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The Subharchord is a synthesizer featuring subharmonic synthesis. It was developed in the mid-20th century by technicians in the German Democratic Republic.
The first fully electronic compositions were written in Germany in the 1950s,[ citation needed ] influenced by musique concrète. In Germany, new music was composed and experiments conducted on electronic equipment that often came originally from physics labs or radio. Development in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the east and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the west differed considerably, as each state defined its own cultural policy.
One result was that young artists and musicians, who saw themselves as the avant-garde, were valued and tolerated differently in the two states; it was easier for musicians in the West to remain independent and experiment without interference. For example, at the Studio for Electronic Music at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne, many new works were written by composers such as Herbert Eimert, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Gottfried Michael Koenig. The publications that came out of the WDR studio found an international audience. Experiments with musical structures and technical innovations were also taking place in studios in Milan, Rome, Eindhoven, Brussels, Gravesano, and New York.
These innovations in music, as well as the use of new electronic sources of sound, were followed with great interest in East Berlin, where the GDR wished to lead in the competitive struggle between the two German states. In around 1960, technical experts at the Labor für Akustisch-Musikalische Grenzprobleme (English: Laboratory for Problems at the Acoustics/Music Interface) began constructing a sound-generating device, which would be a compact sound lab and centerpiece of an electronic music studio, to give East German composers an instrument to work with that was technologically superior to the equipment available in the Western world.
The device utilized the nascent technology of microelectronics, and was based on the mixing of so-called subharmonic sounds. In this respect it was inspired by the Trautonium, a German invention from the 1930s.
A further development of the Trautonium was developed separately by Oskar Sala, called the Mixturtrautonium, a machine used to create the menacing sound of the birds in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds . Unlike all the other electronic instruments in use, the Mixtur-trautonium used subharmonic mixtures to generate sound. The sounds produced by conventional instruments and in the natural world are a combination of a fundamental with a series of harmonic overtones above it. Subharmonic sounds are produced by dividing the fundamental frequency, resulting in subharmonics, or "undertones", which only exist naturally in bells and steel plates, and differ from the sounds produced conventionally by synthesizers and software programmes for electronic music. Sala died without anyone else ever having learned to play the instrument he had built.
In 2000, while researching the history of electronic music instruments, Berlin artist and musician Manfred Miersch discovered the "Subharchord", another instrument which, like the Trautonium, produces subharmonic sounds. This instrument was invented in the GDR under difficult technical conditions, and differs from the Mixturtrautonium in key respects. The Subharchord has a keyboard and is played like an organ, whereas the Mixturtrautonium's manual is a resistor wire over a metal plate, which is pressed at various points to create sound, like a ribbon-controller. In addition, the Subharchord possesses considerably more possibilities than the Mixturtrautonium for generating and manipulating sounds.[ citation needed ]
Miersch's published his discovery in a four-part series in the German magazine Keyboards in 2003, and built a website to promote the Subharchord to a wider audience. One of the surviving instruments has now been restored.
Like its West German counterpart, the Trautonium, the East German Subharchord was used in several film soundtracks. Karl-Ernst Sasse, former conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the DEFA film studio, worked with the subharchord in Dresden on the soundtracks of science fiction films including Signale. The subharchord was also used for many of DEFA's cartoons.
Miersch beteiligte sich mit einer live-performance am „Nodes-Festival für elektroakustische Musik und Klangkunst” in der Akademie der Künste am 1. Juni 2024. Das Konzert dauerte 23 Minuten. Unterstützt wurde er von der Künstlerin Kalma. Einzusehen ist das Konzert unter: Auf den Seiten von Doepfer wird unter Neuigkeiten auf das Konzert verwiesen: subharmonisch (2024, Manfred Miersch feat.Kalma).
„Der unter anderem am Theremin ausgebildete Musiker und Komponist Manfred Miersch ist ein Vermittler zwischen der elektronischen Avantgarde und ihrer Nachfolgegeneration, zwischen den Visionen Karlheinz Stockhausens und dem kosmischen Krautrock Berliner Provenienz: »subharmonisch. 8 Stücke für Mixtur-Trautonium, Subharchord und var-Q-lator↗« entstand als Produktion des Studios für Elektroakustische Musik an der Akademie der Künste. .
„Her(t)z und Untertöne: Manfred Miersch betrachtet sich selbst als 'bildenden Künstler' der mit Tönen, Klängen, Geräuschen und Frequenzen arbeitet und erweckt dabei historische und teilweise vergessene elektronische Musikinstrumente zu neuem Leben.” .
Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instruments. It originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de recherches musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 20th century.
The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterwards Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's death in 2002.
Oskar Sala was a German composer and a pioneer of electronic music. He played an instrument called the Trautonium, an early form of electronic synthesizer.
Harald Genzmer was a German composer of classical music and an academic.
Werner Meyer-Eppler, was a Belgian-born German physicist, experimental acoustician, phoneticist and information theorist.
Herbert Eimert was a German music theorist, musicologist, journalist, music critic, editor, radio producer, and composer.
Kontakte is an electronic music work by Karlheinz Stockhausen, realized in 1958–60 at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) electronic-music studio in Cologne with the assistance of Gottfried Michael Koenig. The score is Nr. 12 in the composer's catalogue of works, and is dedicated to Otto Tomek.
Jean-Claude Éloy is a French composer of instrumental, vocal and electroacoustic music.
York Höller is a German composer and professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln.
Harald Bode was a German engineer and pioneer in the development of electronic musical instruments.
Georg Katzer was a German composer and teacher. The last master student of Hanns Eisler, he composed music in many genres, including works for the stage. Katzer was one of the pioneers of electronic new music in the German Democratic Republic and the founder of the first electronic-music studio in the GDR. He held leading positions in music organisations, first in the East, then in the united Germany, and received many awards, including the Art Prize of the German Democratic Republic, the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the German Music Authors' Prize.
The Berlin Musical Instrument Museum is located at the Kulturforum on Tiergartenstraße in Berlin, Germany. The museum holds over 3,500 musical instruments from the 16th century onward and is one of the largest and most representative musical instrument collections in Germany. Objects include a portable harpsichord once owned by Prussia's Queen Sophie Charlotte, flutes from the collection of Frederick the Great, and Benjamin Franklin's glass harmonica.
Günter Kochan was a German composer. He studied with Boris Blacher and was a master student for composition with Hanns Eisler. From 1967 until his retirement in 1991, he worked as professor for musical composition at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler". He taught master classes in composition at the Academy of Music and the Academy of Arts, Berlin. He was also secretary of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts from 1972 to 1974 and vice-president of the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR from 1977 to 1982. Kochan is one of eleven laureates to have been awarded the National Prize of the GDR four times. In addition, he received composition prizes in the US and Eastern Europe. He became internationally known in particular for his Symphonies as well as the cantata Die Asche von Birkenau (1965) and his Music for Orchestra No. 2 (1987). His versatile oeuvre included orchestral works, chamber music, choral works, mass songs and film music and is situated between socialist realism and avant-garde.
Studie II is an electronic music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen from the year 1954 and, together with his Studie I, comprises his work number ("opus") 3. It is serially organized on all musical levels and was the first published score of electronic music.
Studie I is an electronic music composition by Karlheinz Stockhausen from the year 1953. It lasts 9 minutes 42 seconds and, together with his Studie II, comprises his work number ("opus") 3.
Christoph von Blumröder is a German musicologist.
Hanns-Werner Heister is a German musicologist.
Benedikt Brilmayer is a German musicologist with a focus on organology at the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum.
Volker Straebel is a German musicologist and composer and performer of experimental music.
Joachim Werzlau was a German pianist, radio consultant and composer. He belonged to the first generation of composers in the GDR, where he was also active in organisations and politics. As a pianist, he played for the theatre, for Mary Wigman's dance school, and a kabarett, among others. He composed popular songs, music for audio plays, film scores, incidental music, and three operas. With films such as Nackt unter Wölfen and Jakob der Lügner, he was the most popular film composer of the GDR of his time.
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