The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented [1] in 1930 [2] by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. [3] Soon afterwards Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's death in 2002.
Instead of a keyboard, its manual is made of a resistor wire over a metal plate, which is pressed to create a sound. Expressive playing was possible with this wire by gliding on it, creating vibrato with small movements. Volume was controlled by the pressure of the finger on the wire and board. The first Trautoniums were marketed by Telefunken from 1933 until 1935 (200 were made).
The sounds were at first produced by neon-tube relaxation oscillators [4] (later, thyratrons, then transistors), which produced sawtooth-like waveforms. [5] The pitch was determined by the position at which the performer pressed the resistive wire into contact with the plate beneath it which effectively changed its length, with suitable technique allowing vibrato, quarter tones, and portamento. The oscillator output was fed into two parallel resonant filter circuits. A footpedal controlled the volume ratio of the output of the two filters, which was sent to an amplifier. [6]
On 20 June 1930 Oskar Sala and Paul Hindemith gave a public performance at the Berliner Musikhochschule Hall called "Neue Musik Berlin 1930" to introduce the Trautonium. Later, Oskar Sala toured Germany with the Trautonium; in 1931 he was the soloist in a performance of Hindemith's Concerto for Trautonium with String Quartet. He also soloed in the debut of Hindemith's student Harald Genzmer's Concerto for Trautonium and Orchestra.
Paul Hindemith wrote several short trios for three Trautoniums with three different tunings: bass, middle, and high voice. His student Harald Genzmer wrote two concertos with orchestra, one for the monophonic Trautonium and, later, one for Oskar Sala's Mixtur-Trautonium. One of the first additions of Sala was to add a switch for changing the static tuning. Later he added a noise generator and an envelope generator (so called 'Schlagwerk'), formant filter (several bandpass filters) and the subharmonic oscillators. These oscillators generate a main pitch and several subharmonics, which are not multiples of the fundamental tone, but fractions of it. For either of the (now two) manuals, four of these waves can be mixed and the player can switch through these predefined settings. Thus, it was called the Mixtur-Trautonium. Oskar Sala composed music for industrial films, but the most famous was the bird noises for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds . The Trautonium was also used in the Dresden première of Richard Strauss's Japanese Festival Music in 1942 for emulating the gongs- and bells-parts and in the 1950s in Bayreuth for the Monsalvat bells in Wagner's Parsifal.
The German manufacturer Doepfer sells some devices for the commercial market to allow for Trautonium-like synthesizer control. [7]
The German manufacturer Trautoniks sells custom made Trautoniums. [8]
Oskar Sala developed the Trautonium further and worked with at least one pupil, music therapy pioneer Maria Schüppel. [9] However, Peter Pichler, a Munich musician and artist, had heard the sound of the Trautonium when he was a young man and was fascinated by its emotional impact and dynamic range. Pichler found he could not forget the unique sound; he searched obsessively for anyone who could help him understand the instrument and he finally tracked down Sala. In 1996 the two met in Sala's studio in Berlin, and the result was the preservation of much of Sala's knowledge.[ citation needed ]
Pichler was transformed by the experience but he had to wait fifteen years before he could afford to commission his own Mixturtrautonium from the company Trautoniks. [10] He wrote a musical theater piece about the fathers of the Trautonium, "Wiedersehen in Trautonien", which was performed at the German Museum in Munich, for the 100th birthday of Oskar Sala in 2010. For this theater piece Pichler commissioned three "Volkstrautonien" (a smaller version of the instrument), one of which was bought by the German Museum later for its permanent collection. Pichler is still cooperating closely with the German Museum in Munich that is administering Sala's estate.[ citation needed ] [11]
Since then, Pichler has been making regular appearances with the Mixturtrautonium in various musical genres. The classical music composed for this instrument by Paul Hindemith, Harald Genzmer and Oskar Sala for instance is extremely challenging for even an experienced musician to play.[ citation needed ] [12]
Pichler is one of the very few musicians in the world who has mastered this instrument and is also composing for it. [13]
Daniel Matz plays trautonium on the Agnes Obel albums, Citizen of Glass and Late Night Tales . [14]
The Dutch performer LudoWic [Thijs Lodewijk] [15] also plays the Trautonium and is one of the few people that owns and plays a Mixtur Trautonium.
Subtractive synthesis is a method of sound synthesis in which overtones of an audio signal are attenuated by a filter to alter the timbre of the sound.
Paul Hindemith was a German and American composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the Neue Sachlichkeit style of music in the 1920s, with compositions such as Kammermusik, including works with viola and viola d'amore as solo instruments in a neo-Bachian spirit. Other notable compositions include his song cycle Das Marienleben (1923), Der Schwanendreher for viola and orchestra (1935), the opera Mathis der Maler (1938), the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943), and the oratorio When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1946), a requiem based on Walt Whitman's poem. Hindemith and his wife emigrated to Switzerland and the United States ahead of World War II, after worsening difficulties with the Nazi German regime. In his later years, he conducted and recorded much of his own music.
An analog synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically.
The Electro-Theremin is an electronic musical instrument developed by trombonist Paul Tanner and amateur inventor Bob Whitsell in the late 1950s to produce a sound to mimic that of the theremin. The instrument features a tone and portamento similar to that of the theremin, but with a different control mechanism. It consisted of a sine wave generator with a knob that controlled the pitch, placed inside a wooden box. The pitch knob was attached to a slider on the outside of the box with some string. The player would move the slider, thus turning the knob to the desired frequency, with the help of markings drawn on the box. This contrasts with the theremin, which a performer plays without touching as two antennas sense the position and movement of the performer's hands.
Modular synthesizers are synthesizers composed of separate modules for different functions. The modules can be connected together by the user to create a patch. The outputs from the modules may include audio signals, analog control voltages, or digital signals for logic or timing conditions. Typical modules are voltage-controlled oscillators, voltage-controlled filters, voltage-controlled amplifiers and envelope generators.
A voltage-controlled filter (VCF) is an electronic filter whose operating characteristics can be set by an input control voltage. Voltage-controlled filters are widely used in synthesizers.
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.
The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer invented by the American engineer Robert Moog in 1964. Moog's company, R. A. Moog Co., produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 2014. It was the first commercial synthesizer and established the analog synthesizer concept.
Polyphony is a property of musical instruments that means that they can play multiple independent melody lines simultaneously. Instruments featuring polyphony are said to be polyphonic. Instruments that are not capable of polyphony are monophonic or paraphonic.
The Doepfer A-100 is an analog modular synthesizer system introduced by German audio manufacturer Doepfer in 1995. Although there were only 10 module types at time of release, it currently has more than 120 modules plus several different enclosures and accessories.
Harald Genzmer was a German composer of classical music and an academic.
The Subharchord is a synthesizer featuring subharmonic synthesis. It was developed in the mid-20th century by technicians in the German Democratic Republic.
In music, the undertone series or subharmonic series is a sequence of notes that results from inverting the intervals of the overtone series. While overtones naturally occur with the physical production of music on instruments, undertones must be produced in unusual ways. While the overtone series is based upon arithmetic multiplication of frequencies, resulting in a harmonic series, the undertone series is based on arithmetic division.
A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
Harald Bode was a German engineer and pioneer in the development of electronic musical instruments.
The Doepfer MS-404 is a MIDI analog synthesizer made by the German audio manufacturer Doepfer.
The Swarmatron is an analogue synthesizer developed by Dewanatron, consisting of cousins Brian and Leon Dewan. Hand-made by the Dewans, it has eight oscillators controlled by a single ribbon controller. The oscillators are linked through a 'swarm' control, giving it a distinctive sound that flows in and out of unison, comparable to the noise a swarm of bees produces.
In sound and music, an envelope describes how a sound changes over time. For example, a piano key, when struck and held, creates a near-immediate initial sound which gradually decreases in volume to zero. An envelope may relate to elements such as amplitude (volume), frequency or pitch.
Dietrich Erdmann was a German composer and university lecturer.
Friedrich Trautwein was a German engineer. Trautwein developed the Trautonium and is considered a pioneer of electronic music in Germany.
"Trautonium," the creation of one Dr. Friedrich Trautwein
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