The ‘Luminaphone’, Harry Grindell Matthews & Bernard.J.Lynes. UK, 1925.

The light-powered Luminaphone of 1925. Image: ‘Lichtstrahlen Musik’ Illustrierte Technik für Jedermann: Heft 18 1926, 199
The Luminaphone of 1925 was one of a long line of inventions by the British inventor Harry Grindell Matthews, well known at the time for his much publicised invention of a ‘Death Ray’ in 1923 – an unsubstantiated or proven method of destroying objects and stopping electric engines through an invisible ray-gun. Matthew’s roster of inventions included a light controlled submarine (from which he received a £25,000 prize from the British admiralty), a mobile projector for projecting images onto clouds, an early method of recording sound on to film (1921), an underwater submarine detector, ground-to-plane radio-telephone, and a self-righting flying machine, amongst many others.
Functional diagram of the Luminaphone

The Luminaphone, patented in 1925 (Patent GB254437A ), was an early example of a photo-electric technique for creating pitched tones (originally derived from optical sound film technology); in this case a series of light beams – each light beam representing one frequency or note – were projected through a rotating perforated metal dome onto a selenium photo-cell that generated a pitched voltage pulse. The frequency of the pitch was determined by the frequency of the perforation in the metal dome. The luminaphone’s three octave keyboard had one lamp per key (a total of 36 keys and lamps) – when a key was pressed the assigned lamp would illuminate and project through the rotating perforated dome onto the photo-cell, generating the relevant pitch.1Strange Sources of Music, Popular Science Monthly, March 1926, Vol 108, No. 3, 55.

Diagram showing the operation of the light beams through the perforated dome to a selenium cell. Image: ‘Lichtstrahlen Musik’ Illustrierte Technik für Jedermann: Heft 18 1926 p199

The size and shape of the perforations determined the pitch, intensity and tone quality of the instruments tone – although, presumably, this would require stopping the machine and manually changing the rotating dome to change the sound or intensity. Matthews planned to produce a commercial version of the instrument but the Luminaphone never evolved beyond the one prototype model.2 The Light Beam Piano, Science and Invention, USA, February 1926, 896.

Harry Grindell Matthews playing Luminaphone for a publicity shot in Popular Science Monthly, March 1926 

Harry Grindell Matthews. Biographical Details:

Harry Grindell Matthews. born on 17 March 1880, at Winterbourne, South Gloucestershire.UK. Died:11 September 1941, Swansea, Wales UK.

Harry Grindell Matthews, a prolific British inventor, became an electronic engineer while serving in the Second Boer War (1900). Matthews many  and often fantastical inventions provoked controversy due to his penchant for publicity and unwillingness to reveal his methods – most famously with his military ‘Death Ray’ gun of 1923.

After being rejected by the British military, Matthews travelled to France with the apparent aim of selling his Death Ray invention to the French army and after he was again rejected he travelled to the USA with his new invention, the Luminaphone, to raise funds and generate publicity for his new projects. In 1938 Matthews married the (extremely wealthy) Polish opera singer Ganna Walska and constructed a well protected laboratory and airstrip in  Tor Clawdd north of Swansea in the South Wales hills. Matthews later projects included liquid fuelled rockets and a high flying ‘Stratoplane’. Matthews died of a heart attack on 11 September 1941 before any of his inventions were put into practical production.

A 1925 image that purports to show Matthews ‘Death Ray’ in action on the Welsh island of Flat Holm.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle. July 20, 1924

References:

  • 1
    Strange Sources of Music, Popular Science Monthly, March 1926, Vol 108, No. 3, 55.
  • 2
    The Light Beam Piano, Science and Invention, USA, February 1926, 896.


The ‘Hugoniot Organ’. Charles-Emile Hugoniot, France, 1921.

Hugoniot's patent for a tone-wheel sound generator December 1919
‘Instrument de  Musique Electronique’  – A diagram from Hugoniot’s patent for a tone-wheel sound generator December 1919. Image: French Patent Office FR22866 – 05/09/1921.

CharlesEmile Hugoniot ( died; France, 1927 ) was a French mechanic, researcher and inventor of early electronic musical instruments. Hugoniot was awarded seven patents in France from 1919-1923 for various methods of sound generation including tone-wheels and photo-electrical tone generators. Starting in 1919, Hugoniot began a process of improving existing sound generation devices of the period, first; Thaddeus Cahill’s electro-magnetic tone-wheels (from Cahill’s patent’s that would have been known to him in France) and continuing to electromagnetic steel discs and photo-electrical methods possibly influenced by the South African physicist, Hendrik van der Bijl’s patents from 1916. By doing so, Hugoniot introduced these new methods to a French group of electronic engineers.

Hugoniot Appears to have constructed only one instrument–  a photo-electric organ described in his patent #FR550370 In 1921. The instrument was one of the first to use a photoelectric technique to generate sound: Hugoniot projected a light beam onto a selenium photo-voltaic cell through an array of 12 rotating discs cut with with concentric rings of radial slits. The frequency (and speed of rotation) generated an electrical pulse from the photo-voltaic cell that equated to an octave pitch.

Hugoniot’s died in 1927 before he could develop his ideas any further than prototypes yet he left behind a legacy of innovation that influenced a new generation of French pioneering instrument designers including Pierre Toulon and Givelet & Coupleaux.    1 Bush, D., & Kassel, R. (2004;2006;). The Organ: An Encyclopaedia, London: Taylor and Francis, 167.

Hugoniot's patent for a photo-electrical sound generator August 1921
Hugoniot’s patent for a photo-electrical sound generator August 1921. Image French Patent office FR550370D – 08/27/1921.

“With this scheme the various types of wave forms for different timbres may be placed in radial sectors on a disk; another disk carrying the scanning slits in circular tracks rotates before this wave-form disk. A source of light and photocell complete the translating arrangements. Each slit track scans its corresponding wave cycle at a speed corresponding to one pitch of an approximate tempered scale. Thus, one wave and one slit track serve for each tone frequency of the tempered scale. Naturally the lowest pitch tracks are nearest the center and the highest are nearest the circumference of the scanning disk.

Another interesting arrangement is that used by Lesti and Sammis in the Polytone. Here, instead of using a series of similar wave-form cycles on a continuous track, with a single scanning device, only one complete such cycle is used with periodic scanning by a series of similar scanning slits, equispaced on a continuous track. The slit spacing is precisely equal to the wave-form lengths, so that this wave form is repeated at the scanning frequency; i.e., the number of slits passing it per second. The same method was disclosed as early as 1921 by the French inventor Hugoniot, who described an electrical musical instrument of this type in his patent”. 2 Miessner, Benjamin F, (1936) Electronic Music and Instruments,  Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, New York, N.Y. Volume 24, November 1936, Number 11, 1427.


References

  • 1
    Bush, D., & Kassel, R. (2004;2006;). The Organ: An Encyclopaedia, London: Taylor and Francis, 167.
  • 2
    Miessner, Benjamin F, (1936) Electronic Music and Instruments,  Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, New York, N.Y. Volume 24, November 1936, Number 11, 1427.

The Keyboard Electric Harmonium, Lev Sergeyevich Termen, USA/Russia, 1926.

Lev Termen at the Theremin_Harmonium c1926.

Lev Sergeyevich Termen most well known for creating the ‘Theremin‘ also invented many other electronic instruments based on the heterodyning vacuum tube technology of the day – including the Keyboard Theremin, Theremin Cello, Terpsitone, Rhythmicon and the ‘Electric Harmonium’ or ‘Theremin Harmonium’.

Theremin Harmonium
Termen’s Theremin Harmonium of 1926

Termen’s Harmonium was an early vacuum tube based polyphonic instrument tuned to accompany and train vocal performances built at the Laboratory of Acoustics and Sound Recording of the Moscow Conservatory from 1926 and continuously developed until the 1960s. The portable desktop instrument had a three octave keyboard with a variable tuning that allowed 1,200 micro-tonal divisions per octave. The volume of the sound could be varied using a special volume roller at the front of the keyboard. The timbre and acoustic envelope could be varied by a “rotary timbre register with 12 different sound characteristics”. The output reached a tuning stability of 3 cents once the machine had been active for fifteen minutes and had a maximum output of 3 watts “increased by connecting a powerful amplification device with additional loudspeakers.” 1 Termen, L. S. (1964) Harmonium for working with choirs, report, Laboratory of Acoustics and Sound Recording of the Moscow Conservatory, TOPIC Z-N, 1964. http://www.theremin.ru/archive/harmonium.htm retrieved 25/11/2023.

Lev Termen playing the Keyboard Theremin. Image: Popular Science Jun 1932.

“The new Keyboard Theremin which is designed in the form of a piano to produce synthetic music. […] With huge bansk of vacuum tubes, Prof. Theremin conducts experiments in his laboratory which led to a harmonious reproduction of the radio squeals.” (Popular Science, USA, Jun 1932) 2 Radio Squeals Turned Into Music for Entire Orchestra, Popular Science Jun 1932, 51.

The Theremin Harmonium (left) accompanying a Theremin Cello ensemble, New York. Image: Popular Science June 1932.

Early version of the Theremin Harmonium. From the The Theremin Center for Electroacoustic Music , Moscow, Russia(1)
Early version of the Theremin Harmonium. Image: The Theremin Centre for Electroacoustic Music , Moscow, Russia.

Theremin's later version of the Harmonium. Each key plays a tunable (micro)tone which is reproduced with its own amplifier and speaker.
Theremin’s later version of the Harmonium. Each key plays a tuneable (micro)tone which is reproduced with its own amplifier and speaker. Image: The Theremin Centre for Electroacoustic Music , Moscow, Russia.


Sources:

  • 1
    Termen, L. S. (1964) Harmonium for working with choirs, report, Laboratory of Acoustics and Sound Recording of the Moscow Conservatory, TOPIC Z-N, 1964. http://www.theremin.ru/archive/harmonium.htm retrieved 25/11/2023.
  • 2
    Radio Squeals Turned Into Music for Entire Orchestra, Popular Science Jun 1932, 51.

The ‘Radio Harmonium’, Sergeĭ Nikolaevich Rzhevkin, Russia, 1925.

One of the earliest electronic instruments of the Soviet period, the Radio (or ‘Cathodic’) Harmonium was a three (or four) voice polyphonic cathode vacuum tube instrument controlled by a manual keyboard, designed for playing atonal music. The Radio Harmonium , capable of producing polyphonic chords of four tones in any temperament, was designed by the audio physicist and acoustician Sergeĭ Nikolaevich Rzhevkin (1891-1981) shortly after the invention of the Theremin. 1 Smirnov, Andrei, (2013) SOUND in Z: Experiments in Sound
and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia, Verlag de Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Cologne, 84.
.

“S. N. Rzhevkin is engaged in the construction of a cathode harmonium of his own invention. this harmonium at present has four separate sound generators, affording the possibility of obtaining chords of four tones, as well as the entire chromatic scale within the limits of one and a half octaves.. In addition S. N. Rzhevkin is working on the construction of a keyboard instead of a time-stop device, and also on the question of  obtaining dynamic shading in playing.” 2Cultural life in the Soviet Union, National Institute for Musical Science, Russian Review, Volumes 3-4, march 15, 1925,123.

The instrument was used by the philosopher Ivan Orlov in his investigations of aural phenomena and human perception. 3OrlovI. E. (1926) “Experiments with Rzhevkin’s cathode harmonium.” A Collection of Articles in Musical Acoustics (Russian), State Institute of Musical Science19251. “We must say a few words about Orlov’s hobby, music theory. He asked himself the question, “Why do our auditory organs recognize . . . simple numerical ratios [such as 8:11, 8:13, 10:13 and the like] and perceive them as harmony?” (Orlov 1926b, 193). He invoked Helmholtz’ theory to show that the intermittent sensation of beats characterizes the phenomenon of dissonance, while consonance results from the absence of beats. Orlov attempted to experiment in music and carried out an experiment with Rzhevkin’s cathode harmonium. He analyzed the musical works of Prokof ’yev, Skryabin, and Schönberg from the point of view of the presence and status of the “beats” they contained.” Rzhevkin, later chair of the Department of Acoustics of Moscow State University, described his acoustic theories in approach in ‘A course of lectures on the theory of sound’ published in 1963 4Rzhevkin, Sergeĭ Nikolaevich, (1963) A course of lectures on the theory of sound, Pergamon Press, 1963

Sergeĭ Nikolaevich Rzhevkin investigating the influence of sound on plant growth. Image: Popular Science Monthly Mar 1937.


References:

  • 1
    Smirnov, Andrei, (2013) SOUND in Z: Experiments in Sound
    and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia, Verlag de Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Cologne, 84.
  • 2
    Cultural life in the Soviet Union, National Institute for Musical Science, Russian Review, Volumes 3-4, march 15, 1925,123.
  • 3
    OrlovI. E. (1926) “Experiments with Rzhevkin’s cathode harmonium.” A Collection of Articles in Musical Acoustics (Russian), State Institute of Musical Science19251. “We must say a few words about Orlov’s hobby, music theory. He asked himself the question, “Why do our auditory organs recognize . . . simple numerical ratios [such as 8:11, 8:13, 10:13 and the like] and perceive them as harmony?” (Orlov 1926b, 193). He invoked Helmholtz’ theory to show that the intermittent sensation of beats characterizes the phenomenon of dissonance, while consonance results from the absence of beats. Orlov attempted to experiment in music and carried out an experiment with Rzhevkin’s cathode harmonium. He analyzed the musical works of Prokof ’yev, Skryabin, and Schönberg from the point of view of the presence and status of the “beats” they contained.”
  • 4
    Rzhevkin, Sergeĭ Nikolaevich, (1963) A course of lectures on the theory of sound, Pergamon Press, 1963

 

The ‘Neo Violena’ Vladimir A Gurov, V.I. Volynkin & Lucien M. Varvich. Russia 1927.

Designed by the engineer, musician and violin player Vladimir A Gurov with V.I. Volynkin and with musical input from the composer Lucien M. Varvich, the Neo Violena was created in Russia in 1927. The Neo Violena, as it’s name suggests, was a monophonic finger-board controlled instrument. Rather than using a conventional manual keyboard, the instrument was played by pressing or sliding a finger on a metal string to contact a metal conductive fingerboard; the position of the finger on the string determining the pitch and finger pressure varying the volume  – a similar technique to the Hellertion and Trautonium developed a few years later in Germany. 1 Smirnov, Andrei, (2013), Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia, Koenig,  97Sound was produced from a heterodyning vacuum tube – a technique pioneered by Lev Termen and his Theremin earlier in the USSR in the 1920s.2Gurov had previously worked with Termen at the Detskoye Selo radio station near Leningrad and would have been aware of Termen’s well publicised research. Anflilov, Gleb, (1966), Physics and Music, MIR Publishers, Moscow, 150. The instrument was said to be capable of “producing a pleasant and ‘juicy’ sound that resembled different symphony orchestra instruments and possessed a wide range of sounding shades and timbres.”

“ On Thursday evening at the School House, A. R. Hamilton, president of the Hamilton College of Commerce at Mason City will give an address on “How the “Violena” Is Played” . The “Violena” a musical instrument that is a whole orchestra in one, has been perfected at Leningrad, Russia, by the inventor, Vladimir A. Gurov and the young composer, Lucien M. Varvich. The player twirls a dial and the violena turns into a bass viol, another twirl and it becomes a guitar, still another and it is a flute, and so on. Besides its ability to reproduce faithfully almost- any musical instrument.”3The Bode Bugle, 28 May 1937, USA, 5.
The Bode Bugle. 28 May 1937.


References:

  • 1
    Smirnov, Andrei, (2013), Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia, Koenig,  97
  • 2
    Gurov had previously worked with Termen at the Detskoye Selo radio station near Leningrad and would have been aware of Termen’s well publicised research. Anflilov, Gleb, (1966), Physics and Music, MIR Publishers, Moscow, 150.
  • 3
    The Bode Bugle, 28 May 1937, USA, 5.

The ‘Electronde’ Martin Taubman, Germany, 1927

Martin Taubman play “Cinderella, Stay in My Arms.” on the Electronde in 1938. “Amazing act where Martin Taubman literally plucks a tune from the air by putting his hand before the electric waves coming out of his Electronde machine. It sounds something like a Hawaiian-style electric guitar. Martin uses some foot pedals to control the sound of the machine.” Video: British Pathé 12/12/1938 .

The Electronde was one of many developments of Lev Termen’s Theremin , in this case, a design by the Frankfurt inventor and showman, Martin Taubman. Taubman added a hand held switch for adding staccato envelope and a foot pedal for volume control. This allowed the Electronde to be able to produce notes with a sharp ‘plucked’ attack which was a significant advantage over the Theremin 1 Galpin, F. W. (1937). The Music of Electricity: A Sketch of Its Origin and Development. Proceedings of the Musical Association, 64, 71-83.
Taubman toured Europe with the Electronde during the 1930s.

References:

  • 1
    Galpin, F. W. (1937). The Music of Electricity: A Sketch of Its Origin and Development. Proceedings of the Musical Association, 64, 71-83.

The ‘Orgue des Ondes’ Armand Givelet & Edouard Eloi Coupleux, France. 1929

Organist Charles Tournemire at the Orgue Des Ondes in the église de Villemomble 1931
Organist Charles Tournemire at the Orgue Des Ondes in the église de Villemomble 1931 (Image: 1931 / A. Boukelion)

In 1929 the radio engineer Armand Givelet began a long collaboration with the organ builder Edouard Eloi Coupleux with the ambition to build on his experience with the Clavier à Lampe to create a popular electronic organ for use in churches, cinemas and concert halls. The resulting instrument, the Orgue des Ondes or ‘Wave Organ’ was based on vacuum tube technology but implemented the RC oscillator design rather than the heterodyne principle of the the Theremin, Ondes-Martenot  and others. Uniquely for its time, the Orgue des Ondes 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 Orgue Des Ondes installed at the Poste Parisien, Paris, France c 1928
The Orgue Des Ondes installed at the Poste Parisien radio station, Paris, France c 1928

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. These tubes were housed in a separate rack ten feet long and six feet wide, out of sight of any audience.

Multiple vacuum tubes of the Orgue Des Ondes
Multiple vacuum tubes of the Orgue Des Ondes

The sound of the organ was said to be particularly rich due to small variations in the tuning between each note creating a chorus like effect – in fact, the organ was capable of an early type of additive (addition of sine or simple waveforms) and subtractive (filtering complex waveforms) synthesis due to its number of oscillators and distortion of the sine waves produced by the LC oscillators.

Marshal Pétain reviews the inauguration of the Orgue Des Ondes at the Poste Parisien radio station. Image; 'Le Petit Parisien' 27 October 1932.
Marshal Pétain reviews the inauguration of the Orgue Des Ondes at the Poste Parisien radio station. Image; ‘Le Petit Parisien’ 27 October 1932.

Le Petit Parisien 27th October 1932

Le Post Parisien soon to inaugurate the “Wave Organ”

The organ which has been installed at the Post Parisien will be inaugurated in a few days, on 26 October. The organ, not a typical orchestral instrument used by numerous radio broadcasters, is the result of the latest perfections of technology. This organ, whose powerful voice will soon be broadcast on the waves, has little resemblance to the monumental organs of Notre Dame, Saint-Eustache and Saint-Etienne du Mont. One searches in vain for the forest of pipes which previously would show the instrument’s personality. Instead, two mahogany chests flank the organ, which, pierced with loudspeakers resembling portholes, replace the hundreds of slender colonnades of pipes, evoking the appearance of a harmonium.

This revolution however is not just decorative. The ‘Orgue Des Ondes’, which has just been installed in the large auditorium of the Post Parisien on the Champs Elysees, can be considered one of the most remarkable contributions of current science.

Eloy Coupleux, its inventor and manufacturer (with Armand Givelet) gave me a description of the instrument which, today can rival the the most venerable consecrated instruments. To establish his instrument, Mr. Coupleux started from the principle that every note was to be a transmitter, creating an oscillation at the same frequency of each note. Each of these positions corresponds to a key keyboards or pedal which when pressed trigger an oscillating circuit corresponding to an oscillating frequency of the note and the sound – thus creating all the vibrations of the musical scale. As for sounds, which in the classical organ, are dependent on the shape, length and mouth of the pipes, they are here created by and electrical circuit. The instrument, which has many advantages (over a classical organ. ed ), has three keyboards, pedals and seventy-six stops. The organ is insensible to temperature changes – unlike a classical organ – and is perfectly flexible, offering the possibility of indefinite virtuoso repetitions of high-speed lines. Similarly, the sound can, thanks to the amplified speakers, reach everywhere at the same time – and with radio transmissions of the movement of the keys, at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, an organist could play the organ of the Poste Parisien perfectly to the borders of Japan.

Rejuvenated by the miracle of the waves, the instrument will generate new interest in organs due to the vast increase in it’s abilities.
Maurice Bourdet.

1 Le Petit Parisien : journal quotidien du soir, 27 Octobre 1932,1.

The organ was controlled in the usual way with two manual keyboards, drawbars or stops and foot pedal controls for volume and expression. The instrument was said to accurately reproduce the sound of a large pipe organ as well as flutes, brass, and woodwind. The amplified sound from the organ was fed into a large array of thirty loudspeakers spaced around the performance room.2La Nature 1930, ‘Nouveaux instruments de musique Radio électriques, piano et orgue radioélectriques Givelet-Coupleux’, Cinquante huitième année, deuxième semestre – n. 2836-2847, 258-262.

The Orgue Des Ondes installed at the Poste Parisien radio station, Paris, France c 1928
The Orgue Des Ondes installed at the Poste Parisien radio station, Paris, France, 1932

It is unclear how many of the instruments were built – sources put the number at four or perhaps eight, however, the first Orgues Des Ondes was installed at thr Église de Villemomble in the Parisian suburbs of Saint-Denis – inaugurated by the famous organist Charles Tournemire on the 6th December 1931. The second and more famous instrument was installed at the Poste Parisien radio station and auditorium on the Champs Elysees, Paris, inaugurated on 25th of October 1932.3Science et monde : tout pour tous : des idées, des faits.1932-11-17, 8. The high-profile inauguration event  was lead by the famous organist and composer Maurice Duruflé who’s repertoire of the evening included:

    • Mendelssohn: ‘6th Sonata’
    • Bach: ‘I cry to you Lord’
    • Buxtehude: ‘modal Fugue in C’
    • Vierne: ‘Allegrro perennial of the 1st Symphony ‘
    • Duruflé: ‘Sicilian’
    • Gigout: ‘Toccata ‘
    • Franck: ‘Pastorale’ Schumann ‘Canon in B Minor’

Duruflé thereafter performed every Sunday from August 1932 to January 1933. Both instruments seem to have later been removed and replaced with more modern organs.

The Orgue Des Ondes was met with praise from the scientific community and some musicians – including a young Olivier Messiaen – but also came under fierce criticism as being a frivolous invention or ‘fairground toy’ competing in the serious world of religious music (even the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun joined in the critical affray). Part of the problem was that Coupleux and Givelet had created a futuristic instrument but placed it in a ‘traditional’ and conservative environment unwilling to countenance the replacement of the ‘sacred’ and timeless pipe organ with a synthetic newcomer. For example, it was only in the 1960s that The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church admitted the use of electronic organs in sacred music but emphasised the preeminence of the pipe organ;

“with the knowledge and consent of the competent territorial authority, provided that the instruments are suitable for sacred use.”4 Bush, Douglas and Kassel, Richard, The Organ, An Encyclopedia, Taylor & Francis, 2004, 165.

Despite its initial warm reception, the Orgue Des Ondes eventually succumbed to the practicality and portability of the American built Hammond Organ which also targeted the religious market as well as domestic music making. This competition bankrupted the Givelet-Coupleux partnership in 1935.

Images of the Orgue Des Ondes and othe Coupleux-Givelet instruments.

The Coupleux brothers, Paul, Leon and Eloi
The Coupleux brothers, Paul, Leon and Eloi

Eloi Coupleux Biographical notes

The Coupleux piano manufacturing business was founded in 1865 originally as a modest watchmaking workshop based in Rue Carnot, Tourcoing, Lille, France by Pierre Coupleux . On Pierre’s death in 1904 the Coupleux sons – Eloi, Paul and Leon took over the business and, extending their knowledge of watchmaking, they began to manufacture music boxes, phonographs, devices for optical illusions, fairground equipment and early cinema equipment. The Coupleux’s soon began selling Pianos and other stringed instruments fired by the new middle class demand for the instrument. The Coupleux fuelled this fire by giving promotional concerts around France and Europe, recording their own records and eventually launching their own radio station ‘Radio Flanders’ in 1923 – five years before the existence of French national state radio.

Coupleux brothers working at their fathers watchmaking shop c1900
Coupleux brothers working at their fathers watchmaking shop c1900

In 1908, having secured the French monopoly of imported American Pianolas, Paul Coupleux, by then an established piano dealer and tuner, opened a second shop in one of Lille’s most affluent shopping street 24 bis, rue Esquermoise, Lille selling their own manufactured pianos.

The Coupleux shop at 24 bis, rue Esquermoise, Lille France c 1920
The Coupleux shop at 24 bis, Rue Esquermoise, Lille France c 1920

During the First World War Lille was occupied by the Germans and much of the Coupleux brothers shop and warehouse was destroyed. However in 1919 they realised that there was a new demand for church organs; most of the churches of Northern France and Belgium had been destroyed or damaged and soon their order books were full due to the demand for Coupleux pipe Organs. By 1923 the business was thriving with 150 staff and a production of 150 pianos per month.

The Coupleux company continued to thrive until 1935 when the simultaneous and combined forces of the commercial failure of their electronic musical instrument and the economic crisis of the 1930s closed the business. The rue Esquermoise shop continued as a music store until 1997 long after the closure of the instrument manufacturing business.

Workers at the Coupleux frères piano and organ workshop at 100 rue du Moulin-Fagot, Tourcoing, Lillle, France c1920
Workers at the Coupleux frères piano and organ workshop at 100 rue du Moulin-Fagot, Tourcoing, Lillle, France c1920

Eloi Coupleux was a self taught engineer, he had left school at fifteen and began working in his father’s watchmaking shop where he soon discovered his mechanical talent. His inventions included a dual disk phonograph for stereo audio, the Télépiano (1922) – a device for transmitting piano vibration magnetically down a telephone wire and numerous audio reproduction machines. And it was this obsession with new technology that lead him to meet the physicist and engineer Armand Givelet in 1927.

Louise Coupleux (sister of Eloi) playing an amplified Télépiano in c1922
Louise Coupleux (sister of Eloi) playing an amplified Télépiano in c1922

This meeting was the beginning of a long collaboration between the duo designing new electronic musical instruments. Their first device was a larger, polyphonic version of Givelet’s ‘Clavier à lampe designed for use as a large church organ. The resulting instrument the Orgue Des Ondes was premiered at the 1929 exhibition in Paris and was one of the first electronic organs. Despite international publicity only four of the huge instruments were sold – all to churches in Northern France. 5 Carpentier, Oliver. L’Aventure industrielle des frères Coupleux, 1900-1935, Préface de Douglas Heffer, éditions de l’Inoui, 2004.

Sheet music book and the Orgue Des Ondes
Sheet music book and the Orgue Des Ondes


References

  • 1
    Le Petit Parisien : journal quotidien du soir, 27 Octobre 1932,1.
  • 2
    La Nature 1930, ‘Nouveaux instruments de musique Radio électriques, piano et orgue radioélectriques Givelet-Coupleux’, Cinquante huitième année, deuxième semestre – n. 2836-2847, 258-262.
  • 3
    Science et monde : tout pour tous : des idées, des faits.1932-11-17, 8.
  • 4
    Bush, Douglas and Kassel, Richard, The Organ, An Encyclopedia, Taylor & Francis, 2004, 165.
  • 5
    Carpentier, Oliver. L’Aventure industrielle des frères Coupleux, 1900-1935, Préface de Douglas Heffer, éditions de l’Inoui, 2004.

 

the ‘Clavier à Lampe’ (1927), ‘Automatic Electrical Musical Instrument’ (1929) and ‘Orgue Radioélectrique’. Joseph Armand Marie Givelet, France. 1927.

Armand Givelet behind the early monophonic Clavier a Lampe: “Les premiers essais de musique radio-électrique avec clavier ont été faits par Givelet qui construisit, avec des moyens plus que rudimentaires, un appareil fonctionnant parfaitement.” Image from: Phonographes et Musique Mécanique, Eugène-H. WEISS. Bibliothèque des Merveilles, Librairie Hachette. 1930.(édition de juin 1930), 16.

Armand Givelet was one of several post ww1 military radio operators who coincidentally discovered the musical possibilities of body capacitance to control the radio howl generated by vacuum tube radio feedback – in essence using the body as a variable capacitor to change the pitch of an audio oscillator. Alongside Maurice Martenot (The Ondes Martenot), Leon Termen (The Theremin) and others, Givelet exploited the feedback howl effect to generate a controllable sine pitch for an electronic instrument. Givelet’s instrument christened the Clavier à Lampe. This instrument was a simple a battery powered, monophonic, single oscillator device controlled by a two octave keyboard which Givelet designed to circumnavigate the poor audio fidelity of 1920s microphone technology by directly connecting the output of the instrument into a radio transmitter – the ‘direct injection’ method. The Clavier à Lampe premiered at the Trocadero Theatre, Paris in 1927  1 Hischak claims, probably in error, that Givelet took the Piano Radio Èlectrique on a promotional tour to the United States starting with a performance at the Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia on June 9th 1927: Hischak. Thomas, S.  A Day-by-Day Chronicle of the Jazz Age’s Greatest Year, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 127.. The first broadcast using Givelet’s direct injection method was made on the 27th March 1928 at the “Société des Ingénieurs Civils, Paris.

Givelet’s ultimate ambition, however, was to create a multi-tube polyphonic organ for use in radio broadcasts and liturgical music. To achieve this, Givelet began a lengthy collaboration with Eloi Coupleux of Coupleux Frerès – organ manufacturer and distributor based in Tourcing near Lille. The first fruit of this collaboration was the prototype Automatic radio-electric piano – essentially a five note polyphonic version of the Clavier à Lampe combined with a pianola style punch-paper controller (Coupleux Frerès had the monopoly for the distribution of Aeolian player-pianos in France). The coupleux-Givelet Automatic radio-electric piano was successfully demonstrated to an enthusiastic audience at the Congrès de la Radiodiffusion at the Salle Pleyel  (252 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 75008 Paris) on 16 November 1929:

The 1929 version of the ‘Automatic Radio Electric Piano’:  Eloi Coupleaux on the Left and Armand Givelet on the right. Image from: Phonographes et Musique Mécanique, Eugène-H. WEISS. Bibliothèque des Merveilles, Librairie Hachette. 1930. (édition de juin 1930), 14.

“After the remarkable speeches of M M. Mantoux and Ricard, organizers of the Congress were vigorously applauded by more than two thousand spectators, MM. Eloi Coupleux and A. Givelet, presented a musical wave (‘ondes musicales’) device of their own invention which automatically produces orchestral polyphony thanks to the unwinding of a perforated roller. […]

Eloi Coupleux and A. Givelet have succeeded in producing simultaneous notes thanks to several oscillating circuits operating at the same time with the help of a piano keyboard. From there to associating the automatic control of a piano, there was only one step: the strip (or the perforated cardboard) acts on a pan flute and controls the operation of the keys with more precision and accuracy using its electrical contacts instead of the ‘sledgehammers’ (of an organ or piano).

The extremely ingenious combinations of the device make it possible to obtain tremolo and other variable characteristics of the oscillating circuit of the corresponding note. Timbral variations are also created by the actions of filters, or superimposed oscillations. We also have at will a hard or soft, progressive attack of the note.

The re-creation of a piano or a radio organ obviously requires a large number of oscillating circuits and lamps but this number is considerably reduced by bringing in frequency doublers, for example, which make it possible to immediately obtain the notes of the upper scale.”2Lallemant, Paul, ‘En Marge De La Profession’ , Le Moniteur des architectes : organe… de la Société nationale des architectes de France, Paris, 01/04/1933, 66-70.

A third prototype from the Givelet-Coupleux collaboration was a was a fully polyphonic organ with 2 manuals and pedals known as the Orgue radio-électrique which was shown at the Académie des Sciences, Paris on October 6th, 1930. This instrument was developed into what became the final instrument from the Givelet–Coupleux team, a huge multi-oscillator polyphonic organ christened the Orgue des Ondes.

Armand Givelet Biographical notes

Armand Givelet (born: 21 07 1889 Reims France – died: 09 11 1963 La Varenne St-Hilaire, St-Maur-des-Fossés) was originally  an engineer in the French military during the First World War but  soon recognised the potential of Lee De Forest’s triode technology. He founded and became president of the Radio-Club de France (1921) and the T.S.F. (‘Transmission sans fil’ or Wireless) engineering school. Givelet became a recognised authority on radio technology and an inventor who held many patents for radio and broadcast equipment as well as his work with electromechanical (tone-wheel) and valve based electronic musical instruments; His particular contribution was a stabilised audio oscillator that used much less power than previous triode circuitry.

Givelet’s first complete instrument was the The monophonic Piano Radio-électrique unveiled in 1927. In early 1929 Givelet began a lengthy collaboration with the organ Builder Eloi Coupleux and the Coupleux-frères company  that produced some of the earliest polyphonic electronic organs – designed primarily for the church and religious music market. The largest of the Coupleux-Givelet instruments was the Orgue des Ondes built initially for Le Poste Parisien – a huge instrument which comprised of 200 oscillator tubes producing 70 different timbres or stops. Despite their unique features, The Coupleux-Givelet organs were rapidly made obsolete by much smaller and cheaper organs such as the Hammond Organ. Only four Orgue des Ondes were sold by Coupleux-frères to churches in France.

Givelet also wrote radio plays under the pseudonym Charles de Puymordant.3 Poincignon, Jean-Gabriel , La Renaissance du Radio Club de France, Le Haut-Parleur, N° 820, Juillet 1948, 359. and published a number of books on physics and music.

An article in Parole Libre (29-10-1927) describes the character and appearance of Armand Givelet:

“Mr. Armand Givelet has produced a number of inventions, including some outside the the wireless industry.  As early as 1917 he built a spark-gap transmitter without valves and the first commercial amplifier in 1918 . The silhouette of M. Givelet is amusing: very long, dry, a little bent. Author of magazines on the T.S.F., he always appears smiling. Very short-sighted, with wrinkled eyelids, he is constantly browsing. Very dark, he has a thick goatee, short mustache, high hair. He is gesticulating, active, endearing. Vice President short mustache, high hair. It is wide, overflowing, a little diffuse. At 38, he not only has a magnificent past, but the whole future of the most knowledgeable, most disinterested and most deserving scientist, despite being… French!”

Caricature of Armand Givelet: Armand Givelet Inventeur. La Parole libre : supplément du Journal parlé…. 10-29-1927, 2.


Sources

Carpentier, Olivier .’L’ Aventure industrielle des frères Coupleux, 1900-1935′ Préface de Douglas Heffer, éditions de l’ Inoui, 2004.

La Vie et les ondes : l’oeuvre de Georges Lakhovsky / Michel Adam et Armand Givelet, 1936.

Givelet, A. ‘L’Orgue Electronique Système Coupleux-Givelet de l’église de Villemomble, près Paris, Le Genie Civil: revue générale des industries françaises et étrangères, 1932-03-05. 244-246.

‘Instrument de Musique synthétique (Piano Radioélectrique), Le Genie Civil: revue générale des industries françaises et étrangères, 18/02/1928. 175.

Le Monde, 1989-07-21, 23.

References:

  • 1
    Hischak claims, probably in error, that Givelet took the Piano Radio Èlectrique on a promotional tour to the United States starting with a performance at the Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia on June 9th 1927: Hischak. Thomas, S.  A Day-by-Day Chronicle of the Jazz Age’s Greatest Year, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 127.
  • 2
    Lallemant, Paul, ‘En Marge De La Profession’ , Le Moniteur des architectes : organe… de la Société nationale des architectes de France, Paris, 01/04/1933, 66-70.
  • 3
    Poincignon, Jean-Gabriel , La Renaissance du Radio Club de France, Le Haut-Parleur, N° 820, Juillet 1948, 359.

 

the ‘Warbo Formant Orgel’, Harald Bode & Christian Warnke, Germany, 1937

Harald Bode’s first commercial design was the wonderfully named “Warbo Formant Orgel” built while at the Heinrich-Hertz Institut für Schwingungsforschung at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. The Warbo Formant Orgel was designed and built with the musical input from the composer and band-leader Christian Warnke (hence ‘War- Bo’  Warnke/Bode);

“Christian made the contribution of a musician — that means he told me what to do as far as all the features the instrument should have. I’ll have to go into more detail. Christian Warnke was a composer and musician, a bandleader with a fine ear for music, and he was an excellent violinist. He wasn’t involved in the design per se, just the specifications of the Warbo. And he sponsored the project on a minimum budget. Mind you this was in the second part of the 30s, which had still terrible after-effects of the depression. But the Warbo was my first major contribution in the field.”
Harald Bode in  SYNE magazine 1980

The Warbo Formant Orgel  from the Hamburger Anzeiger. 21 September 1938.
The Warbo Formant Orgel from the Hamburger Anzeiger. 21 September 1938.

Description of the Formant operation of the Warbo Formant Orgel
Description of the Formant operation of the Warbo Formant Orgel

Two versions of the instrument were made and later stored at the  Heinrich-Hertz Institute (HHI) in Charlottenburg, Berlin. The institute’s building was completely destroyed during the war and with it the Warbo Formant Orgel. No recording of the Warbo Formant have been found. As with many other instruments designed by Bode the ‘Warbo Formant Orgel’ pioneered aspects of electronics that became standard in later instruments. The Warbo Formant Orgel was a partially polyphonic four-voice keyboard instrument with 2 filters and key assigned dynamic envelope wave shaping – features that were later used on the postwar ‘Melodium’ and  ‘Melochord’.

“… It [The Warbo Formant Orgel] was built with a relaxation type of oscillator. Four oscillators actually, that were selected for the 44-note keyboard. The major problem being the stability of the oscillators, which is critical when comparing one with the other, especially with four. So I dropped the idea of a four-note organ at that time and went on to the Melodium, which was created in 1938 and used in many large performances with the Berlin Philharmonic as a solo instrument. It was also used in some significant motion pictures of that era.”
Harald Bode in  SYNE magazine 1980

Biographical notes

Harald Bode; October 19, 1909 Hamburg Germany – January 15, 1987 New York USA.
Harald Bode; October 19, 1909 Hamburg Germany – January 15, 1987 New York USA.

Bode Studied  mathematics, physics and natural philosophy at Hamburg University, graduating in 1934. In 1937, with funding support provided by the composer and band-leader, Christian Warnke, Bode produced his first instrument the ‘Warbo-Formant Orgel’ (‘Warbo’ being a combination of the names Warnke and Bode). Bode moved to Berlin in 1938 to complete a postgraduate course at the Heinrich Hertz Institute where he collaborated with Oskar Vierling and Fekko von Ompteda. During this period Bode developed the ‘Melodium’ ;  a unique monophonic touch-sensitive, multi-timbral instrument used extensively in film scores of the period.

When WWII started in 1939 Bode worked on military submarine sound and wireless communication projects “…We had the only choice in Germany, to go to military service or do work for the government. I praise myself lucky, that I was able to go to the electronic industry” and moved to the  small village Neubeuern in southern Germany, where in 1947 Bode built the first European post-war electronic instrument, the ‘Melochord’. In 1949 Bode joined the AWB company where he created the  ‘Polychord’ a simpler, polyphonic version of the ‘Melochord’ which was followed by the ‘Polychord III’ in 1951 and the  ‘Bode Organ’, a commercial organ which became the prototype for the famous Estey Electronic Organ. After leaving AWB, Bode’s designs included the ‘Tuttivox’, a miniature electronic organ and collaborated on a version of Georges Jenny’s ‘Clavioline’, both big sellers throughout Europe.

In 1954 Bode moved to the USA, settling in Brattleboro, Vermont where he lead the development team (and later, Vice President)  at the Estey Organ Corporation. In 1958, while still working at Estey, Bode set up the Bode Electronics Company where in March 1960 he created another unique instrument; a modular synthesiser “A New Tool for the Exploration of Unknown Electronic Music Instrument Performances” known as the  ‘Audio System Synthesiser’ which Robert Moog used as the basis for his line of new Moog synthesisers.

After the Estey Organ Company foundered in 1960, Bode joined the Wurlitzer Organ Co and moved to Buffalo, New York where he was one of the first engineers to recognise the significance of transistor based technology in electronic music.  Bode’s concepts of modular and miniature self-contained transistor based machines was taken up and developed in the early 1960’s by Robert Moog and Donald Buchla amongst others. 1962 saw the beginning of a long collaboration between Bode and the composer Vladimir Ussachevsky at the  Columbia Princeton Center for Electronic Music which lead to the development of innovative studio equipment designs such as the  ‘Bode Ring Modulator’ and ‘Bode Frequency Shifter’. The commercial versions of these inventions were produced  under the Bode Sound Co and under license Moog Synthesisers.

Harald Bode retired in 1974 but continued to pursue his own research. In 1977 he created the ‘Bode Vocoder’ (licensed as the ‘Moog Vocoder’). In 1981 he developed his last instrument, the ‘Bode Barber Pole Phaser’.

Harald Bode’s sketchbooks

 


Sources

The ‘Superpiano’ and ‘Symphonium’. Emerich Spielmann, Austria, 1928

Front view of the Superpiano showing tone-mixing knee lever, pedals and loudspeaker
Front view of the Superpiano showing tone-mixing knee lever, pedals and loudspeaker

Spielmann’s Superpiano, patented in 1927, was a keyboard instrument based on the photo-optical principle used in a number of instruments during the 1920s and 30s: the  Cellulophone , the Radio Organ of a Trillion TonesSonothèque’ , the Welte Licht-ton Orgel and others.  In general this principle worked by projecting a light beam through a spinning glass disk onto a photo-electrical cell. The regular interruption of the light beam causing an ‘oscillating’ voltage tone. Spielmann’s innovative instrument used two rows of twelve black photographically reproduced celluloid disks. Each disk had a series of holes cut in seven concentric circles equating to the waveforms of the seven octaves of a note – the light beam being picked up by selenium photo-electrical cells.

Anni Spielmann (Emerich's daughter) playing the Superpiano
Anni Spielmann (Emerich’s daughter) playing the Superpiano. Image: The archive of  Regina Spelman, Deborah Lucas, Dan Lucas.

The Superpiano created complex tones by allowing a combination of  ‘pure’ and harmonic sound waves of the same note; each note was duplicated with contrasting sound wave and harmonics  – hence two rows of twelve disks –  allowing the player to mix the sound waves of each note with a knee lever. Volume control was achieved by variable pressure on the manual keyboard via variable resistors dimming and increasing the lightbulb brightness – and therefore the note volume. The instrument’s overall pitch could also be altered while playing, by adjusting the speed of the rotating disks. Spielmann intended the Superpiano to be used as an affordable ($300) home keyboard which could be played like a piano but also a type of early sampling keyboard – ‘drawings’ of different instrument’s waveforms could be made on the celluloid disks, allowing the player to reproduce the “entire instrumental range of an orchestra” – or so the advertising claimed.

The celluloid disks of the Superpiano for creating tones and harmonics
The celluloid disks of the Superpiano for creating tones and harmonics

Spielmann’s instrument had it’s debut in 1929 at a concert organised by the Österreichische Kulturbund (Austrian Culture Union) on January 9, 1929 played by the renowned composer and pianists  Erich Wolfgang Korngold who played a piano with one hand and the Superpiano with the other. Later, On February 14, 1929, Spielmann presented the Superpiano on the Vienna radio station RAVAG featuring lectures on the theme of ‘Das Licht spricht, das Licht musiziert’ (Light speaks, light makes music).

“The piano has undisputedly dominated as a household instrument for more than 150 years. It owes its position to for its ability to play polyphonically with sounds in which each individual note can be dynamically differentiated by attack – in contrast to the organ and harmonium. While the piano only enables polyphonic playing, the super piano also brings polychrome, sound-rich music. Not only can you sound many tones on the super piano, but you can also make every note sound with all the dynamic shades for as long as you want, unlike on the piano. This is why orchestra-like effects can be achieved on the super piano with a sound design that is analogous to singing. […] In the super piano, the tones of different timbres are produced synthetically. They represent the end product of a mixture of a tone without overtones and a tone rich in overtones, which can be easily achieved by the player by moving a toggle lever, which is produced using a light electric system by two sound disks running next to each other and effective at the same time. Continuously moving the lever from left to right allows the sound to slowly transition from the flute character to the string character and from there to the brass character. For the time being, I have refrained from constructing a multiple super piano on which a single musician could produce several timbres simultaneously in polyphonic playing and am avoiding the technical difficulty of polyphonic and polychrome playing by making music on two or more instruments, each of which is different Producing tonal colors in rich alternation, together contributing to create the impression of great tonal richness. Even if the ear thinks it can hear the sound of organ, flute, violin, cello, timpani by comparing it with the sound of the traditional instruments from the superpiano, the superpiano neither wants to imitate nor replace the old instruments. But there is the possibility of revitalizing the old music literature with a new richness of tone and expression and can open up new avenues for new music.”

1 Spielmann, Emerich (1933),WIE ICH DAS SUPERPIANO ERFAND, Radio Wien, 31 march 1933, 3.

Spielmann's Superpiano 1927
Spielmann’s Superpiano 1927. Image: the Museum of Technology, Vienna, Austria

The last Superpiano at the Vienna Technical Museum, Austria
The last Superpiano at the Vienna Technical Museum, Austria showing the celluloid disks and light bulbs. Image: the Museum of Technology, Vienna, Austria

The last Superpiano at the Vienna Technical Museum, Austria
The last Superpiano at the Vienna Technical Museum. Image: the Museum of Technology, Vienna, Austria

Several instruments seem to have been built but only one survived the ravages of WW2, sold to the Vienna technical Museum in 1947. Spielmann developed a modification of the Superpiano called the Symphonium;  where the Superpiano used organ-like sounds, the Symphonium was based on mixable combinations of orchestral sounds; woodwind, brass and strings allowing fifteen possible combinations of timbres (to the Superpiano’s two). 2 Donhauser, Peter, (2007), Elektrische Klangmaschinen: Die Pionierzeit in Deutschland und Österreich, Böhlau, Wien, 57-60.

Emerich Spielmann playing the Superpiano
Emerich Spielmann playing the Superpiano as an add-on to a standard acoustic piano

With the seizure of power by the National Socialists in Austria and Germany in 1933 the Superpiano project was disrupted and the instrument failed to become a commercial proposition; As an Austrian Jew, Spielmann’s situation became increasingly precarious , his license to practice as an architect was revoked in 1938. Spielmann fled to London with his daughter Anni, and then to New York where he became a naturalised US citizen in 1944. Spielmann seems to have continued the project in the USA but the instrument was probably overshadowed by the similar Welte LichttonOrgel using similar technology (also Jewish escapees to New York), and dominance of the Hammond Organ in the home instrument market.

A view of the inside of the Superpiano. Image radio Wien, March,  1933.

xx
Letter to Spielmann advocating the  Superpiano from Albert Einstein. USA 1944

Spielmann's patent for the photo-electrical sound generator
Spielmann’s 1928 patent for the photo-electrical sound generator. Image: US Patent Office #1778374

first show of the superpiano 2

Superpiano editorial in the Southeast Missourian Newspaper. 1929
Superpiano editorial in the Southeast Missourian Newspaper. 1929

Contemporary newspaper clippings The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954)
Contemporary newspaper clippings The Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 – 1954)

Contemporary newspaper clippings. Straights Times, Singapore 1929
Contemporary newspaper clippings. Straights Times, Singapore 1929

naturalisation papers of Emerich Spielmann. 1944
U.S. naturalisation papers of Emerich Spielmann. 1944

Emerich(Ernst) Moses Spielmann – 23.06.1873  Vienna, Austria – 1952 Elmhurst, Queens, New York USA. Biographical notes

Emerich Spielmann, was a Viennese architect born into a Jewish family in the mid-19th century in Moravia. His father was a merchant Hermann Spielmann (1842-1925), his mother Josephine Franzos (1850-1918). Spielmann studied after high school from 1892 to 1899 at the Institute of Technology at King Karl and Karl Mayr Eder . He then worked until 1903 in the Wilhelm Stiassny and Friedrich Ohmann architectural practise. In 1904  he began a collaboration with the architect Alfred Teller working in the Viennese secessionist style and later to neo-baroque and classical forms, until 1932,  when he worked independently with his own practice. As a Jew, in 1938 Spielmann’s  license to practice was revoked by the Nazi authorities. He fled to London 1939  with his daughter Anna on May 6 and arrived on August 22, 1944 in New York where he became a naturalised citizen in 1944. He died in New York in 1952. 3Prokop U. (2016). On the jewish legacy in viennese architecture : the contribution of jewish architects to building in vienna 1868-1938. Böhlau. Retrieved December 2 2023 from http://www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=612510. and archive of  Regina Spelman, Deborah Lucas, Dan Lucas


references:

  • 1
    Spielmann, Emerich (1933),WIE ICH DAS SUPERPIANO ERFAND, Radio Wien, 31 march 1933, 3.
  • 2
    Donhauser, Peter, (2007), Elektrische Klangmaschinen: Die Pionierzeit in Deutschland und Österreich, Böhlau, Wien, 57-60.
  • 3
    Prokop U. (2016). On the jewish legacy in viennese architecture : the contribution of jewish architects to building in vienna 1868-1938. Böhlau. Retrieved December 2 2023 from http://www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=612510. and archive of  Regina Spelman, Deborah Lucas, Dan Lucas