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.


‘Pattern Playback’, Franklin S. Cooper. USA, 1949

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Franklin Cooper with the Pattern Playback machine

The Pattern Playback was not a musical instrument as such but an early hardware device designed to synthesise and analyse speech, designed and  built by Dr. Franklin S. Cooper and his colleagues, including John M. Borst and Caryl Haskins, at Haskins Laboratories in the late 1940s and completed in 1950.

Diagram showing the function of the Pattern Playback machine
Diagram showing the function of the Pattern Playback machine

The device converted a picture or ‘spectrogram’ of a sound back in to sound. The ‘Pattern Playback’ machine functioned in a very similar way to the Russian ANS Synthesiser using a photo-electrical system; a mercury arc-light was projected through a rotating glass disc printed with fifty harmonics of a fundamental frequency as a way of generating a range of tones. The light is then projected through an acetate ‘black and transparent’ spectrogram image that lets through the portions of light that carry frequencies corresponding to the spectrogram. The resulting ‘filtered’ light hits a photo-voltaic cell which generated the final audible sound .

pp1
The Pattern Playback machine

Pattern Playback
The Pattern Playback machine

Several versions of the device were built at Haskins Laboratories and used up until 1976. The Pattern Playback now resides in the Museum at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, Connecticut.


Sources

http://www.splab.net/APD/D800/index-e.html

The history of speech synthesis

The ‘Hardy-Goldthwaite Organ’ Arthur Cobb Hardy, Sherwood F. Brown & duVal Radford Goldthwaite, USA, 1931

Hardy Goldthwaite Organ
Hardy Goldthwaite Organ

The Hardy-Goldthwaite organ was a type of early  analogue sampler, similar to the Welte Licht-Ton Orgel, The Superpiano and several other photo-electrical instruments of the period and was developed by the physicists Arthur Hardy and Sherwood Brown at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the request of DuVal R. Goldthwaite, chairman of the Interchemical Corporation (who apparently had originated the concept after working with Hardy on colour and ink chemistry). At the heart of the instrument was a single optical disc of photographed sound waves. The discs, created from translations of original instrumental sounds, rotate between a light a slit and a photo-electrical cell generating voltage outputs of various timbres. A small three octave manual keyboard operated a shutter within the instrument that projected a light beam through the specific tone on the disc correlating to the key’s pitch.

The instrument was said to be able to produce the timbres of an organ, trumpet, piano and strings – with the possibility of reproducing any sound that could be recorded to the glass disc.

hardy
Arthur Cobb Hardy

Arthur C. Hardy born Worcester, Massachusetts:1895 died: 1977.

Arthur Hardy was a physicist best know for his work with spectrometers and colour analysers and was the author of the default text on the subject ‘The Principles of Optics’ . After the WWI Hardy worked at Kodak Research Labs and then transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he became chair of MIT’s physics department.

Hardy became president of the Optical Society of America from 1935-36 and in 1935 Hardy filed a patent for the first spectrophotometer – a device for measuring and recording colour values. It could detect two million different shades of colour and make a permanent record chart of the results. The patent was assigned to the General Electric Company of Schenectady, N.Y. which sold the first machine on 24 May 1935. It used a photo-electric device to receive light alternately from a sample and from a standard for comparison. 

After the outbreak of WWII Hardy founded the ‘Visibility Laboratory’ which focused on applying optics to such problems as camouflage, misdirection of aerial bombardment, target location, visibility of submerged objects at sea.

'The Canadian Champion' Newspaper July 3rd 1930
‘The Canadian Champion’ Newspaper July 3rd 1930

 


Sources:

‘A History of Sampling’ (Hugh Davies)

Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture. Thom Holmes

‘Modern Mechanix’ magazine USA 1931

The Canadian Champion Newspaper July 3rd 1930

The ‘Vibroexponator’ Boris Yankovsky, Russia 1932

Boris yankovsky in 1939
Boris Yankovsky in 1939

Boris Yankovsky (1904-1973) worked with the Multzvuk group as a pupil of Arseney Araamov at Mosfilm, Moscow from 1931-32. However he grew disenchanted with what he considered to be an over simplified way of approaching acoustics. Yankovsky realised that pure uniform  waveforms do not represent timbre and that a more complex spectral approach needed to be developed. In 1932 Yankovsky left Multzvuk to pursue his ideas of spectral analysis, decomposition and re-synthesis . His project was based on his belief that it is possible to develop a universal language of sounds using combinations of hand drawn spectral ‘sound objects’ (similar to the much later cross-synthesis and phase-synthesis techniques).

“I found the idea of synthesis while I was laboriously working on ‘drawn sound’. And this is the chain of my consideration:
The colour of the sound depends on the shape of the sound wave;
Graphical colour of the sound wave could be analysed and represented as the Fourier series of periodic functions (sine waves);

Consequently the sound wave could be re-synthesised back with the same set of sine waves. Nobody did this before the invention of graphical (drawn) sound just because there was not a technical means and  methodology for sound reproduction from such graphical representations of sound. As with electrons (the neutrons and protons) the number of which defines the quality of the atom, so do the sine waves define the quality of the sound – it’s timbre.

Drawn scale with angles to create pitch shift
Drawn scale with angles to create pitch shift

The conclusion: why not initiate a  new science – synthetic acoustics?
It would make sense if we could define (at least in draft) a sort of periodic table of Sound Elements, like Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The system of orchestral tone colours has gaps between the rows that could be filled by a means of synthesis, like the gaps between Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of Chemical Elements have been filled with the latest developments in chemistry […] It is obvious that the method of selection and crossing of sound and instruments, which is similar to the method of Michurin (Ivan Michurin Russian Biochemist and Horticulturist), will give us unprecedented, novel ‘fruit hybrids’ that are technically unobtainable for a usual orchestra […]
(Yankovsky 1932-1940; 15,45)

“It is important now to conquer and increase the smoothness of tone colours, flowing rainbows of spectral colours in sound, instead of monotonous colouring of stationary sounding fixed geometric figures [wave shapes], although the nature of these phenomena is not yet clear. The premises leading to the expansion of these phenomena – life inside the sound spectrum – give us the nature of the musical instruments themselves, but “nature is the best mentor” (Leonardo da Vinci) […] The new technology is moving towards the trends of musical renovation, helping us to define new ways for the Art of Music. This new technology is able to help liberate us from the cacophony of the well-tempered scale and related noises. Its name is Electro-Acoustics and it is the basis for Electro-Music and Graphical Sound”.
Yankovsky 1934

To implement these theories yankovsky invented the Vibroexponator; No images or diagrams have survived but the Vibroexponator appears to be a process using a modified rostrum animation stand that allowed the photographed ‘spectral templates’ to be translated into audible sound and then combined into complex sound.

“The Vibroexponator is a complex, bulky tool for optical recording of synthetic sounds to the soundtrack of ordinary 35mm film by means of a specially produced intensive negatives. the instrument is partly mechanised and provides various motions to the original negative. The automation of the direction control is partially broken and requires extra repairs and maintenance, […] The slide copying tool is intended for production of intensive negatives from films with transversal soundtracks. it too is a massive construction. The gearbox at least a 100-fold safety factor and a great power”

Nikolai Zimmin from the MINI institute describes the Vibroexponator in 1939

Yankovsky spent the next decade working on his spectral theories and building a ‘Syntone Database’ of his spectral templates by recording and analysing hundreds of samples of instruments from Bolshoi Theatre as well as samples of vowels and speech.

Slide copying machine tool diagram
Slide copying machine tool diagram

Political repression in the USSR stopped the funding of Yankovsky’s work until 1939 when he met the young inventor Evgeny Murzin who shared Yankovsky’s vision of a universal synthesis tool (which later emerged as the ANS Synthesiser) . Yankovsky together with Murzin and Yevgeny Sholpo formed the ‘Laboratory for Graphical Sound at the Institute of the Theatre and Film’ where he completed the final version of Vibroexponator. Further development of the instrument and of Yankovsky’s theories of spectral sound was halted by the outbreak of World War Two, Yankovsky never returned to graphical sound.

The Multzvuk group

Multzvuk group was formed in 1930 by Arseney Araazamov to conduct research into graphical sound techniques. The group was based at the Mosfilm Productions Company in Moscow (one of the leading film production companies in Moscow, renamed Gorki Film Studio in 1948) and consisted of composer and theoretician, Arseney Araamov, cameraman and draughtsmen  Nikolai Zhelynsky, animator Nikolai Voinov, painter and amateur acoustician Boris Yankovsky. In 1931 the group moved to ‘NIKFI’,  the ‘cientific Research Institute for Graphic Sound’. Leningrad, and and was renamed the ‘Syntonfilm laboratory’. In 1932 NIKFI stopped funding the group who then moved to Mezhrabpomfilm and finally closed in 1934.

From 1930-34 more than 2000 meters of sound track were produced by the Multzvuk group, including the experimental films ‘Ornamental Animation’, ‘Marusia Otravilas’, ‘Chinese Tune’, ‘Organ Chords’, ‘Untertonikum, Prelude’, ‘Piruet’, ‘Staccato Studies’, ‘Dancing Etude’ and ‘Flute Study’. The Multzvuk archive was kept for many years at Avraamov’s apartment, but destroyed in 1937.


 Sources

Electrified Voices: Medial, Socio-Historical and Cultural Aspects of Voice … edited by Dmitri Zakharine, Nils Meise

Graphical Sound Andrey Smirnov, Moscow, 2011

the ‘Nivotone’ , Alexei Voinov, Russia, 1931.

The Nivotone optical reader
The Nivotone optical reader. Image: Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia, Koenig, 14.

The animator Nikolai Voinov (1900-1958), originaly part of Arseney Avraamov‘s group Multzvuk in Moscow, 1931, created his own method of optical synthesis. Instead of drawing or printing to 35mm sound-film Voinov cut wave forms from strips of paper which were then optically read by his machine the Nivotone (‘Paper-Sound’) and translated into sound by a photo-electric process.

“Voinov would painstakingly cut out short cog shapes from sheets of paper, with each cog representing a single semitone in the range of eighty piano keys. For each note he would take a contoured “comb” of cogs with the density related to the pitch, similar to the combs of natural soundtracks. Low pitches have a low density of cogs, while for higher pitches they are condensed and thin.” Vladimir Solev describing Voinov’s paper-cut technique in: Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia.1Smirnov, A, (2013) Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia, Koenig, 14 .

According to Solev, Voinov was able to accurately synthesise piano sounds with a surprisingly efficient level of control over the dynamics of sound:

Then Voinoff, made his “piano,” all of which can be fitted into a necktie box. Each of its keys, i.e., each half-tone, is represented by a long” comb,” which is a schematic record of the real piano. This schematization did not harm the achievement of the purpose. Voinoff complains only about the extreme bass notes, which, he says, having lost some of the overtones, do not sound as rich. Voinoff has not been able to add the necessary little ” teeth ” to the large basic ones. Voinoff fits his ” keys ” or ” combs” on to the regular appliances for cartoon photography in such a way as to have the “key” exactly on the sound track during the photographing process. In this manner, he has succeeded in photographing two three-minute items; a Prelude by Rachmaninoff, and a fox-trot The White Monkey. The Prelude showed especially interesting results. The ” designed music” (to be more exact, it was music cut out of paper) came out as an abstract design of diverging circles and prisms. Voinoff has also recorded a cartoon film, The Thief, in which he has preserved the rhythms very exactly.”. 2Solev, V. (1936) ‘Absolute Music’, Sight and Sound magazine (U.S.), 1936, N18, 48.

The Multzvuk group

Multzvuk group was formed in 1930 by Arseney Araazamov to conduct research into graphical sound techniques. The group was based at the Mosfilm Productions Company in Moscow (one of the leading film production companies in Moscow, renamed Gorki Film Studio in 1948) and consisted of composer and theoretician, Arseney Araamov, cameraman and draughtsmen  Nikolai Zhelynsky, animator Nikolai Voinov, painter and amateur acoustician Boris Yankovsky. In 1931 the group moved to ‘NIKFI’,  the Scientific Research Institute for Photography for Film. Moscow, and and was renamed the ‘Syntonfilm laboratory’. In 1932 NIKFI stopped funding the group who then moved to Mezhrabpomfilm and finally closed in 1934.

From 1930-34 more than 2000 meters of sound track were produced by the Multzvuk group, including the experimental films ‘Ornamental Animation’, ‘Marusia Otravilas’, ‘Chinese Tune’, ‘Organ Chords’, ‘Untertonikum, Prelude’, ‘Piruet’, ‘Staccato Studies’, ‘Dancing Etude’ and ‘Flute Study’. The Multzvuk archive was kept for many years at Avraamov’s apartment, but destroyed in 1937.


References:

  • 1
    Smirnov, A, (2013) Sound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th Century Russia, Koenig, 14 .
  • 2
    Solev, V. (1936) ‘Absolute Music’, Sight and Sound magazine (U.S.), 1936, N18, 48.

‘Graphical Soundtrack’, Arseney Avraamov, Russia, 1930

Arseny Avraamov in Moscow 1923. (Russian: Арсений Михайлович Авраамов), (born Krasnokutsky [Краснокутский], 1886 died Moscow, 1944)
Arseny Avraamov in Moscow 1923. (Russian: Арсений Михайлович Авраамов), (born Krasnokutsky [Краснокутский], 1886 died Moscow, 1944)
Methods of synthesising sound using a photo-electrical system flourished during the late 1920s, particularly after the development of sound-film techniques around 1926. In brief, the technique involved projecting a light beam through a transparent strip (or glass plate or rotating disk) onto a selenium cell. A graphic representation of a sound wave drawn onto the transparent surface varied the intensity of the light beam which in turn generated a variable and corresponding voltage output from the selenium cell i.e. a variable pitch corresponding to the drawn graphic. This technique was much used in Germany during the 1930s – for example: Oskar Fischinger’s sound-film based Tönende Ornamente (1932),  Rudolph Pfenninger’s similar Tönende Handschrift (1932), Spielmann’s glass-disc keyboard, the Superpiano (1928) and Welte’s Licht-Ton Orgel (1936) with other examples from around the world including the Luminaphone (UK/USA 1925), the Hardy Goldthwaite Organ (USA 1930) and Pierre Toulon’s Cellulophone (F 1927). However it was in 1930s Soviet Russia that light-sound synthesis was explored with particular interest, possibly because of the mystical synaesthetic theories of the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1871–1915) who, even in the 1930s, exerted an immense influence over young soviet musicians.

The Russian avant-garde composer and theorist, Arseny Mikhailovich Avraamov is probably best known for his Simfoniya Gudkov (“Symphony of Sirens”) (November 7, 1922, Baku, USSR – an epic production which involved a score that coordinated navy ship sirens and whistles, bus and car horns, factory sirens, cannons, the foghorns of the entire Soviet flotilla of the Caspian Sea, artillery guns, machine guns, seaplanes, a specially designed “whistle main,” and renderings of Internationale and Marseillaise by a mass band and choir.) Later, however, through his pursuit of new sounds and particularly microtonal tuning, Avraamov became a central figure in soviet optical sound synthesis.

Avraamov studied at the music school of the Moscow Philharmonic Society from 1908-11 but fled the country when the first world war broke, working, among other things, as a circus artist. Avraamov returned during the revolution of 1917 where he developed his own  “Ultrachromatic” 48-tone micro tonal system ( “The Universal System of Tones,” 1927). Avraamov later (1930) began to develop a technique of optical sound synthesis which involved hand-drawing geometrical representations of sound shapes and then repeatedly printing these shapes onto the audio-optical strip on a cine-film. 1Smirnov, Andrey, Sound In Z: Experiments In Sound And Electronic Music In Early 20th Century Russia, Walther Koenig, 2013, pp28-37. Avraamov’s technique bore a striking resemblance to those developed simultaneously by Fischinger and Pfenninger (circa 1930) in Germany, despite this similarity,  it seems that both soviet and German techniques were developed in isolation.

An example of Avraamov’s hand-drawn graphic soundtrack Moscow 1930-1. image: Smirnov, Sound In Z, 179.

“By knowing the way to record the most complex sound textures by means of a phonograph, after analysis of the curve structure of the sound groove, directing the needle of the resonating membrane, one can create synthetically any, even most fantastic sound by  making a groove with a proper structure of shape and depth”.2 Avraamov, A, (1916) Upcoming Science of Music and the New Era in the History of Music, Musical Contemporary Magazine, 1916, No 6, 85. 

“Composer Arseny Avraamov at the scientific-research institute conducts the interesting experiments on a creation of the hand-drawn music. Instead of common sound recording on film by means of microphone and photocell, he simply draws on paper geometrical figures, then photographing them on sound track of the filmstrip. Afterwards this filmstrip is played as a common movie by means of film projector. Being read by photocell, amplified and monitored by loudspeaker, this filmstrip turns out to contain a well-known musical recording, while its timbre is impossible to relate to any existing musical instrument. Comrade Avraamov conducts now a study in recording of more complicated geometrical figures. For instance, to record graphical representations of the simplest algebraic equations, to draw molecular orbits of some chemical elements. In this research composer is assisted by a group of young employee of the Research Institute for Film and Photo. By the end of December Avraamov will finish his new work and to show it to the film-community. Quite possibly the listening of the abstracts of “Hand Drawn Music” will be organized in radio broadcast”3‘Drawn Music’. Kino, Moscow, 16.12.1931. Trans. AS. in: Smirnov, Sound in Z, 178

The Multzvuk group

Multzvuk group was formed in 1930 by Arseney Araazamov to conduct research into graphical sound techniques. The group was based at the Mosfilm Productions Company in Moscow (one of the leading film production companies in Moscow, renamed Gorki Film Studio in 1948) and consisted of composer and theoretician, Arseney Avraamov, cameraman and draughtsmen Nikolai Zhelynsky, animator Nikolai Voinov, painter and amateur acoustician Boris Yankovsky. In 1931 the group moved to ‘NIKFI’,  the Scientific Research Institute for Photography for Film. Moscow, and and was renamed the ‘Syntonfilm laboratory’. In 1932 NIKFI stopped funding the group who then moved to Mezhrabpomfilm and finally closed in 1934.

From 1930-34 more than 2000 meters of sound track were produced by the Multzvuk group, including the experimental films Ornamental Animation, Marusia Otravilas, Chinese Tune, Organ Chords, Untertonikum, Prelude, Piruet, Staccato Studies, Dancing Etude and Flute Study. The Multzvuk archive was kept for many years at Avraamov’s apartment, but destroyed in 1937.4Smirnov, Andrey, (2013 )Sound In Z: Experiments In Sound And Electronic Music In Early 20th Century Russia, Walther Koenig, 2013, 181.


References

Much of the biographical information is from Andrey Smirnov’s pioneering work Sound In Z: Experiments In Sound And Electronic Music In Early 20th Century Russia, Walther Koenig, 2013. It is currently out of print but available here as a pdf download.

  • 1
    Smirnov, Andrey, Sound In Z: Experiments In Sound And Electronic Music In Early 20th Century Russia, Walther Koenig, 2013, pp28-37.
  • 2
    Avraamov, A, (1916) Upcoming Science of Music and the New Era in the History of Music, Musical Contemporary Magazine, 1916, No 6, 85. 
  • 3
    ‘Drawn Music’. Kino, Moscow, 16.12.1931. Trans. AS. in: Smirnov, Sound in Z, 178
  • 4
    Smirnov, Andrey, (2013 )Sound In Z: Experiments In Sound And Electronic Music In Early 20th Century Russia, Walther Koenig, 2013, 181.

 

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

The ‘Cellule Photo Electrique’ or ‘Cellulophone’. Pierre Toulon & Krugg Bass, France, 1927.

The Cellulophone : Image: ©Tom Rhea, Keyboard Magazine 1977

Created by the French engineer Pierre Marie Gabriel Toulon aided by the electronic engineer Krugg Bass, the Cellulophone (“Cellule Photo-électrique”) made it’s debut as a prototype in France in 1927. The Cellulophone was an electro-optical tone generator instrument resembling an electronic organ controlled by two eight octave keyboards and a foot pedal board. The instruments sound was created using a photo-electrical technique: a light beam was projected through slits in a vari-speed rotating disk cut with a number of equidistant slits – 54 slits for the lowest note with different shaped masks to create varied timbres. The light beam projected through the slits of the disk on to a photoelectric cell which in turn generated an audible voltage pulse from a single vacuum tube oscillator; the speed of the rotating disk therefore determined the frequency of the output signal of the instrument. The Cellulophone used four tungsten filament lamps to generate constant light beams which were directed via mirrors and lenses through a single rotating disk onto a single selenium photo-cell to generate an amplified voltage pitch from a vacuum tube. Toulon’s design however, included a number of optical filters or ‘shutters’ that could modulate the tonal timbre of the instrument allowing for complex overlapping timbral tones to be created. 1 Toulon, Pierre Marie Gabriel,(1934), Music Instrument Working Through a Keyboard and Photo-electric Cell, US Patent Office Granted Feb 1934, No.1948,996. Despite these innovations, according to Tom Rhea, the Cellulophone’s use of a single disk to create all twelve semitones in an octave meant that the instrument was constantly out of tune – i.e. above the 0.1% accuracy range. 2 Rhea, Tom,(1984), Photo-electric Instruments, The Art of Electronic Music, GPI Publications 1984, 13.

Pierre Toulon’s original 1928 patent of the Cellulophone ‘ ‘Music Instrument Working Through a Keyboard and Photo-electric Cell. Image: US Patent Office Granted Feb 1934 No.1948,996

Toulon’s Cellulophone won the Prix jean Bares in 1933:

“Second prize (2,500 francs) was awarded to Mr.. Pierre Toulon, a father of three children and consulting engineer of the Electrical School , who made a large number of inventions, among which include “the relay arc” whose principle is applied in instruments referred to as “Thyratrons” and “Spark-gap convertors”, the latter enabling flattening  and straightening of even high powered electrical currents.

Mr. Toulon also invented a device called “Cellulophone” – a musical instrument keyboard developed by the Pleyel company, which is an organ extremely reduced in size.” 3 Les Prix Jean S. Barès 1933, Office national des recherches scientifiques et industrielles et des inventions (France), 1934-10-01, 280.

The Cellulophone was one of a generation of instruments in the 1920-30’s that used a photo-electric sound generation method; other examples being the Licht-ton Orgel , the Photona , the Superpiano and the Radio Organ of a Trillion Tones. The increased sophistication and reliability of post war electronic circuitry marked the decline of light based synthesis after the 1940’s except for a few pioneers such as Daphne Oram who used a similar Oramics system to synthesise and sequence sounds.

Pierre Toulon, who held numerous related patents for early television scanners, electrical relays, large-screen televisions, audio amplifiers and sound reproduction and transmission devices also proposed in the 1930’s a technique of speech synthesis using fragments of optical film mounted on a rotating drum.

Rotating disc mechanism of the Cellulophone<em> (©Tom Rhea, Keyboard Magazine 1977)</em>
Rotating disc mechanism of the Cellulophone. Image: ©Tom Rhea, Keyboard Magazine 1977)

A 1928 Extract from La Revue Hebdomadaire describes various new electronic instruments of the period including the Cellulophone:

CHRONIQUE SCIENTIFIQUE. LA MUSIQUE RADIOPHONIQUE

Les concerts du professeur Theremin. Une expérience d’acoustique fort instructive. Battements électriques. Où interviennentles lampes à trois électrodes de la T. S. F. Le principe de l’éthérophone. Un précurseur. Piano etorgues radio électriques. Le cellulophone. Conclusion. On a beaucoup parlé ces derniers temps d’une rénovation de l’art musical par l’emploi d’instruments de musique utilisant la merveilleuse souplesse des ondes hertziennes. Les concerts donnés cet hiver à Paris par le professeur Léo Theremin, de Léningrad, ont attiré un nombreux public. Il n’est pas douteux que l’idée d’utiliser les ondes hertziennes à la production des sons puisse constituer une innovation heureuse. Essayons donc de décrire le merveilleux appareil du professeur Theremin et d’en faire comprendre le fonctionnement.

L’explication paraîtra très simple à tous les sans-filistes. Quant à mes autres lecteurs, s’ils veulent bien me prêter quelque attention, je suis certain qu’ils saisiront tout aussi aisément le principe de la musique radiophonique. Rappelons tout d’abord une expérience d’acoustique que chacun peut répéter, pourvu qu’il possède chez lui quelque instrument de musique.

Tout le monde sait que le son est produit par les vibrations de la matière et qu’il nous paraît d’autant plus aigu que les vibrations sont plus rapides. Lorsqu’on fixel’extrémité d’une tige d’acier, une lame de fleuret par exemple, dans un étau, et qu’après l’avoir écartée desa position on l’abandonne à elle-même, elle entre en vibration et produit un son, d’abord très grave, maisqui monte de plus en plus au fur et à mesure qu’on raccourcit la lame, ce qui augmente le nombre des oscillations par seconde. Les sons les plus graves que l’on puisse entendre correspondent environ à 30 vibrations par seconde, et les sons les plus aigus à 40 000. Entre ces limites s’étend toute la gamme des sons perceptibles.

Mettons en bran le deux diapasons identiques, donnant par exemple chacun le la normal, l’un d’eux ayant été désaccordé par un peu de cire fixée sur l’une des branches. Le diapason normal effectuant 435 vibrations par seconde, celui qui a été désaccordé en donnera par exemple 432. Dans ces conditions, lorsque les deux diapasons fonctionnent en même temps, on perçoit dans le son d’ensemble des renforcements et des affaiblissements sucessifs,des sortes de hou, hou, hou, répétés régulièrement etqu’on appelle des battements. L’expérience a permis de constater que le nombre deces hou, hou, hou. par seconde est exactement égal à la différence entre les nombres de vibrations par seconde que donnent séparément les deux diapasons, soit ici 435 diminué de 432. Il y a donc trois battements par seconde. Le phénomène est général. Chaque fois qu’on produit simultanément, au moyen d’appareils quelconques, deux séries de mouvements vibratoires dont les nombres d’oscillations par seconde sont différents, l’ensemble donne lieu à des renforcements et à des affaiblissements successifs,à des battements. Or les ondes hertziennes résultent d’une sorte de mouvement vibratoire d’un milieu hypothétique qu’on suppose répandu partout et auquel on a donné l’antique nom d’éther. Dans les ondes, dites entretenues, qu’utilise la radiophonie, les vibrations sont très régulières mais extrêmement rapides. Elles se produisent à raison de quelques centaines de mille par seconde. Envoyées directement dans un téléphone, ces ondes seraient sans actionsur lui, car à supposer qu’elles fussent capables de faire vibrer, suivant un rythme de quelques centaines de mille par seconde, la membrane du téléphone, nous serions incapables de percevoir des vibrations aussi rapides, pour les quelles notre oreille est atteinte d’une surdité absolue. Mais émettons simultanément, au moyen de deux appareils différents, deux séries d’ondes hertziennes, les unes, pour fixer les idées, à raison de ioo ooo vibrations par seconde, et les autres, à raison de 99 000. Leur production simultanée donnera naissance à des battements électriques, à des renforcements suivis d’affaiblissements des ondes hertziennes, dont le nombre par seconde sera égal à 100,000 diminué de 90,000. Et à ces battements électriques qui se produisent ainsi à raison de 1,000 par seconde, le téléphone peut être rendu sensible. Sa membrane oscillant à raison de r 000 vibrations par second eémettra un son aisément perceptible. Si donc, l’une des deux séries d’ondes demeurant invariable et se produisant toujours à la fréquence 100 000, nous avons le moyen de faire varier la fréquence de l’autre série d’ondes et de la rendre égale par exemple à 99,500, à 99,400, à 99,300. le nombre des battements, toujours égal à la différence des fréquences associées, sera successivement 500, 600, 700. par seconde. Le téléphone actionné par les battements fournira un son deplus en plus aigu, correspondant successivement à 500, 600, 700. vibrations par seconde. Et c’est là tout le secret de l’éthérophone. Des ondes hertziennes sont produites à la fréquence moyenne de 300 ooo vibrations par seconde par deux générateurs appelés hétérodynes. Si les deux séries d’ondes sont légèrement désaccordées, elles donnent lieu à des battements électriques qui, agissant dans un haut-parleur à la manière habituellement utilisée dans les réceptions radiophoniques, en actionnent la membrane et produisent un son. De la boîte où sont enfermées les deux hétérodynes émergent une tige métallique verticale jouant le rôled’antenne, et une spirale en fil de cuivre placée horizontal ement sur le côté. Le fonctionnement de l’appareil consiste à faire varier les constantes électriques de l’un edes deux séries d’ondes en approchant la main droitede l’antenne verticale et la main gauche de la spirale. Le premier mouvement fait varier la fréquence des battements et, par conséquent, détermine la hauteur de lanote le second mouvement agit sur l’amplitude des ondes et par suite sur l’intensité du son. De ces deux mouvements, le premier, qui doit suivre les notes de la partition musicale, est évidemment le plus compliqué etest de ce chef dévolu à la main droite le second est réservéà la main gauche en raison de sa simplicité.

L’idée qui est à la base de l’éthérophone n’est pas nouvelle. Dès 1917, les ingénieurs français travaillant au laboratoire de la tour Eiffel avaient songé à tirer un parti musical des battements radio électriques dont nous venons de parler. M. Armand Givelet, vice-président du Radio-Club de France, avait eu l’idée de marquer à lacraie sur le cadran du condensateur d’hétérodyne le réglage correspondant aux différentes notes de la gamme. En tournant rapidement ce condensateur variable et en arrêtant brusquement l’aiguille sur les repères du cadran, il était parvenu assez facilement à jouer des mélodies populaires simples. C’était, en somme, exactement le principe de l’éthérophone. Il a suffi de perfectionner quelques détails pour obtenir un appareil permettant deproduire des effets véritablement artistiques.

D’ailleurs, M. A. Grivelet a réalisé, il y a quelques années, le premier piano radio électrique. On a pu voircet instrument exposé récemment au premier Salon des Sciences et des Arts, au Grand Palais des Champs Élysées. Chaque note est produite par un circuit séparé, engendrant les vibrations sans qu’aient à intervenir des battements. De son côté, M. Bertrand a construit sous le nom d’orgue radio électrique un appareil d’un principe tout à fait analogue à celui du professeur Theremin, qui utiliseles battements électriques de deux hétérogynes, et dans lequel le son est diffusé par un haut-parleur de grand modèle. La variation de la hauteur du son est produite par la commande d’une manette qui se déplace devant un cadran comportant une gamme de trois octaves.

Le Cellulophone de M. Pierre Toulon n’est pas moins curieux. Son principe est tout différent. Il utilise la propriétédes cellules photo électriques, sortes de piles qui donnent naissance à un courant lorsqu’elles reçoivent un faisceau de lumière. En envoyant sur une cellule, non un éclairage continu, mais un éclairage intermittent qu’on peut réaliser en interposant entre la source lumineuse etla cellule un disque tournant perforé, la pile produit une succession de courants instantanés dont le nombre par seconde dépend du nombre des trous que porte le disqueet de sa vitesse de rotation. Envoyés dans un haut parleur,ces courants le font vibrer avec la même fréquence. La hauteur de la note musicale dépend ainsi du nombre de trous que porte le disque et de sa vitesse derotation, le timbre étant déterminé par la forme de cestrous. On conçoit qu’on puisse modifier à volonté la hauteur et le timbre, et obtenir des effets musicaux très variés.

Il serait difficile de prédire l’avenir qui est réservé aux appareils de musique radio électrique. Indiquons seulement qu’ils ont permis d’obtenir des effets artistiques très intéressants, et il ne serait pas surprenant que,grâce à eux, la musique, cette forme si élevée et si expressive de l’art qui a très peu évolué depuis des siècles,entrât dans une voie entièrement nouvelle. A. BOUTARIC. 4 Boutaric, A,(1928), CHRONIQUE SCIENTIFIQUE. LA MUSIQUE RADIOPHONIQUE, La Revue Hebdomadaire: romans, histoire, voyages, Paris, March 1928, 504 .

And from Le Genie Civil February 7, 1928:

cellulophon_le_genie_civil_18feb_1928
‘Le Cellulophone’ from Le Genie Civil, 18 February 7th, 1928.


References:

  • 1
    Toulon, Pierre Marie Gabriel,(1934), Music Instrument Working Through a Keyboard and Photo-electric Cell, US Patent Office Granted Feb 1934, No.1948,996.
  • 2
    Rhea, Tom,(1984), Photo-electric Instruments, The Art of Electronic Music, GPI Publications 1984, 13.
  • 3
    Les Prix Jean S. Barès 1933, Office national des recherches scientifiques et industrielles et des inventions (France), 1934-10-01, 280.
  • 4
    Boutaric, A,(1928), CHRONIQUE SCIENTIFIQUE. LA MUSIQUE RADIOPHONIQUE, La Revue Hebdomadaire: romans, histoire, voyages, Paris, March 1928, 504 .

The ‘Rhythmicon’ Henry Cowell & Leon Termen. USA, 1930

Henry Cowell and the Rhythmicon
The composer Joseph Schillinger and the Rhythmicon. Image (c)

In 1916 the American Avant-Garde composer Henry Cowell was working with ideas of controlling cross rhythms and tonal sequences with a keyboard, he wrote several quartet type pieces that used combinations of rhythms and overtones that were not possible to play apart from using some kind of mechanical control- “un-performable by any known human agency and I thought of them as purely fanciful”(Henry Cowell) 1Cowell, H. . In 1930 Cowell introduced his idea to Leon Termen, the inventor of the Theremin, and commissioned him – for the fee of $200 –  to build a machine capable of transforming harmonic data into rhythmic data and vice versa.2 According to Mead “Even though Theremin was at the time receiving offers as high as $10,000 from Hollywood studios for work with his earlier instrument, the Theremin, he only charged Cowell $200 for the Rhythmicon because, according to Mrs Cowell, he always enjoyed Cowell and was glad to help him”  – Mead, Rita H,(1981) Henry Cowell’s New Music, 1925-1936 : the Society, the music editions, and the recordings, Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press,188-9. 

“My part in its invention was to invent the idea that such a rhythmic instrument was a necessity to further rhythmic development, which has reached a limit more or less, in performance by hand, an needed the application of mechanical aid. The which the instrument was to accomplish and what rhythms it should do and the pitch it should have and the relation between the pitch and rhythms are my ideas. I also conceived that the principle of broken up light playing on a photo-electric cell would be the best means of making it practical. With this idea I went to Theremin who did the rest – he invented the method by which the light would be cut, did the electrical calculations and built the instrument.” Henry Cowell 3 Henly, H (1932) Music: New Futures for Rhythms, Argonaut, CX/2846 (May 20, 1932), 10.

“The rhythmic control possible in playing and imparting exactitudes in cross rhythms are bewildering to contemplate and the potentialities of the instrument should be multifarious… Mr. Cowell used his rythmicon to accompany a set of violin movements which he had written for the occasion…. The accompaniment was a strange complexity of rhythmical interweavings and cross currents of a cunning and precision as never before fell on the ears of man and the sound pattern was as uncanny as the motion… The write believes that the pure genius of Henry Cowell has put forward a principle which will strongly influence the face of all future music.4 Henly, H (1932) Music: New Futures for Rhythms, Argonaut, CX/2846 (May 20, 1932), 10. Homer Henly, May 20, 1932.

Rhythmicon Discs
Optical rhythm discs of the Rhythmicon. Image (o)

Termen and Cowell christened their machine the Rythmicon or Polyrhythmophone (or sometime the Theremin-Cowell Rythmicon) and it can be seen as the first electronic rhythm machine. The 17 key polyphonic keyboard produced a single note repeated in periodic rhythm for as long as it was held down, the rhythmic content being generated using a photo-electrical technique: rotating perforated disks interrupted light beams that triggered photo-electric cells which in turn generated a rhythmical electronic pulse. The keyboard was laid out in a non-standard fashion arranged in a regular sequence of black
and white – the lowest note produced a unit of rhythm; white keys produced even divisions of it; black keys produced odd-numbered divisions up to a fifteenth of that basic pulse.5Sachs, Joel,(2012), Henry Cowell: A Man Made of Music, Oxford University Press, Inc, 223. . The transposable keyboard was tuned to an unusual pitch, based on the rhythmic speed of the sequences and the basic pitch and tempo – essentially each separate rhythm had its own pitch which was combined into a polyrhythmic-melodic piece.

Henry Cowell playing the Rhythmicon c 1932. Image: (c) the Imogen Cunningham Trust

The instrument was first unveiled at The New School New York on January 19, 1932, with the assistance of Clara Reisenberg (the famed Theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore) and with Lev termen who demonstrated his Theremin Cello and keyboard Harmonium, and later at the same location on March 10th where termen also demonstrated his dance-performance instrument, the Terpsitone where Clara Reisenberg’s movements controlled the instruments pitch. The Rhythmicon never lived up to Cowell’s musical ambitious expectations and generally received a negative reception from critics who, focussing on the instruments harmonic shortcomings, disregarded Cowell’s rhythmic-melodic ideas.6Sachs, Joel,(2012), Henry Cowell: A Man Made of Music, Oxford University Press, Inc, 225. .

The sound of the Rhythmicon, produced by an array of six vacuum tubes was characteristically thin and was often described as unimpressive: “The melodic possibilities of the instrument seem small, though its theoretical interest is high. The sound is like that of a reed organ.” 7 Mead, Rita H,(1981) Henry Cowell’s New Music, 1925-1936 : the Society, the music editions, and the recordings, Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press,189.) or in another review by the music journalist Alfred Metzger in the San Francisco Chronicle (May, 1932) “like a cross between a grunt and a snort in the low ‘tones’ and like an Indian war whoop in the high tones”8 Metzger, A, (1932), Newest invention in music makes debut in SF, San Francisco Chronicle, May 16th 1932.

Cowell wrote two works for the Rythmicon; Rythmicana (renamed Concerto for Rhythmicon and Orchestra 1931 9 Mead, Rita H,(1981) Henry Cowell’s New Music, 1925-1936 : the Society, the music editions, and the recordings, Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press,189.) and Music for Violin and Rythmicon (now lost, 1931 – a computer simulation of this work was reproduced in 1972). Cowell, however, discouraged by the instruments negative reception, eventually lost interest in the machine, transferring his interest to ethnic music and the machine was mothballed.

“In 1934, realizing that he [musicologist and financer of the Rhythmicon Nicolas Slonimsky] never could bring the instrument to Boston because, in those days of unstandardized electric service, the predominant DC current required a costly converter for the AC Rhythmicon, he offered it to Henry or the New School for half the original price. 108 In the end Slonimsky sold it for $90 to [US Composer] Joseph Schillinger, who used it in his teaching and eventually gave it to the Smithsonian. The second Rhythmicon was stored by Henry at Stanford, where it eventually fell apart and was scrapped.” 10Sachs, Joel,(2012), Henry Cowell: A Man Made of Music, Oxford University Press, Inc, 222. .

The remaining existing version of the Rhythmicon is a model created by Termen on his return to the USSR in the 1960s and resides at the Theremin Institute in Moscow (as of 2020).

The 1960s Rhythmicon at the Theremin Institute Moscow. Image: Theremin Institute/Andrei Smirnov


References:

  • 1
    Cowell, H.
  • 2
    According to Mead “Even though Theremin was at the time receiving offers as high as $10,000 from Hollywood studios for work with his earlier instrument, the Theremin, he only charged Cowell $200 for the Rhythmicon because, according to Mrs Cowell, he always enjoyed Cowell and was glad to help him”  – Mead, Rita H,(1981) Henry Cowell’s New Music, 1925-1936 : the Society, the music editions, and the recordings, Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press,188-9. 
  • 3
    Henly, H (1932) Music: New Futures for Rhythms, Argonaut, CX/2846 (May 20, 1932), 10.
  • 4
    Henly, H (1932) Music: New Futures for Rhythms, Argonaut, CX/2846 (May 20, 1932), 10.
  • 5
    Sachs, Joel,(2012), Henry Cowell: A Man Made of Music, Oxford University Press, Inc, 223.
  • 6
    Sachs, Joel,(2012), Henry Cowell: A Man Made of Music, Oxford University Press, Inc, 225.
  • 7
    Mead, Rita H,(1981) Henry Cowell’s New Music, 1925-1936 : the Society, the music editions, and the recordings, Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press,189.
  • 8
    Metzger, A, (1932), Newest invention in music makes debut in SF, San Francisco Chronicle, May 16th 1932.
  • 9
    Mead, Rita H,(1981) Henry Cowell’s New Music, 1925-1936 : the Society, the music editions, and the recordings, Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press,189.
  • 10
    Sachs, Joel,(2012), Henry Cowell: A Man Made of Music, Oxford University Press, Inc, 222.

The ‘Saraga-Generator’, Wolja Saraga, Germany,1931.

The Saraga Generator
One of the sound generating devices built by Wolja Saraga at the HHI. Photo; Saraga family archives

Wolja Saraga was a research doctoral student and then lecturer from around 1929 until 1936 at the newly formed (1928) Heinrich-Hertz Institut Für Schwingungsforschung (Heinrich hertz Institute for Frequency Research or HHI for short) based on Franklin Str 1, Charlottenburg, Berlin, Germany. The HHI was tasked with research into all forms of frequency research – communications, radio, physics, acoustics and electronic musical instruments. Under the direction of Prof Gustav Leithäuser the HHI became the international center for the development of electronic musical instruments through the work of figures such as Fritz Sennheiser,  Oskar Vierling Harald Bode , Winston KockFriedrich Trautwein and Wolja Saraga.

The Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, Charlottenburg, Berlin. Image: Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universität Berlin Inv. Nr. F 8108.

In 1932 Saraga began to investigate the opportunities and practicalities of musical sound production via three main approaches: optical sound synthesis, direct sound generation through ‘direct discharge’ and by using a voltage controlled tungsten arc-lamp.1Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55,99, 100, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives. The name Saraga-Generator has has become used for his more well-known photo-electrical instrument but probably applies better to his ‘direct discharge’ instrument that used a high voltage power generator to create spark-gap transmissions of sound waves. In this text it applies to all of his electronic musical experiments.

Saraga’s experiments with direct sound generation at the HHI  circa1930. Image: Funkbastler, H24, 1930, 409-10.

The Direkte elektrische Schallerzeugung or Direct Electrical Generator created a musical tone through direct stimulation of the air without loudspeakers – a method similar to Simon and Duddel’s early Singing Arc experiments of 1899. The result would have been at quite a high volume or, as Saraga put it “The desired kinetic effect is not negligible”. 2Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55, 25 Jan 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives. The technique is explained in Saturday Review (1952): “The effect takes advantage of several physical principles:[5] First, ionization of a gas creates a highly conductive plasma, which responds to alternating electric and magnetic fields. Second, this low-density plasma has a negligibly small mass. Thus, the air remains mechanically coupled with the essentially massless plasma, allowing it to radiate a nearly ideal reproduction of the sound source when the electric or magnetic field is modulated with the audio signal.” 3 Villchur, Edgar, (1952) A New Speaker Principle, Saturday Review, 1952 Sep 27, 60-61.

Writing in Funkbastler Magazine, Saraga describes the sound of the instrument:

“The high-frequency glow arc also works with low background noise. Sometimes the presence of the counter electrode is also the cause of disturbing side effects. The air between the plates can oscillate itself and the acoustic change circumstances. Special forms of the counter electrode will probably prove to be particularly favourable. If you listen to the performances of the peak discharge, you will particularly notice the good reproduction of the high frequencies; the hissing sounds are very natural. The favourable acoustic radiation of the lower frequencies seems to be much more difficult, as the reproduction generally sounds a bit thin.4Saraga, Wolja, (1930) Schallerzeugung durch Hochfrequenzentladungen, Funkbastler, Heft 24, 409-10.

Saraga probably abandoned research in direct transmission for this reason – the low frequency reproduction was poor and because of the impracticalities of the approach: the amount of energy required and potentially hazardous by products produced by the ionisation process. 

The second approach Musikinstrument mit Wolframbogenlampe or Music Instrument with Wolfram Bow Lamp used used a tungsten arc-lamp connected to a loudspeaker without an amplifier which produced “very high volumes”. The tone of the lamp was modulated using a resistance manual; probably a metal strip touched by the player. 5Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 100, 13th September 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.

Saraga’s photo-electrically controlled instrument the Elektrisches Photozellenmusikinstrument described in his 1932 HHI report, was a monophonic device that consisted of an audio oscillator controlled by movements of the performer’s hand between a low voltage neon lamp and a narrow V-shaped slit in the lid of a box. The white painted interior of the box had a photocell mounted on it positioned so that direct light would not reach it. The range of the instrument was about four octaves. Articulation and loudness were controlled by a switch, held in the performer’s other hand, and a volume pedal. 6Davies, Hugh (1984), Saraga-Generator, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 383. Saraga’s photo-cell instrument was patented in 1932 and demonstrated at the Berlin Radio Exhibition (IFA – Internationale Funkaustellung, Berlin) alongside the Orchester der Zukunft (the all-electric Orchestra of the Future) in the same year. Saraga described the timbral quality of the basic instrument as poor but one that could be easily rectified using the same type of format filters as Trautwein’s Trautonium7Saraga, Wolja, (1932) Ein Neues Elektrisches MusikInstrument, Funkbastler, Heft 10, 433-5.

"Electric Concerts" with the electroacoustic "orchestra of the future", 1932/1933 On the occasion of the 9th and 10th IFA in Berlin 1932 and 1933 for the first time found concerts with "Electric Music" instead. They played by the so-called "Orchestra of the future" all electroacoustic musical instruments then available. The "Elektischen concerts" made at the time an exceptional level of interest and broad support in the public, as the cooperating with private Theremingerät Erich Zitzmann-Zerini [second right] the engineer Gerhard Steinke told while gave him this original image. The orchestra consisted of two theremin instruments Trautonium [by Trautwein], Heller desk [of B. and P. Helberger Lertes], a neo-Bechstein grand piano [for suggestions of O. Vierling, S. Franco, W. Nernst and H . Driescher], Vierling piano [electro Acoustic piano by O. Vierling], electric violin, electric cello and Saraga generator [a light-electric device by W. Saraga, in principle, similar to the Theremingerät]. Photo: archive Gerhard Steinke
A concert by the electroacoustic “Orchestra of the Future” at the 9th and 10th IFA in Berlin 1932. Consisting of: (L-R) Bruno Hellberger playing his Hellertion, unknown playing the Electric Cello, Oskar Sala playing the Volkstruatonium, unknown playing the Neo Bechstein Electric Piano, Oskar Vierling playing the Electrochord, unknown playing the ‘Electric Violin’, unknown playing the ‘unknown instrument’,  Erich Zitzmann-Zerini with the Theremin, Unknown playing the Volkstrautonium. Saraga (not in the photograph) gave lectures on electronic music and demonstrations of his photo-electric instrument after each performance. Photo: archive Gerhard Steinke.
Saraga escaped Germany in 1936 (Bringing with him a Volkstrautonium purchased as a promotional model from Telefunken – which was confiscated by German authorities at the border) and eventually found employment in Orpington, Kent, UK. 8Interview with Esther Saraga, London 2015 In May 1946, Saraga founded the Electronic Music Group at the Northern Polytechnic (Holloway Rd, London) and tried to renew interest in his photo-electric instrument with public demonstrations of its capabilities and searched for commercial applications for the instrument including film soundtrack music and musical therapy for blind war veterans.

Saraga describes his instrument in an article in the Electronic Engineering journal, July 1945:

Basic diagram showing the box light-receiving device. Image: Electronic Engineering, July1945, 601

“A photo-electric cell is used as playing manual for controlling the pitch, the amount of light falling on this cell determining the frequency of the oscillation produced.* Thus the player can play on this instrument by varying the amount of light falling on the cell by moving his hand be- tween the cell and a source of light. This playing technique is in some aspects similar to that employed in Theremin’s instrument ; but there are some important differences which will be discussed, and it is hoped that the new playing technique will provide players and composers with new, hitherto unknown or technically im- possible, methods of expression.

The loudness of the tone produced can be controlled by means of a pedal which actuates a variable resistance or potentiometer. In a more elaborate form of the instrument it is intended to control the loudness by varying the amount of light falling on a second photo -electric cell. It is expected that this method of loudness control will be useful also in connection with other electronic musical instruments. For starting and stopping the tone the player uses a switch held in one hand which opens or closes the loud- speaker circuit. This switch is necessary because the loudness control by means of a pedal is rather slow. Instead of using a switch the player can close the- loudspeaker circuit by touching two metal contacts with his hand as a conducting link.” 9Saraga, W, (1945), An Electronic .Musical Instrument With a Photo -Electric Cell as Playing Manual, Electronic Engineering, 601.

Saraga argued that his instrument was superior to Termen’s Thereminvox in that it was easier and more natural to play:

“practical experience with Theremin’s instrument shows that its playing technique, while relieving the player from the resistance and inertia of the instrument, increases the resistance and inertia of his own hand because the hand has to be moved freely in the air for long periods with- out any physical support and without any visible indication of the correct positioning of the hand. Moreover, the pitch produced depends not only on the position of the hand but, to a smaller degree, also on the position of the whole body. Furthermore, the character of the electrostatic field of the rod in which the player moves his hand is such that it is very difficult to produce a linear pitch scale, i.e., to make the pitch proportional to the distance of the hand from the rod. The object of the new instrument […] is to eliminate these disadvantages of Theremin’s instrument. For this purpose the use of a photoelectric cell as -playing manual for determining the pitch or the loudness of the musical tones seems to be particularly convenient, because the geometrical relations of light beams’ and light and shadow which determine the amount of light falling on the cell when the hand of the player is in a certain position are much simpler, and much easier to control, than the geometrical relations of electrostatic fields which determine the hand capacitance in a certain position of the hand.10Saraga, W, (1945), An Electronic .Musical Instrument With a Photo -Electric Cell as Playing Manual, Electronic Engineering, 601.

Wolja Saraga working on the 'Saraga Generator' at the HHI, Berlin in 1932
Wolja Saraga working with a tungsten arc lamp for sound generation at the HHI, Berlin in 1932. Image: Saraga family archives.

Wolja Saraga. Berlin, 1930s
Wolja Saraga. Berlin, 1930s. Image: Saraga family archives.

Wolja Saraga working at the HHI, Berlin 1932. (Photo; TU Archives, Berlin)
Wolja Saraga working at the HHI, Berlin 1932. (Photo; TU Archives, Berlin)

Wolja Saraga: Biographical Notes

Wolja Saraga was a German Jewish Physicist, born in Berlin, Germany on 03-09-1908  to a Romanian father and a Russian mother. He studied telecommunications at the Heinrich Hertz Institute (Heinrich-Hertz Institut Für Schwingungsforschung or ‘HHI’) at the Technical University, Berlin under Prof Gustav Leithäuser. Saraga became a research assistant at the HHI and later  a lecturer from 1929-1933. He also studied physics and mathematics at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he was awarded a Dr. phil. in physics in 1935.

saraga_presse_kart
Wolja Saraga’s ticket for the 1936 ‘Great-German Radio Exhibition’ (image; Saraga Family Archive 2016)

During his time in Berlin, Saraga was very energetic in promoting the potential of electronic music; He wrote numerous articles for journals and magazines on the subject of acoustics and audio technology and made several public presentations and demonstrations of electronic instruments including Theremins, Trautoniums and his own Saraga Generator. Saraga was also present playing the Saraga Generator at the 1932/3 International Funkaustellung (IFA) where the first ever electronic musical orchestra performed  – Das Orchester der Zukunft.

It became clear to Saraga in 1935-6 that as a Jewish scientist he would have no future in the new National Socialist German Reich and began to apply to leave the country, first of all to Switzerland and then to the UK. Saraga finally left Berlin in 1938 at the age of 29. he was initially held for six months on the Isle Of Man Hutchinson Camp as a German internee but was given a position working for the Telephone Manufacturing Company (or ‘TMC’) in St Mary’s Cray, Kent where, despite his unhappiness at his employers lack of interest in research, he remained until 1958.

A press card for a presentation by W.Saraga entitled 'Electronic Music'
A press card for a presentation by W.Saraga entitled ‘Electric Music – a presentation and musical demonstration of the Trautonium’. Berlin 1933. (Photo; Saraga Family Archive 2016)

Saraga then joined The Associated Electrical Industries Research Laboratory in Blackheath, London as a Research Scientist and Group Leader where he specialised in telephony filter design. In 1962, Saraga’s key contributions were recognised by the award of the Fellowship of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, ‘for contributions to network theory and its application in communications’. In 1972, Saraga moved full time to Imperial College, London where he became a postgraduate lecturer and researcher in network theory and mathematics and wrote a number of books and filed several patents on network theory and telephony. Wolja Saraga died in London on Feb 15 1980.11Scanla, J,O,(1980) Obituary of Wolja Saraga, CIRCUIT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS, VOL. 8, 341.   , 12 (1980) Obituary of Wolja Saraga,  IEEPROC, Vol. 128, Pt. G, No. 4, AUGUST 1981. 13 Crab, Simon, (2015) Interview with Esther Saraga, london 2015.


References:

  • 1
    Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55,99, 100, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.
  • 2
    Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 55, 25 Jan 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.
  • 3
    Villchur, Edgar, (1952) A New Speaker Principle, Saturday Review, 1952 Sep 27, 60-61.
  • 4
    Saraga, Wolja, (1930) Schallerzeugung durch Hochfrequenzentladungen, Funkbastler, Heft 24, 409-10.
  • 5
    Saraga, Wolja, (1932), Technischer Bericht Nr. 100, 13th September 1932, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut für Schwingungsforschung, HHI Archives.
  • 6
    Davies, Hugh (1984), Saraga-Generator, Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Oxford University Press, 383.
  • 7
    Saraga, Wolja, (1932) Ein Neues Elektrisches MusikInstrument, Funkbastler, Heft 10, 433-5.
  • 8
    Interview with Esther Saraga, London 2015
  • 9
    Saraga, W, (1945), An Electronic .Musical Instrument With a Photo -Electric Cell as Playing Manual, Electronic Engineering, 601.
  • 10
    Saraga, W, (1945), An Electronic .Musical Instrument With a Photo -Electric Cell as Playing Manual, Electronic Engineering, 601.
  • 11
    Scanla, J,O,(1980) Obituary of Wolja Saraga, CIRCUIT THEORY AND APPLICATIONS, VOL. 8, 341.   
  • 12
    (1980) Obituary of Wolja Saraga,  IEEPROC, Vol. 128, Pt. G, No. 4, AUGUST 1981.
  • 13
    Crab, Simon, (2015) Interview with Esther Saraga, london 2015.