Six mind-blowing early electronic instruments
In our world of plugins and Korg synthesisers, it’s easy to forget there was once a time when the world of electronic music was an untapped realm. We tend to think that the dawn of electronic instruments began in the 1950s and ’60s with the arrival of Mr Moog and his excellent synths. Still, electricity has been used in the design of musical instruments since the mid-18th century.
Take J.B Delaborde, a Jesuit priest who, in 1761, invented the electric harpsichord, or ‘Clavessin Électrique’. This was an era of technological and scientific innovation, and music benefitted from both. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, inventors incorporated solenoids, motors and other electromechanical elements into their musical inventions.
However, it wasn’t until William Duddell’s singing arc that a musical instrument was invented that could produce notes by purely electric means. First demonstrated in 1899, Duddell’s instrument employed a keyboard to modify the pulsation rate of an exposed electric arc, producing different musical notes.
Over the next 50 years, an incredible variety of weird and wonderful instruments emerged. Here, we’ve bought you five of the most dazzling. Some are still used today; others exist only in documents and diagrams. All of them, however, deserve to be brought back into the limelight.
Six mind-blowing early electronic instruments:
The Ondes Martenot (1928)
There are few instruments quite as haunting as this early synthesiser. Invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot, the Ondes Martenot is a monophonic keyboard instrument that has been used by a surprising amount of composers, including Arthur Honneger, Olivier Messiaen and, more recently, Jonny Greenwood.
Combining a keyboard section and a pull wire operated by a ribbon controller, the Ondes Martenot is unlike traditional keyboard instruments in that the keys can shift, meaning that notes can be pitch-shifted up and down, creating ghostly glissandos. The most famous use of the Ondes Martenot is probably in Elmer Bernstein’s original score for Ghostbusters. Below, you can watch Jonny Greenwood playing the instrument with Radiohead.
The Choralcelo (1909)
Named for the “heavenly voices” it emitted, the Choralcelo was a hybrid electronic instrument disguised as a commercial, domestic organ. It was marketed towards wealthy Americans living in grand country houses – mainly because the instrument, designed band developed by Melvin L. Severy, was an absolute behemoth.
In March 1916, The Electrical Experimenter Magazine described the Choralcelo as the “most wonderful musical instrument ever thought out by the human mind”. They praised its “natural overtones and harmonics; rich – full – pure and perfect, thus opening to the musician wonderful possibilities of expression and emotional power of which he possibly never dreamed”.
The Glass Harmonium (1761)
Though technically an acoustic instrument, this stunning piece of musical engineering still deserves a place on our list. Invented by founding father Benjamin Franklin in 1761, The Glass Harmonium – also known as the glass harmonica – was one of the most celebrated instruments of the 18th century. Featuring a series of spinning glass bowls, each of which produces a different musical note when touched, the glass harmonium creates the same kind of sonorous note you can conjure by rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass.
Everyone from Beethoven and Mozart to Donizetti and Saint-Saëns wrote music for the glass harmonium, but by the 1820s, it was falling out of favour. Why? Well, over the years, many disturbing events became associated with the instrument. Many players fell ill, often complaining of muscle spasms, cram, dizzy spells and nervousness.
In Germany, a child died halfway through a performance, suggesting that the ethereal instrument had the power to conjure the spirits of the dead. Benjamin Franklin continued playing his harmonium until his life’s end without any side effects. To this day, no explanation has been found for the illnesses. Below you can see the glass harmonium in action in a performance of Saint-Saëns’ ‘The Aquarium’.
The Theremin (1920)
Utilised by everyone from Led Zeppelin to Dmitri Shostakovich, the Theremin is perhaps the most innovative instrument ever to be discovered totally by accident. That’s right, unlike the other instruments on this list, the Theremin wasn’t devised for musical purposes at all. In fact, it was an accidental byproduct of Soviet-sponsored research into proximity sensors, hence why it doesn’t even need to be touched to be played.
Instead, the thereminist moves their hands in the proximity of two metal antennas. The pitch of a note is determined by the distance from one antenna, while the distance from the other determines the volume. The closer the hand, the higher the note. For a time, there was a huge amount of interest in the Theremin, and several amazing recordings remain from this golden age. Sadly, the instrument fell into disuse by serious musicians with the introduction of Moog synth technology.
The Telharmonium (1897)
The Telharmonium was invented in 1897 by Thaddeus Cahil and had its public debut in 1906. Weighing in at 210 tonnes, the instrument used rotating electromagnetic generators to produce electrophonic pulses picked up by telephone receivers and translated into sound.
Because the Telharmonium was invented before speakers, the only way to make the resulting sound audible was to funnel it through acoustic horns. As you would expect, the telharmonium didn’t catch on, despite Cahill’s tireless promotion. In 1914 the inventor filed for bankruptcy, and his instruments were sold for scrap. Sadly, that means we have no idea what the instrument sounded like, though there are a couple of fraudulent Youtubers who will try to convince you otherwise.
Trautonium (1930)
Invented in Germany in 1930 by Freidrich Trautwein, the Trautonium is a relative of the Ondes Martenot in that it is a monophonic analogue proto-synthesizer. Unlike Martenot’s instrument, however, the Trautonium is played by the action of fingers on a metal resistor wire, which is mounted on a metal plate known as the ‘playground’. The volume of a note is determined by the pressure applied to the ‘keys’ in much the same way as the piano, so it was surprisingly user-friendly, even if you could only play one note at a time.
The instrument is also capable of many tone colours thanks to a neon light which generates weaker frequencies. When controlled by appropriate buttons, these frequencies affect the upper harmonic, making an array of tones and timbres available. Indeed, it proved so dexterous that Oscar Sala used its descendant, the Mixtur-Trautonium, in his electronic score for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
