Music is probably as old as the human voice. Biblical references suggest that musical instruments have existed for millenia. Electricity has been used to make music only during the past century. And the voltage-controlled synthesizer has been in use for a scant decade.
History lends perspective. In this column we will explore how electricity has been used to make music, and try to place electronic keyboards in context with other musical instruments.
An instrument is a utensil, a means by which something is achieved or performed. Implicit in this definition is the idea that the development of instruments is a facet of technology. Musical instruments certainly have never been exempt from dependence on technology. Instruments of the orchestra became possible only as woodworking and metallurgy were developed. And the escapement mechanism in the piano is as much an outgrowth of technology as the loom or the spinning wheel. Electronic musical instruments are no more a product of technology than are earlier instruments: they merely reflect a contemporary technology — electronics.
The first encounter with a new technology is often uncomfortable. How alien the gaudy dynamics of the early pianoforte must have sounded to the clavichordists’ pristine ears! When a musical instrument is in its infancy, its musical validity is invariably subject to question. Is this so surprising? Most instruments, electronic or otherwise, are not introduced at maturity, but undergo considerable evolution, To understand this evolution helps us understand the instrument and its music.
Not being aware of the history of electronic instruments, we tend to divorce them in our minds from ten centuries of legitimate musical roots. A look backward can be both instructive and entertaining. Instructive because observation of the successes and failures of musical instrument design sharpens our appreciation of the musical values that remain valid throughout time, and entertaining because this particular historical landscape is filled with extravagant overstatement, outrageous nonsense, elegant idealism, and, occasionally, sublime prophecy. Here are a few samples:
Every time I see or hear a new wonder like this I have to postpone my death right off. I couldn’t possibly leave this world until have heard this again and again. — Mark Twain, on hearing the Cahill Telharmonium (1906).
Dr. Cahill’s instrument gives us a hint of what the music of the future may be like. With its wires spreading in every direction, the best music may be delivered at towns, villages, and even farmhouses up to a hundred miles or more from the central station. — R.S. Baker, on the Cahill Telharmonium (1906).
All the fixtures and machinery belonging to the Cahill Telharmonium Company were placed on ten flat cars this morning and will be shipped to New York, where Mr. Cahill has already opened a large factory. — Holyoke Transcript (April 25, 1911).
In all my work with the audion, I have never found any phase of its unlimited possibilities quite so interesting as this of producing musical notes. In the next twelve months I hope to be able to produce an instrument….. — Lee de Forest, on the use of the triode tube as an oscillator (1915).
Mager produced today an organ with many registrations on which four-voice playing is possible. So far there is only one difficulty, that is, that each voice must have its own keyboard, thus the four-voice movement must be played on three manuals and the pedal. For this reason the manuals must be close to each other and the keys short, so that one can easily play on several manuals with one hand. — Newspaper review of Jörg Mager’s Klaviatur-Spaerophon (1930).
With the technical means of radio something much higher and more powerful could be achieved, namely to place at the disposal of music the totality of all additional over tones on which the timbre depends. With this totality a new world of sounds can be created which can overshadow all that has been achieved until now. — Jörg Mager, pioneer designer (c. 1935).
We do not like to think of a populace at the mercy of this fearfully magnified and potent tone that Professor Theremin has brought into the world. The radio machines are bad enough, but what will happen to the auditory nerves in a land where super-Theremin machines can hurl a jazz ditty through the atmosphere with such horribly magnificent sonorities that they could deaden the sound of an automobile exhaust from twenty miles away? — Newspaper review of a Theremin concert (1929).
While electro-acoustics has dealt in the last few years primarily with problems of reproduction, I wish to prepare for the creative artist new possibilities of expression. Mechanical music has not enriched art as such, but only enlarged it in respect to the former case. I, however, believe that I am serving creative art through my work before all and, therefore, contributing to the reconciliation of the two branches of the human mind which have erroneously been placed in opposition to each other: art and technology. — Friedrich Trautwein, on his development of the Trautonium (1930).
This new stringless piano may be the forerunner of a whole new class of electronic musical instruments of widely differing tonal performance. The lowly fixed-free reed, virtually the “sow’s ear” among musical vibrators, has become the “silk purse” of electronic design and technique with the great advantages of low cost and weight, silence when desired with headsets, and the ability to stay in tune for many decades. — B.F. Miessner, on his struck-reed electric piano (1945).
This new Orgatron conforms to the standards and recommendations of the American Guild of Organists. The Orgatron looks, sounds, and plays like a pipe organ! — Brochure on the Everett Orgatron (ca. 1935).
It is possible to make a photographic record of the most perfect tones of Kreisler or Caruso, and adapt them to the tone records of the Superpiano. The Superpiano will then not only sound with the tone colorings of Kreisler’s violin or Caruso’s voice, but will compel the former to play contrabass and the latter to sing bass. — E. Spielmann, on his Superpiano photoelectric organ (1931).
At the present writing, plans are being discussed with a view to a symphony orchestra which is composed exclusively of electronic organs, of which there will be about 35. — Description of plans to use Ivan Eremeeff’s Syntronic Organ in an electronic orchestra to be conducted by Leopold Stokowski (1934).
In building the Pianorad it was found that the simplest method is to fill the center holes of the windings with modeling clay, and then to stick the iron wires into the clay. In this way a very gradual change in pitch can be made and it can be held constant at the desired value.. — Technical detail of the construction of Hugo Gernsback’s Pianorad (1926).
The Coupleux-Givelet Organ, like de Forest’s plan, utilizes one audio-frequency oscillator tube for each note of the musical scale. For each different timbre they use a complete series of such oscillators followed by an amplifier and speaker. Thus, for 10 different timbres through a pitch range of 70 notes, they use 700 oscillator tubes and 10 amplifier and reproducer outfits. — Description of the French Coupleux-Givelet Organ (1930).
It is going to be about as easy to keep the Hammond Novachord out of every orchestra as it would be to bar a saxophone from a jazz band. Not only does it produce several instruments for the price of one, but it produces tones that no one ever imagined outside a Thorne Smith alcoholic extravaganza. — Nicolas De Vore (1939).
In the method and apparatus of this invention the composer, arranger, or conductor has at his command means for controlling the quality of each note, its intensity, intensity envelope, the degree of accent, duration, and tempo, without necessarily affecting any other note or tone of the composition. — John Hanert, on his encoded-performance synthesizer developed at the Hammond Organ Company (1945).
Engineers and composers now acknowledge that the consistent and systematic use of voltage-controlled instruments simplifies both the generation of complex, dynamically varying sounds and the arrangement of these sounds into a composition. — Dr. Robert A. Moog, on the Moog Synthesizer (1967).
Hindsight is equipped with 20/20 vision. From our vantage point we can appreciate the humor, pathos, or brilliance of prior developments. Hopefully, our glances into the past will lend some perspective on the use of contemporary electronic keyboards, and will foster the vision for future developments.
JANUARY 1977
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