The Sphäraphon family of electronic instruments was a series of modifications to the original concept of the Elektrophon, a monophonic vacuum-tube instrument designed and built by the German pioneer of electronic musical instruments, Jörg Mager, in 1921. Despite Mager’s names for the subsequent new variants – the Sphäraphon (1924) and Kurbelsphärophon (1926) – they were all generally referred to as “Sphärophons” in the media of the time.
The original concept for the Sphäraphon originated with the Italian/German composer and theoretician Ferruccio Busoni, who mentored a group of Berlin composers exploring microtonal and quarter-tone music in the early 1920s. This group included Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Alois Hába, Willi Möllendorf, Richard Stein, Julián Carrillo, Arthur Lourié and Jörg Mager. Busoni’s 1911 publication, Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, had by then become a popular and highly influential manifesto in which he called on young musicians to create a new form of utopian, free music liberated from the tyranny of the fixed tonal scale. However, to achieve this revolution, it was necessary to create new instruments capable of producing sound of any pitch and timbre.
“Suddenly, one day, it became clear to me: the development of music is impeded by our instruments. [. . .] In their scope, their sound, and their performative possibilities, our instruments are constrained, and their hundred chains shackle the would-be creator as well.”1 Busoni, Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 2nd Ed., 41.
Busoni found what he thought would be the technological solution for this musical revolution in Thaddeus Cahill’s new electronic instrument: the 200-ton dynamo-powered Telharmonium, which at the time of writing (1911) was the only electronic instrument in existence. Busoni, having never seen the instrument, erroneously described the Telharmonium as being able to produce ‘infinite gradation of the octave’ by ‘merely moving a lever corresponding to the pointer of a quadrant’, a description entirely based, it seems, on Busoni’s own hopes rather than the abilities of the fixed-tone Telharmonium. [MFN] Busoni, Ferruccio. (1911) Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, New York (State): G. Schirmer, 23. [/MFN] However, it was Busoni’s description of the Telharmonium that formed the basis of Mager’s design for the Elektrophon, and for Mager, the start of a lifelong obsession to create, through ‘radio-electricity’, a perfect, ideal, universal instrument, unrestricted by the 12-note scale.2Mager, Edwart. (1933) Das Mager-Buch, Freiburg i.B., self-published, 105–7.
The Elektrophon was a one-off design constructed from discarded spare parts while Mager was employed at the Lorenz radio factory, Berlin, sometime after 1921. The instrument was a rather crude monophonic device based on the same heterodyne principle 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 of humans. In the case of Elektrophon, two 50 Khz frequency oscillators were used. The novel feature of the Elektrophon and all subsequent Sphäraphon designs was that, rather than being controlled by a conventional fixed-tone manual keyboard, the pitch of the note was controlled by rotating a metal handle, creating a glissando effect on a continuous glissando tone, or at least 72 divisions of an octave. 3 Stange-Elbe, Joachim. (1994) Elektronische Musikinstrumente. Ein historischer Rückblick mit zeitgenössischen Dokumenten, 5.Teil: Sphärenklänge, Jörg Magers: “Neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio”, ZeM-Mitteilungsheft Nr. 14 – April 1994. Under the handle was a semicircular plate marked with chromatic scale intervals. The Hungarian composer Alois Hába wrote several short pieces for the Elektrophon in 1922 – none of which survive.4Davies, Hugh. (1984) Sphärophon, The New Grove dictionary of music and musicians, London: Macmillan Press, 436.
In 1924, Mager renamed the Elektrophon to Sphärophon, a name that referred to the instrument’s semicircular dial and highlighted its symbolic connection to Pythagoras’s concept of the “Music of the Spheres.” For Mager, his instrument was the ideal device, uniquely capable of recreating the original, perfect form of universal music. In 1924, Mager published a small booklet, Eine Neue Epoch Der Musik Durch Radio, outlining his work. He described his new discovery: “The pan-tonal circle lay before me! The ocean of tone in its immeasurability! The omnitonium, the musical ideal of all times!” 5Mager, Jörg. (1924) Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln, Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 5.
Mager had always planned to create a polyphonic Sphärophon instrument, but this ambition was hindered by the financial crises of the Weimar Republic and by a shortage of parts caused by the industrial blockades imposed by the Versailles Treaty. For this reason, the 1926 version of the instrument, known as the Kurbelsphärophon, or ‘handle Sphärophon’, remained monophonic but added a filter (most likely the formant filters developed by Karl Willy Wagner at the Telegraphentechnische Reichsamt, where Mager had a small studio) to alter the instrument’s timbre and a second tuning handle freeing it from a continuous glissando. The instrument also had foot pedals to control the sound’s volume and envelope. Arno Huth in Die Musik 1927 describes the playing technique:
“The instruments are operated from a console. In Types I and II, a semicircular plate is positioned in front of the player, displaying the pitches as a scale. Type I is adjusted using two levers, operated alternately by the left and right hands. Each lever has a contact button on its handle to close the electrical circuit. After adjusting the lever, the same hand presses the contact button. While the note is sounding, the other hand adjusts the second lever to the same pitch, freeing the first lever for further adjustment. This alternating action allows for seamless legato, a smooth glide from one note to the next. Type II has a similar mechanism, but instead of levers, it uses contact buttons and is designed for playing multiple notes” 6Huth, Arno. (1927)”Elektrische Tonerzeugung,” Die Musik XX/1 (October 1927), 43.
Emil Schenck Mager’s friend and biographer described the instrument in his book Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, written in 1952:
“A lever device, by means of which, by exciting and changing the vibrations in the vacuum electron tubes and by transmitting these vibrations to a [loudspeaker] membrane, it was possible to produce continuous tones of any pitch and with almost any volume. By using filters that control the overtone structure of the sound, it was also possible to influence the timbre.”7Schenck, Emil. (1952) Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, herausgegeben von der Städtischen Kulturverwaltung Darmstadt, 8.
This new version of the Sphärophon was unveiled to the public in 1926 at the Donaueschingen summer festival and again at the Neue Frankfurt Festival in 1927. In Frankfurt, Mager also demonstrated three distinct types of instruments: the ‘melody’ version – the Kurbelsphärophon, a ‘chord’ version consisting of a panel with an array of buttons that sounded various harmonic intervals, and a ‘timbre’ version that became known as the Kaleidophon. 8 Patteson, Thomas. (2016) Instruments for New Music, University of California Press, 76. The Russian composer Georgi Mikhailovich Rimsky-Korsakov (1901–1965) wrote a number of pieces for the Kurbelsphärophon – none of which are known to have survived.
References
- 1Busoni, Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 2nd Ed., 41. ↩︎
- 2Mager, Edwart. (1933) Das Mager-Buch, Freiburg i.B., self-published, 105–7. ↩︎
- 3Stange-Elbe, Joachim. (1994) Elektronische Musikinstrumente. Ein historischer Rückblick mit zeitgenössischen Dokumenten, 5.Teil: Sphärenklänge, Jörg Magers: “Neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio”, ZeM-Mitteilungsheft Nr. 14 – April 1994. ↩︎
- 4Davies, Hugh. (1984) Sphärophon, The New Grove dictionary of music and musicians, London: Macmillan Press, 436. ↩︎
- 5Mager, Jörg. (1924) Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln, Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 5. ↩︎
- 6Huth, Arno. (1927)”Elektrische Tonerzeugung,” Die Musik XX/1 (October 1927), 43. ↩︎
- 7Schenck, Emil. (1952) Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, herausgegeben von der Städtischen Kulturverwaltung Darmstadt, 8. ↩︎
- 8Patteson, Thomas. (2016) Instruments for New Music, University of California Press, 76. ↩︎
- 9Busoni, Ferruccio. (1911) Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, New York (State): G. Schirmer, 23. ↩︎
- 10Mager, Jörg. (1924) Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln, Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 5. ↩︎
Jörg Mager: Biography
Born 6 November 1880, Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany. Died 5 April 1939. Aschaffenburg, Bavaria,
Jörg Mager was a German inventor and self-proclaimed ‘Father of German Electronic Music’, who became a significant figure in the early development of electronic musical instruments. From around 1921 until his death in 1939, he created a family of electronic instruments that included the Elektrophon (1921), Sphäraphon (1924), Kurbelsphärophon (1926), Kaleidophon (1926), Klaviatursphäraphon (1928), and Partiturophon (1930). 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 Ferruccio Busoni’s influential text Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik 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).9 Busoni, Ferruccio. (1911) Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, New York (State): G. Schirmer, 23. 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”.
Mager was one of ten children born to watchmaker Edward and Cäcilia Mager in Eichstätt, a rural town in Bavaria, in 1880. After attending elementary and high school, Mager graduated from the Eichstätt teacher training college and, from December 1906, worked as a teacher and organist in Aschaffenburg, where he was also one of the founders of the adult education centre. Jörg Mager’s lifelong fascination with microtonal music began unexpectedly during the hot summer of 1911, when he heard an overheated, out-of-tune organ playing notes beyond the fixed tempered scale. Intrigued by the instrument’s strange sounds, he started exploring the concepts of half- and quarter-tone music, eventually self-publishing his work, Vierteltonmusik, in 1915. During this time, he also began designing an instrument capable of delivering microtonal and quarter-tone scales. The first of these was an acoustic harmonium called the Vierteltonharmonium (Quarter-Tone Harmonium), created in 1912.
Mager served as a nurse in the First World War, stationed in Wurzburg. After the war, he became involved in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. When the Republic was violently suppressed by the Freikorps in 1919, Mager fled to Berlin and, in 1921, found a part-time job at the Lorenz radio factory in Tempelhofer Hafen. At the same time, he joined a small group of young international composers interested in microtonal and quarter-tone composition (Viertelton or sometimes just ‘VT’), including Ivan Wyschnegradsky, Alois Hába, Willi Möllendorf, Richard Stein, Julián Carillo, Arthur Lourié, under the guidance of the renowned composer and prominent champion of microtonality, Ferruccio Busoni. The group embarked on several ultimately unsuccessful attempts to create acoustic microtonal pianos and harmoniums to be able to perform their microtonal work: Hába’s microtonal organ, constructed by the August Förster company in 1923, and Wyschnegradsky’s quarter-tone piano are two examples. However, it was Jörg Mager who, taking inspiration from Busoni’s evangelism of electronic instruments and his mystical description of the Telharmonium, decided that the problem of microtonality could only be solved through electricity. Mager was a typical utopian in an age of utopians: a ‘disciple’ of Tolstoy, Strindberg, Schopenhauer, and Gandhi, and a devoted champion of radical teaching reforms, Pacifism, Teetotalism, Esperanto, and Socialism. Mager had an unshakeable belief in the inherent transformative power of music alone, capable of bringing about a revolutionary new society of harmony and brotherhood. Mager inherited Busoni’s mystical belief in the socially transformational power of music, but, unlike Busoni, Mager attempted to put these utopian ideas into practice. Rather than adapting existing instruments, Mager decided to create an entirely new instrument based on emerging radio technology. This first instrument was named the Elektrophon, and after further development at a small studio provided by the Berlin Telegraphentechnische Reichsamt (the state radio research technical institute), it was renamed the Sphäraphon in 1924.
“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 Epoche der Musik durch Radio“ (Berlin 1924)
In 1924, Mager published Eine Neue Epoch Der Musik Durch Radio, a short pamphlet that detailed his radical vision of electronic music and promoted his new instrument, the Sphäraphon (‘Sphere-o-phone’), as the ideal, universal instrument capable of ushering in his vision of a new utopian society. The name Sphäraphon referred to the semi-circular dial used to control the instruments, and it also emphasised the relationship with Pythagoras’s idea of ‘Music of the Spheres’ and echoed both Helmholtz’s and Busoni’s earlier writings. Invoking Pythagoras was not just a classical embellishment; Mager’s declared aim – following Busoni’s previous suggestions – was to create what he called the ‘Omnitonium’, an ideal universal instrument, able to play any pitch and any tone – an instrument that would supersede all other instruments, recreating the timeless Pythagorean dream of celestial music: ‘Absolute music! The pan-tonal circle lay before me! The ocean of tone in its immeasurability! The omnitonium, the musical ideal of all times!’
To achieve his utopian dream of socially transformative music, Mager planned to build ‘Sphäraphon Towers’ in which his microtonal electronic music would be amplified and projected across Berlin, inspiring a mass communal awakening. Mager describes this vision in his 1924 booklet Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio:
“A spring day in Treptower Volkspark. In the middle of the park, a tower, the Sphärophon tower, higher than the [Treptower park] observatory. The instrument, operated by music engineers and Sphärophonmusikern, starts to sound. Tone-colour cascades spray over thousands of people, transforming the spring blossom splendour into tonal splendour. All the feelings evoked in the human soul by the miracle of spring – cheers and jubilation, affectionate intimacy and a childlike loftiness, the Sphäraphon sounds out to them from the distance, brings them together and raises them to the effervescent ecstasy of spring joy! A utopia! But how long will this Utopia take?! …”10Mager, Jörg. (1924) Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln, Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 5.
Despite enthusiastic endorsements from musical luminaries such as Paul Hindemith, Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov, and Ferruccio Busoni, the Sphäraphon received a lukewarm reception when it was unveiled to the public in 1926. This was particularly evident when Mager’s performances of his rather austere microtonal music were showcased alongside Leon Termen’s flashy yet kitschy renditions of popular classical hits. Mager sought to address the shortcomings of the Sphäraphon with a new model called the Kurbelsphäraphon – ‘Kurbel’ being ‘crank’ or ‘handle’. This updated instrument featured a second manual dial, allowing players to interrupt the continuous output and avoid the Sphärophon’s characteristic endless glissando. Additionally, it included two pedals for controlling the volume and envelope of each note. The Kurbelsphäraphon was unveiled at the 1926 Donaueschingen summer music festival, once again to Mager’s frustration, alongside Leon Termen’s Theremin.
Jörg Mager’s complete dependence on wealthy patrons left him in constant financial distress; however, his tireless efforts to secure funding eventually bore fruit. In 1929, chaired by manufacturer Emil Schenck with assistance from the city of Darmstadt, the Heinrich Hertz Institute for Vibration Research (HHI), and the Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft (RRG – the state radio service), Mager established the Studiengesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik (Society for Electro-acoustic Music) to develop and promote his work. The new workshop was located in the grand Prinz-Emil-Schlößchen castle in Darmstadt and was staffed by skilled technicians, including the future electronic instrument designer Oskar Vierling, known for creating the Elektrochordand Grosstonorgel, among other instruments.
With this resource at his disposal, Mager continued to develop his instrument design and created the Klaviatursphäraphon in 1928. In this model, he replaced the handles of the Kurbelsphäraphon with two short, keyed monophonic keyboards. The shorter keys allowed the player to play both keyboards simultaneously, producing a duophonic tone. By adjusting the capacitance of the sound-generating circuit, it was possible to alter the intervals between keys and scale the keyboard’s acoustic length. An octave could be compressed to as small as a major second, meaning that each successive step represented an interval of a 12th tone. Additional tonal colours were achieved through acoustic resonators, a series of filters, and specially designed resonant speakers – similar to the diffuseurs developed by Maurice Martenot in Paris for the Ondes Martenot.
Despite being free from financial concerns, Mager now faced pressure to deliver more commercially viable instrument designs. This required him to abandon his obsessive interest in microtonal music, which had by then become unfashionable and, during the Nazi period, dangerously reminiscent of Weimar-era modernism. Mager began to focus on timbre with the goal of creating a complex, polyphonic electronic organ. He developed two instruments: the Klaviatursphäraphon in 1928 and the Partiturophon in 1930. The name “Partiturophon,” derived from the word “partitur,” meaning musical score, reflected his aim of capturing the diverse combinations of orchestral timbre. The Partiturophon featured a four-keyboard (later five-keyboard) design. This arrangement required the player to learn a difficult bent-finger technique to produce four or five voices simultaneously, with one voice assigned to each keyboard. Additionally, it included a foot pedal that enabled transposition of the voices up or down by one octave. Mager claimed that the instrument could imitate the sounds of wind, string, and percussion instruments, as well as church bells, using a blend of electronic and electroacoustic techniques.
The instruments produced at the Studiengesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik, though groundbreaking for their time, never achieved production readiness because Mager repeatedly rejected the constraints imposed on the economic use of his inventions. As a result, his abrasive personality, combined with his loss of support from the society’s board, led him to leave Darmstadt in 1936. Mager moved to Berlin and returned to semi-nomadic penury while seeking financial support for his ongoing work. By the mid-1930s, technological advances and techniques had outpaced Mager’s self-taught technical skills, leading to the emergence of more efficient and cost-effective alternatives in Germany and across Europe and the USA. Notable examples include the Mixtur Trautonium, developed by Friedrich Trautwein and Oskar Sala, and the KdF Grosstonorgel, designed by Mager’s former student, Oskar Vierling. Both of these instruments received support from the Nazi regime. After he left Darmstadt, Mager’s health began to deteriorate due to diabetes, accompanied by increasing disorientation and mental confusion. His daughter, Sofie, brought him back to Aschaffenburg, where he died on April 5, 1939, at the age of 59.
Throughout his life, Mager maintained that he independently conceived the use of radio vacuum tubes to generate electronic sounds before Leon Termen developed his more famous Etherphone (later known as the Theremin). The Elektrophone was among the earliest electronic musical instruments, and Mager asserted that he was its true inventor and a pioneer of electronic music. However, the reality is that the domestic radio-howl effect, which underpinned sound generation in all vacuum-tube instruments, was already well known by that time. This effect inspired many designs of electronic musical instruments during that period and remained the primary method for generating tones until the introduction of transistors in the 1960s.
None of Mager’s instruments is known to have survived the Second World War. Despite Mager’s ambition to create a universal, ideal instrument, only one of each model was ever built. During the Weimar era, which was marked by hyperinflation and financial hardship, Mager often repurposed components from earlier instruments to create new variants. As a result, only one updated version of each model exists. In 1944, the castle in Darmstadt was heavily bombed by the Allies, destroying the last remnants of the Partiturophon and its predecessors. Mager’s son, Siegfried, became the heir and protector of Jörg Mager’s legacy. After the war, he actively, though unsuccessfully, attempted to restore his father’s reputation as the “Father of German Electronic Music.”
