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.

12 thoughts on “The ‘Rhythmicon’ Henry Cowell & Leon Termen. USA, 1930”

  1. The first image of Rhythmicon Discs is from a video called ” The Rhythmicon revival after 45 years of silence ” by Andrey Smirnov, who documented his fixing the 3rd version of the original at The Theremin Center, Moscow, in December 2004.

    The tuning of the discs is as follows:
    — foreground: 15 layers progressing in steps of 2 (harmonics 2, 4, 6, …, 30);
    — background: 15 layers progressing in steps of 1 (harmonics 1, 2, 3, …, 15).

    Second set (black disc diagrams) consists of a pitch wheel (left) and tempo wheel (right) which, according to the picture’s source, belonged to the 2nd Rhythmicon built by Lev.

    Tuning:
    — left: 16 layers progressing in steps of 6 (harmonics 6, 12, 18, …, 96);
    — right: 16 layers progressing in steps of 1 (harmonics 1, 2, 3, …, 16).

    The choice for having a standard 7-white/5-black piano keyboard as controller is unfortunate, since this irregular layout fails to properly represent the natural harmonic relationships between the rhythmical patterns.

  2. The above comment may produce some misunderstanding. On both images, the disks on the right are responsible for rhythm, and the disks on the left are responsible for pitch. Rhythm disks are almost similar, the only difference – amount of rhythms – 15 and 16. And in the case of these disks it would be better to talk not about harmonics, but rhythms: basic rhythm, rhythm on 2, on 3, on 4, on 5 etc.
    Regarding the pitch disks – all pitched sounds related to harmonics are produced by their means and no other harmonics are available. It means that pitch disk on the first image produces the set of pitches related to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd ,4th etc. up to 15th harmonics by means of layers with 2 holes, 4 holes, 6 holes etc.
    The pitch disk on the second image produces the set of pitches, related to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. up to 16th harmonics by means of layers with 6 holes, 12 holes, 18 holes etc.
    Amount of holes depends only on the range of rotating speeds and required pitch ranges. Slower motor – more holes for the 1st harmonic are required.

  3. This part of the text: “The eventual machine was christened the “Rythmicon”…. etc. is completely wrong. The rhythmicon is not an electronic, but electro-optical rhythm machine, it has nothing in common with the theremin and doesn’t contain any hetrodyning vacuum tube oscillators.

  4. hi. do you have any reliable evidence to back up the Joe Meek story – and all subsequent rumoured uses of the rc in pop music? As far as I know all this is completely untrue. If you have sources to the contrary that would be immensely useful. thanks

  5. I want to make a Rhythmicon VST plugin so I’ve been trying to find out as much as possible about the original instrument to get it as right as possible. The information I need is about the 17th key for “syncopation”. I’ve read that there was an additional beat at a half measure operated by the 17th key. But I can’t see a hole for this in any images I’ve seen and I can’t count up to 17 mirrors for the light path, so I think this info must be incorrect.
    My theory is that the 17th key might be an accent key which maybe increases the total volume when depressed (or maybe mutes it).
    Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated!

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