The Klaviatursphäraphon (1928) & Partiturophon (1930). Jörg Mager, Germany.

The Klaviatursphäraphon

The Klaviatursphäraphon or Klaviatur-Sphärophon was a keyboard-controlled variant of the Kaleidophon, designed and built by the pioneer of German electronic music, Jörg Mager, in 1928.

By the late 1920s, Mager’s position as the leading pioneer of electronic musical instruments was increasingly challenged by other designers developing instruments for a growing commercial market focused on home music and entertainment. The debut of the large, multi-vacuum-tube polyphonic Orgue des Ondes in Paris in 1928 spurred efforts in Germany, motivated by both national pride and commercial prospects, to create a comparable instrument. Friedrich Trautwein’s Trautonium, originally conceived as a ‘beautiful polyphonic organ,’ emerged in 1929 and was based on the design of the Hellertion. In France, Maurice Martenot received significant media attention for his Ondes Martenot in 1928. Simultaneously, Mager’s utopian vision of electronic microtonal music as a catalyst for a new and just society became increasingly unlikely and irrelevant as the National Socialist movement in Germany gained influence. In response to these sociopolitical changes, Mager abandoned the lever-driven, semi-circular, microtonal glissando-focused designs of the earlier Sphärophon in in favour of multiple keyboard controllers, aiming to produce a more user-friendly, familiar, and perhaps marketable instrument.

The instrument known as the Klaviatursphäraphon incorporated two, and later three, short monophonic keyboards that replaced the sliding pitch levers of earlier models. This design enabled more precise and convenient control of pitch and timbre. The shorter keys allowed simultaneous performance on both keyboards, producing a duophonic tone. Using a feature originally developed for the Kaleidophon, it was also possible to adjust the intervals between keys using a device Mager called the musikalischer Storchschnabel or ‘musical cranesbill’. This innovation enabled modification of the keyboard’s acoustic length. Consequently, established keyboard playing techniques could be applied to an electrically modified pitch space – this meant that Mager’s instrument could. ¹ Additional tone colour was added by passing the output through a series of filters – the formant filters developed for the Kaleidophon and specially formed acoustic resonant loudspeakers.

Mager’s studio in Darmstadt, with a collection of resonant objects used to add tonal colour to the sound of the *Klaviatursphäraphon*. Image: PIX magazine VOL 3, No. 2, JANUARY 14,1939.

Mager presented his new instrument with a demonstration of ‘Electronic Music’ at the annual convention of the Reich Association of German Musicians and Music Teachers in Darmstadt on October 6, 1928, with the hope that his new ‘commercial’ instrument would attract financial support to allow its continued development. ² Playing to the sensibilities of the new era of German nationalism, Mager stressed the need to support German ‘Electronic Music’ in the face of foreign competition, particularly the French Ondes des Orgues – even going so far as pointing out the Jewishness of Theremin’s manager, Julius Goldberg, as a threat.³

According to Mager’s friend and biographer Emil Schenck, the sound of the Klaviatursphäraphon was impressive:

“The sound and modulation capabilities of the rudimentary instrument were surprising. The audience was particularly impressed by the ability to swell the volume from the barely audible, whispering pianissimo to the most powerful fortissimo, even in the timbre of the wind instruments. Equally fascinating was the rich array of timbres, most of which cannot be produced by our most familiar instruments. The effect on the audience was overwhelming.”⁴

In January 1929, a consortium of Darmstadt industrialists and businessmen established the Gesellschaft für elektro-akustische Musik (‘Society for Electroacoustic Music’) to promote the electronic production of music with Mager as its head, probably the first electronic music studio of its kind. The studio’s board, comprising Emil Schenck, Louis Merck, and Dr August Roesener, financed the operation and offered Mager a three-year contract along with several technical assistants, including research and technical engineer Friedrich Wamboldt, mechanic Wend, engineer Christensen, and engineer Dr Jankovsky. The city of Darmstadt provided the Rococo Prinz-Emil-Schlößchen castle free of charge for the society’s use.⁵

The Pariturophon

On August 25, 1930, Mager presented the results of his work and the latest version of his instrument, which performed arrangements of works by Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, and Mendelssohn, to an invited audience. He named the instrument the Partiturophon, with ‘Paritur’ meaning ‘musical score’ in German, to highlight its capacity to perform conventional music. Aware that the monophonic nature of each keyboard represented a limitation, which other instrument designers were addressing at the time, Mager emphasised the instrument’s connection to the multi-timbral fugue scores of J.S. Bach:

“One is forced to treat this monophonic line individually, so that—as in the polyphony of Bach, for example—each voice can be brought out as in a three-dimensional relief. In addition, each keyboard, being independent, can maintain its own appropriate timbre, which makes possible mixtures and contrasts of tone colour of an almost orchestral quality.”⁶

The Partiturophon was an expanded version of the Klaviatursphäraphon, featuring three manuals and a pedalboard, which provided a total of four voices.

Jörg Mager’s early version of the Pariturophon c 1930.

The local Darmstädter Tagblatt of August 26, 1930, noted that:

“Mager demonstrated today a richly registered organ on which two-part playing is possible. The only difficulty at present is that each part must have its own keyboard, meaning that the four-part texture must be played on three manuals and the pedal. For this reason, the manuals are positioned so close together, and their keys so short, that one can comfortably play several manuals with one hand; for this reason, too, the scale of the keyboard is somewhat narrower than on a standard piano or organ keyboard. Apart from these difficulties, which require a special approach to playing the new instrument, it astonishes with its endless variety of tonal colours, its rich dynamic shading, and the expressiveness of its tone.”⁷

Jörg Mager working on the Pariturophon at the Prinz-Emil-Schlößchen, Darmstadt, 1930. Image: PIX magazine VOL 3, No. 2, JANUARY 14,1939.

Playing technique used to produce three-note polyphony on a three-keyboard, one-voice-per-keyboard Partiturophon.

The prominent conductor and advocate of modern music, Hermann Scherchen, authored a comprehensive report on Mager’s new instrument. He acknowledged its limitations, such as the absence of convincing brass and string timbres and a degree of tonal monotony across its registers, yet he strongly endorsed the instrument as “entirely ready for artistic musical purposes” and ready for mass production⁸ Scherchen was particularly interested in the application of the instrument for Klangfarbenmusik, or ‘tone colour music’, as it allowed for the use of distinct timbres on each keyboard that could be continuously varied throughout a composition.

Mager playing the Partiturophon, showing the unusual and difficult fingering technique needed to play four-note (or three note in this model) polyphony across the multiple keyboards. — Mager playing the *Partiturophon*, showing the unusual and difficult fingering technique needed to play four-note (or three-note in this model) polyphony across the multiple keyboards. Image: Schenck, Emil. (1952) Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, herausgegeben von der Städtischen Kulturverwaltung Darmstadt, 1.

A later version of the Partiturophon added a fourth manual and a pedal board, thereby achieving five-voice capability. According to Schenck, Mager added what he called a “Bauchschweller” or ‘Belly Swell’ mechanism, where the proximity of the player’s body could alter the volume of the instrument, allowing the player to effect a crescendo without interrupting playing, and, with the domestic market in mind It was designed to be easily disassembled for portability.

The only known surviving recording of Jörg Mager’s Partiturophon broadcast by Herbert Eimert during a 1952, NWDR Nachtsprogramme

Eimerts’ translated commentary to the radio broadcast:

“Even before the First World War, Jörg Mager was exploring mechanical methods for dividing pitches. He soon realised that the problem of pitch division could only be solved with electrical aids, and from then on, he was determined to acquire a suitable electrical medium. He heard, for the first time, a continuously gliding pitch scale, albeit in a manner usually described as common feedback whistling. In this respect, the first radios, while unpleasant and involuntary, were nonetheless the first electronic sound instruments. Jörg Mager, however, was delighted by this whistling sound and, based on this principle, built his Spharophone, the first musical instrument ever on which all audible vibrations could be musically utilised in unison by means of a lever. With the support of K.W. Wagner and especially the Study Society for Electric Music in Darmstadt, Jörg Mager succeeded in the 1930s in penetrating almost all previously inaccessible areas of the musical sound sphere and proving that Busoni, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Max von Schillings, and others were right in their prophecies that promised new artistic possibilities through electric sound generation. Jörg Mager’s subsequent work consisted of demonstrating that the three foundations of musical art—vibration, sound structure, and dynamics—open new artistic horizons through the new technology of electric sound generation…And now the only remaining original recording of the Mager organ.”

In the early 1930s, Jörg Mager’s reputation was at its zenith and was widely recognised as a leading figure in electronic music. The Gesellschaft attracted numerous distinguished visitors who sought to witness the “sorcerer of sound” and the Zauberorgel, or ‘Magic Organ.’ Notable guests included Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, who contributed a valuable silver plate to serve as a loudspeaker resonator; General Tietgen; Wilhelm Furtwängler; Arturo Toscanini; Rudolf Kelterborn; Karl Böhm; Hermann Scherchen; Hermann von Keyserling; and Jonathan Zenneck, among others. Winnifred Wagner’s visit resulted in a commission to create electronically generated bell effects for the 1931 production of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal in Bayreuth, conducted by Toscanini – the ultimate seal of approval from the German musical establishment. Mager also brought to Bayreuth a ‘sound generator,’ where Mager’s noise-modulation function was used to create ‘thunder and collapsing sounds’ in Wagner’s Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.⁹

mager_parsifal_orgel_die_buhne_1936_pp415_416 — Mager’s ‘Parsifal Organ’ of 1931, which probably used electronically generated sounds modified through the resonant strings of a piano. Image: die Buhne, 1936, 415_416.

Despite achieving both fame and financial stability, Mager declined to participate in commercial contracts. For instance, he rejected an offer of collaboration from Siemens & Halske, a leading industrial electronics company, due to concerns about the security of his intellectual property. Mager’s already abrasive personality worsened as he became increasingly ill with diabetes, and this, coupled with his unwillingness to commercially exploit his works as agreed by the Gesellschaft, led the board to terminate his contract in 1932. Mager remained at the Prinz-Emil-Schlößchen, working on his instrument, until 1935, even as the water supply and, finally, the electricity supply were cut off. Mager returned to Berlin, where he made a few poorly attended ‘electronic music’ performances and performed a score by Rudolf Perak for the UFA film Stärker als Paragraphen on the Partituraphon in 1936.

Final four-keyboard version of Jörg Mager’s Partiturophon. Image: Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, Bd. 55, 1934-35, Leipzig 1935, 01.

__________________________________________________

Jörg Mager: Biography

Born 6 November 1880, Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany. Died 5 April 1939. Aschaffenburg, Bavaria,

Bust of Jorg Mager by Heinrich Johst 1935. Image: Das Mager Buch 1935. — Bust of Jörg Mager by Heinrich Jobst, Darmstadt, 1932. Image: Das Mager Buch 1935.

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), 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 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).[MFN] Busoni, Ferruccio. (1911) Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, New York (State): G. Schirmer, 23. [/MFN] 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.

Jörg Mager as a military nurse in Wurzburg 1915 during the First World War. — Jörg Mager during World War I, serving as a nurse in Würzburg in 1915. Image: *Das Mager Buch*, 1935.

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 [it take for this] Utopia?! …”

¹⁰

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.

Mager and his assistant working on the *Sphäraphon* 1927. Image: Das Neue Frankfurt 1926-27, 145.

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.

Jörg Mager’s four manual *Partiturophon of 1930.* Visible behind the instrument is a row of gongs used to create harmonic overtones from the instrument.

Mager and a three-manual version of the *Partiturophon* at the *Studiengesellschaft für elektroakustische Musik* in Darmstadt.

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. His health deteriorated 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.

None of Mager’s instruments is known to have survived the Second World War. 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.”

‘The first pioneer of ether-wave music’ A postcard produced by Jörg Mager in 1935 to promote his work.

References

1
Patteson, Thomas. (2016) Instruments for New Music, University of California Press, 76.
2
This is possibly the first time the description Electronic/Electric Music has been used – previously, music produced by electronic music was called ‘Ether-wave Music’ or ‘Radio-electric Music’.
3
Donhauser, Peter. (2007) Elektrische Klangmaschinen; Die Pionierzeit in Deutschland und Österreich, Brill, 212.
4
Schenck, Emil. (1952) Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, herausgegeben von der Städtischen Kulturverwaltung Darmstadt, 11.
5
Schenck, Emil. (1952) Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, herausgegeben von der Städtischen Kulturverwaltung Darmstadt, 14.
6
Mager, Jörg. (1934) “Das ‘Partiturophon—Eine Hausmusik Lösung, Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau 54, no. 21 (1934): 329
7
Prof. Dr Noack states in the Darmstädter Tagblatt of August 26, 1930
8
Patteson, Thomas. (2016) Instruments for New Music, University of California Press, 79.
9
Schenck, Emil. (1952) Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, herausgegeben von der Städtischen Kulturverwaltung Darmstadt, 19.
10
Mager, Jörg. (1924) Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln, Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 5.

The ‘Elektrophon’ (1921), Sphäraphon (1924) & Kurbelsphärophon (1926). Jörg Mager, Germany.

Mager and his assistant – possibly Oskar Vierling – working on the *Sphäraphon* at the Berlin Telegraphentechnische Reichsamt in 1926. Image: Das Neue Frankfurt 1926-27, 145.

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 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.²

Mager’s technical drawing of *Spharaphon* for his 1931 US patent – US1829099-2

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 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.⁴

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!” 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” ⁶

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.”⁷

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 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

1
Busoni, Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 2nd Ed., 41.
2
Mager, Edwart. (1933) Das Mager-Buch, Freiburg i.B., self-published, 105–7.
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.
4
Davies, Hugh. (1984) Sphärophon, The New Grove dictionary of music and musicians, London: Macmillan Press, 436.
5
Mager, Jörg. (1924) Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln, Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 5.
6
Huth, Arno. (1927)”Elektrische Tonerzeugung,” Die Musik XX/1 (October 1927), 43.
7
Schenck, Emil. (1952) Jörg Mager: Dem deutschen Pionier der Elektromusikforschung, herausgegeben von der Städtischen Kulturverwaltung Darmstadt, 8.
8
Patteson, Thomas. (2016) Instruments for New Music, University of California Press, 76.
9
Busoni, Ferruccio. (1911) Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, New York (State): G. Schirmer, 23.
10
Mager, 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 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”.

Jörg Mager: „Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio“ (Berlin 1924)

Mager’s 1924 publication, ‘A New Epoch of Music Through Radio’, in which he outlined his ideas for electronic microtonal (quarter-tone) music.

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.”

The Kaleidophon (1926). Jörg Mager, Germany.

The Kaleidophon was a unique and little-documented musical instrument created by German pioneer Jörg Mager in 1926. Like Mager’s other inventions, the Kaleidophon evolved from his original concept, the Sphärophon. However, this particular instrument was designed to produce complex tone colours rather than microtonal notes. Mager described the Kaleidophon as “a monophonic electronic instrument with kaleidoscopic sound mixtures that follow the tonal principles of Arnold Schoenberg and Ferruccio Busoni.” Based on the limited documentation available, it appears that the Kaleidophon was a keyboard-controlled, monophonic instrument tuned in semitones. Its tuning could be modified by turning a lever that adjusted the basic intervals. Additionally, the instrument could generate the equivalent of chords by combining overtones in controllable mixtures, controlled via a touch-sensitive feature on the keyboard. According to Mager, it was also capable of producing “glissandos, vibrato, and timbre trills.” ¹

Mager first demonstrated the Kaleidophon in his own Sphärophon room at the Internationalen Ausstellung Musik im Leben der Völker in Frankfurt – 11.Juni – 28. August 1927. According to the critic and journalist Arno Huth, who had witnessed the still unfinished version of the instrument, the Kaleidophon was a “piano-like keyboard instrument that could alter the sound tone using types of organ stops, as well as the volume by connecting loudspeakers of any number and combination. Although not yet fully exploitable today due to their complexity, the instruments can produce all timbres, intervals, and dynamic levels” ²

It is likely that Mager used the formant filters developed by Karl Willy Wagner at the Telegraphentechnische Reichsamt, where Mager had a small studio, to alter the instrument’s timbre through subtractive synthesis. He also passed the instrument’s audio output through a series of acoustically resonant surfaces – metal sheets, steel springs, glass, etc., attached to loudspeakers to give the tone additional colour – a technique similar to Maurice Martenot’s ‘diffuseurs’ for the Ondes Martenot instrument of the same period.

Jörg Mager and his assistant Oskar Vierling experimenting with acoustic resonators to create complex sound timbres. Image: Das Neue Frankfurt 1926-27, 145.

Uniquely, Mager may also have used low and high frequency noise ³ to modulate the character of the sound and low frequency sound waves in a manner similar to more recent LFO modulation. Mager also developed a method that uses low-frequency square-wave modulation to generate the aforementioned “timbre trills”. ⁴ Many of these techniques were also applied to Mager’s later keyboard instruments, such as the Klaviatursphäraphon (1928), Partiturophon (1930).

Jörg Mager: BiographyBorn 6 November 1880, Eichstätt, Bavaria, Germany. Died 5 April 1939. Aschaffenburg, Bavaria,

örg 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). ⁵ 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”.

Jörg Mager: „Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio“ (Berlin 1924)

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.

References

1
Davies, Hugh. (1984) Sphärophon, The New Grove dictionary of music and musicians, London: Macmillan Press, 436.
2
Huth, Arno. (1927) “Elektrische Tonerzeugung,” Die Musik XX/1 (October 1927), 43).
3
Jörg Mager, “Verfahren zur elektrischen Erzeugung von Geräuschen,” DE 541,812, Aug 1, 1929
4
Jörg Mager, “Electro-acoustic Musical Instrument,” United States Patent 1,829,099, 3, filed October 27, 1931
5
Busoni, Ferruccio. (1911) Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music, New York (State): G. Schirmer, 23.
6
Mager, Jörg. (1924) Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio, Berlin-Neukölln, Selbstverlag des Verfassers, 5.

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.

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.¹

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

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.

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.

Charles–Emile Hugoniot (died in France, 1927) was a French mechanic, researcher, and inventor of early electronic musical instruments. Hugoniot was awarded seven patents in France between 1919 and 1923 for various methods of sound generation, including tone wheels and photoelectric 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 patents 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 photoelectric organ described in his patent #FR550370 in 1921. The instrument was among the first to use a photoelectric technique to generate sound: Hugoniot projected a light beam onto a selenium photovoltaic cell through an array of 12 rotating discs, each cut 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 died in 1927 before he could develop his ideas beyond prototypes, yet he left a legacy of innovation that influenced a new generation of French pioneering instrument designers, including Pierre Toulon and Givelet & Coupleaux. ¹

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.

Benjamin Miessner, writing in the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, USA 193,6 describes Hugoniot’s photo-electric sound generation ideas:

“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

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, best 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.

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 variable tuning, allowing 1,200 microtonal divisions per octave. The sound volume can be adjusted using a dedicated 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

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 banks 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

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 tunable (micro)tone, reproduced by 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.

“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.” ²

The instrument was used by the philosopher Ivan Orlov in his investigations of aural phenomena and human perception. ³ 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 ⁴

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
Orlov, I. E. (1926) “Experiments with Rzhevkin’s cathode harmonium.” A Collection of Articles in Musical Acoustics (Russian), State Institute of Musical Science, 1925, 1. “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 its name suggests, was a monophonic fingerboard-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 determined the pitch and finger pressure varied the volume – a similar technique to the Hellertion and Trautonium developed a few years later in Germany. ¹ Sound was produced from a heterodyning vacuum tube – a technique pioneered by Lev Termen and his Theremin earlier in the USSR in the 1920s.² 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.”³
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. Anfilov, 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

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 (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.

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.²

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 1932.³ 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

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.

Eiffel Tower and home of the Orgue D’es Ondes and France’s first radio station

The Télépiano c1922

Loudspeakers and valves of the ‘Piano Radio Èlectrique’

The Givelet-Coupleux Organ of 1930 played by Armand Givelet