager: ” Eine Neue Epoch Der Music Durch radio” (Berlin 1924)

http://acousmata.com/post/27443169341/jorg-mager

http://www.audionautas.com/2010/10/jorg-mager-el-genio-hurano-i.html

Peter Donhauser, “Electric sound machines. Pioneer days in Germany and Austria,” Böhlau Verlag, ISBN 9783205775935

Fred Prieberg, “Music in the Nazi state,” Dittrich Verlag, ISBN 392086266XElena monster, “As the electronic music was ‘invented’ ,” Schott Verlag, ISBN 3795718910

MAGER Jörg: Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln 1924. : Vierteltonmusik, Aschaffenburg [1915].

The ‘Kaleidophon’ Jörg Mager, Germany, 1939

Jörg (Georg Adam) Eichstätt Mager born November 6, 1880 Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Died Aschaffenburg 1939
Jörg (Georg Adam) Eichstätt Mager born November 6, 1880 Aschaffenburg, Bavaria, Died Aschaffenburg 1939

Little information survives of Jörg Mager’s last instrument the ‘Kaleidophon’ which he completed in 1939. The instrument was probably destroyed by allied bombing of Mager’s Darmstadt headquarters. The only references survives as notess “…a monophonic electronic instrument with kaleidoscopic sound mixtures following the tonal precepts of Arnold Schoenberg and Ferruccio Busoni.”

More on Jörg Mager here