mease ;

SEMIBEGUN 008: THE TRAUTONIUM

Air Date: September 28, 2022

However knowledgeable about the IRS tax code and Harley Davidson motorcycles, my mother has close to zero context for all things electronic music, music technology, and musics of any kind beyond what plays on classic rock and select pop radio stations. An affinity for certain Madonna and Rush hits represents the extent of her proximity to electronic music. More ignorant laymen exist, for sure. Her partner might be an even better candidate, although his purist dedication to outlaw country puts his specialist inclinations into a different order. My mom lives in the mountains of North Carolina along the Tennessee border, just a short drive from the Moog plant in Asheville. During a visit to the factory, an associate gave us an amateur demonstration of the Theremini, Moog’s version of the early electronic instrument, on the show room floor. Afterwards, in our room at the Margaritaville Hotel in Pigeon Forge, I asked if she recognized the instrument’s iconic ethereal spaghetti sound. Maybe she recognized it from films? She replied that it sounds familiar but wasn’t sure from what exactly. She hadn’t considered its origin, it’s to her just a familiar sound in certain contexts like Halloween party mixes and sci-fi b-movie soundtracks (although maybe it was the Ondes Martenot and not the Theremin she’d heard). The Theremin remains one of the oldest and most recognizable electronic musical instruments, and it absolutely deserves attention. Various companies sell them complete or as kits. They’re not terribly difficult to build from scratch. Many people own one. Some of those people actually play it too. But there are quite a few other instruments from the earlier twentieth-century arguably more interesting and versatile in terms of sound and performance. We’re here to talk about one of those instruments: the Trautonium.

The Trautonium’s inventor, German electrical engineer Freidrich Trautwein, intended the design of his instrument to free the performer from the restrictions of the piano keyboard’s fixed intonation. A performer pushes a wire into a metal plate to complete a circuit which generates sound. Chromatic tuning is marked for convenience and the continuous wire allows for glissandi, vibrato, and other expressive gestures. The performer can also easily play microtones, although the instrument’s microtonal potential is less often exploited in the repertoire than its gesturally expressive capabilities. The original monophonic Trautonium used a simple vacuum tube system to generate sawtooth-like sounds. But the Trautonium’s warmth and timbral palette extend well beyond a simple sawtooth generator. Its special tone quality results primarily from the subharmonic oscillators (independent dividers that generate new frequencies from the fundamental) and the formant filters (a series of bandpass filters that shapes the sound like a form of subtractive synthesis). The harmonic vibrancy coupled with the filter’s ability to dial in the tone makes other instruments from the 1920s and 30s sound quite plain in comparison. Oskar Sala, the most famous performer on the Trautonium’s short roster, contributed quite a few of his own innovations including the subharmonic oscillators in the next generation of the instrument, the polyphonic Mixtur-Trautonium. Sala primarily used this expanded instrument in his records and sound design projects after World War II.

So, it sounds great with flexible intonation and a lot of expressive potential. Do people still play the Trautonium? A few companies still make various models, like Doepfer's modular A-100 Trautonium System and Trautonik's reproductions (and Moog’s Subharmonicon similarly produces subharmonics although it isn’t a Mixtur-Trautonium proper), but few performers play the instrument seriously and few composers write for it. Historically this is also true. German composer Paul Hindemith wrote music for the instrument as did his student Harald Genzmer. Hindemith’s 7 Trio Pieces For 3 Trautoniums, a personal favorite, demonstrates the versatility of the instrument’s character through a series of miniatures. Genzmer’s Scherzo für Mixtur-Trautonium und Klavier and Hindemith’s Concertino for Trautonium with Strings present the Trautonium in context, and stark contrast, with familiar acoustic instruments. Strings unsurprisingly melt into the instrument’s texture while the piano offers a timbral and percussive counterpoint. Not many concert pieces have been written since the 1950s, although within the past decade there have been a few like Manuela Kerer’s 2016 piece Feuernde Seele for Mixtur-Trautonium and orchestra. A handful of others from 2019 were written specifically for performance by Peter Pichler, perhaps the only current Trautonium player with the level of skill and enthusiasm to rival Oskar Sala and continue the craft. Like Sala, he also composes and scores films as well as performs the instrument’s limited repertoire. In addition to Pichler, a small number of Trautonium enthusiasts primarily on YouTube perform short solo compositions and improvisations with their instruments. These include Ghost Money and LudoWic, both producing very lovely work. Other than the composers and performers just listed, there’s not a lot going on currently in the Trautonium world, at least not easily visible on the English-speaking part of the internet. It’s not impossible that there exists a large haven of Trautonium enthusiasts somewhere, churning out new works at this very moment.

Certainly, many of the instruments developed before the mid-twentieth century have been more neglected and forgotten than the Trautonium. Scrolling through the list of instruments on the 120 Years of Electronic Music website, most of these names are unknown to me. Unlike the Rhythmicon or the Electrophon, the Trautonium did receive a limited commercial production run as the “Volkstrautonium” by German company Telefunken; but due to various factors including price and user-unfriendliness, no one really bought them.[1] Despite this lack of commercial success, Paul Hindemith and Oskar Sala provided enough PR for the instrument by way of impressive musical output. The Ondes Martenot, invented around the same time with several design similarities, attracted even more major composers including Olivier Messiaen, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Edgard Varèse. Its ethereal sound shows up in more movies. The number of active performers also outnumbers that of the Trautonium, with high profile musicians like Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead still bringing attention to the Ondes. This does not make one instrument superior to the other (although the Trautonium arguably achieves more timbral variety). The comparative lack of attention towards the Trautonium does, however, indicate a need to promote the subject of this essay. The people deserve a Trautonium renaissance! So perhaps start by listening to what the instrument has offered, then imagine what else it might do.

[1] "The ‘Trautonium’ Dr Freidrich Trautwein. Germany, 1930," 120 Years of Electronic Music, accessed October 1, 2022, <https://120years.net/wordpress/the-trautoniumdr-freidrich-trautweingermany1930/>.