The ondes Martenot was invented in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot. Martenot was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators, and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello.
The ondes Martenot (French for "Martenot waves") is one of the earliest electronic instruments,[2][3][4] patented in the same year as another early electronic instrument, the theremin.[2] It was invented in 1928 by the French cellist Maurice Martenot.[2] Martenot had been a radio operator during World War I, and developed the ondes Martenot in an attempt to replicate the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators.[2] He hoped to bring the musical expressivity of the cello to his new instrument.[5] According to The Guardian, the ondes Martenot visually resembles a cross between an organ and a theremin.[2]
Martenot first demonstrated the ondes Martenot on April 20, 1928,[6] performing Dimitrios Levidis's Poème symphonique at the Paris Opera.[7] He embarked on a number of performance tours to promote it, beginning in Europe before going to New York.[8] In 1930, he performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra, after which he embarked on a world tour.[8] In 1937, the ondes Martenot was displayed at the Exposition Internationale de Paris with concerts and demonstrations in an ensemble setting with up to twelve ondists performing together at a time.[8] Beginning in 1947, the ondes Martenot was taught at the Paris Conservatory, with Martenot as the first teacher.[9]
Units were manufactured to order.[6] Over the following years, Martenot produced several new models, introducing the ability to produce vibrato by moving the keys, a feature adapted in the 1970s by some Yamaha GX-1 synthesisers.[3] Martenot was uninterested in mass-producing the ondes Martenot, which may have contributed to its decline in popularity following initial interest.[8] Jean-Louis Martenot, Maurice Martenot's son, created new ondes Martenot models.[3] In 2009, the Guardian reported that the last ondes Martenot was manufactured in 1988, but that a new model was being manufactured.[2]
Sounds and technique
A recording of the Ondomo, an instrument based on the ondes Martenot
The ondes Martenot is unique among electronic musical instruments in its methods of control.[10] The ondes Martenot can be played with a metal ring worn on the right index finger. Sliding the ring along a wire produces "theremin-like" tones, generated by oscillator circuits using vacuum tubes,[2] or transistors in the seventh model.[11][12]
The third model, unveiled in 1929, had a non-functioning simulacrum of a keyboard below the wire to indicate pitch.[13] This model also had a "black fingerguard" on a wire which could be used instead of the ring. It was held between the right thumb and index finger, which was played standing at a distance from the instrument. When played in this way, the drawer is removed from the instrument and placed on a bench next to the player. Maurice Martenot's pedagogical manual for the ondes Martenot, written in 1931, offers instruction on both methods of playing.[14]
Au ruban playing techniqueDiffuseurs from left to right: Métallique, Palme, and cabinet containing both Principal and Résonance[15]
Later versions added a real functioning keyboard;[13] the keys produce vibrato when moved from side to side. This was introduced in the 1930s with the 84-key fourth version of the instrument.[16][17] Subsequent versions had 72 keys. Combined with a switch that transposes the pitch by one octave, these instruments have a range from C1 to C8.[18] A drawer allows manipulation of volume and timbre by the left hand.[19] Volume is controlled with a touch sensitive glass "lozenge".[2]
Early models can produce only a few waveforms.[19] Later models can simultaneously generate sine, peak-limited triangle, square, pulse, and full-wave rectified sine waves, in addition to pink noise, all controlled by switches in the drawer.[20] The square wave and full-wave rectified sine wave can be further adjusted by sliders in the drawer. On the Seventh model, a dial at the top of the drawer adjusts the balance between white noise and the other waveforms. A second dial adjusts the balance between the three speakers. A switch chooses between the keyboard and ribbon.[21]
Further adjustments can be made using controls in the body of the instrument. These include several dials for tuning the pitch, a dial for adjusting the overall volume, a switch to transpose the pitch by one octave, and a switch to activate a filter.[21] The drawer of the seventh model also includes six transposition buttons, which change the pitch by different intervals.[22] These can be combined to immediately raise the pitch by up to a minor ninth.[23]
Martenot produced four speakers, called diffuseurs, for the instrument.[24] The Métallique features a gong instead of a speaker cone, producing a metallic timbre. It was used by the first ondes Martenot quartets in 1932.[16] Another, the Palme speaker, has a resonance chamber laced with strings tuned to all 12 semitones of an octave; when a note is played in tune, it resonates a particular string, producing chiming tones.[2][25] It was first presented alongside the sixth version of the ondes Martenot in 1950.[26]
According to The Guardian, the ondes Martenot "can be as soothing and moving as a string quartet, but nerve-jangling when gleefully abused".[2] Greenwood described it as "a very accurate theremin that you have far more control of ... When it's played well, you can really emulate the voice."[25]The New York Times described its sound as a "haunting wail".[6]
Use
Classical music
The ondes Martenot is used in many classical compositions,[3] most notably by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen first used it in Fête des belles eaux, for six ondes,[27] and went on to use it in several more works, including Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine and Saint François d'Assise. For his Turangalîla-Symphonie, Messiaen used it to create "shimmering, swooping musical effects".[6] This symphony featured the ondes Martenot and piano as soloists against the backdrop of a large orchestra. It is widely renowned as a masterpiece, and its fame associated the ondes Martenot with Messiaen.[9] Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod, arranged and edited four unpublished Feuillets inédits for ondes Martenot and piano which were published in 2001.[28]
According to the New York Times, the ondes' most celebrated performer was the French musician Jeanne Loriod (1928–2001), who studied under Martenot at the Paris Conservatory. She performed internationally in more than 500 works, created 85 works for a sextet of ondes she formed in 1974, and wrote a three-volume book on the instrument, Technique de l'Onde Electronique Type Martenot.[6] A British pupil of Jeanne Loriod, John Morton of Darlington (1931-2014), performed his own ondes instrument in works by Messiaen, Milhaud, Honegger and Bartok, amongst others, at the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere in the 1970s, as well as on television and radio.[32]
The English composer Hugh Davies estimated that more than 1,000 works had been composed for the ondes.[6]Jeanne Loriod estimated that there were 15 concertos and 300 pieces of chamber music.[6] The instrument was also popular in French theatres such as the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre National Populaire and the Folies-Bergère. [33]
The Guardian described Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead as a "champion" of the ondes Martenot. He first used it on Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A, and it appears in Radiohead songs including "The National Anthem", "How to Disappear Completely" and "Where I End and You Begin".[13] Radiohead have performed versions of their songs "How to Disappear Completely" and "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" using several ondes Martenots.[2] On their 2001 album Amnesiac, they used the ondes martenot palm speaker to add a "halo of hazy reverberance" to Thom Yorke's vocals on the song "You and Whose Army?".[25] In 2011, Greenwood composed a piece for two ondes Martenots, Smear.[35]
Composer Danny Elfman used the instrument in the soundtrack to the comedy science fiction film Mars Attacks!: he had originally intended to use a theremin, but was unable to find a musician who could play one.[46]
The British composer Barry Gray studied the instrument with Martenot in Paris, and used it in his soundtracks for 1960s films including Dr Who and the Daleks, and Doppelgänger,[3] as well as his scores for Gerry Anderson's TV series, such as Fireball XL5. One of Gray's instruments (a valve model 6 from 1969) was inherited and restored by film composer François Evans who used it in Edgar Wright's first feature film: A Fistful of Fingers, and occasionally records with this instrument in his soundtracks. Evans studied ondes Martenot under Pascale Rousse-Lacordaire, pupil of Maurice Martenot and Jeanne Loriod.[53]
The ondes Martenot is sometimes reported as having been used in the original Star Trek theme; in fact, the part was performed by a singer.[2]
Legacy
In 2001, the New York Times described the ondes, along with other early electronic instruments such as the theremin, teleharmonium, trautonium, and orgatron, as part of a "futuristic electric music movement that never went remotely as far as its pioneers dreamed ... proponents of the new wired music delighted in making previously unimaginable noises".[6] The French classical musician Thomas Bloch said: "The ondes martenot is probably the most musical of all electric instruments ... Martenot was not only interested in sounds. He wanted to use electricity to increase and control the expression, the musicality. Everything is made by the musician in real time, including the control of the vibrato, the intensity, and the attack. It is an important step in our electronic instrument lineage."[13]
According to music journalist Alex Ross, fewer than 100 people have mastered the ondes Martenot.[4] In 1997, Mark Singer wrote for The Wire that it would likely remain obscure: "The fact is that any instrument with no institutional grounding of second- and third-raters, no spectral army of amateurs, will wither and vanish: how can it not? Specialist virtuosos may arrive to tackle the one-off novelty ... but there's no meaningful level of entry at the ground floor, and, what's worse, no fallback possibility of rank careerism if things don't turn out."[6]
The ondes Martenot's electronics are fragile, and it includes a powder which transfers electric currents, which Martenot would mix in different quantities according to musicians' specifications; the precise proportions are unknown. Attempts to construct new ondes Martenot models using Martenot's original specifications have led to mixed results.[13]
In 2000, Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead commissioned the synthesiser company Analogue Systems to develop a replica of the ondes Martenot, as he was nervous about damaging his instrument on tour. The replica, called the French Connection, imitates the ondes Martenot's control mechanism, but does not generate sound; instead, it controls an external oscillator.[3]
A version called Ondéa was also created in the 2000s.[2] In 2011, Sound on Sound wrote that original ondes Martenot models were "all but impossible to obtain or afford, and unless you can stump up 12,000 Euros for one of Jean‑Loup Dierstein's new reproduction instruments, the dream of owning a real Ondes is likely to remain such".[3] In 2012, the Canadian company Therevox began selling a synthesizer with an interface based on the ondes Martenot pitch ring and intensity key.[54] In 2017, the Japanese company Asaden manufactured 100 Ondomo instruments, a portable version of the ondes Martenot.[55]
References
^Sibyl Marcuse, "Ondes Martenot", Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary, corrected edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975): 377.
^Robert Simonson (9 September 2004), Tom Waits' Black Rider Extends Again at ACT, Playbill.com, archived from the original on 29 June 2011, retrieved 7 June 2012, The score of The Black Rider calls for an eclectic pit of such instruments as the toy piano, the pocket trumpet, the Stroh violin, the Ondes Martenot, the glass harmonica, the Cristal Baschet, the drunk piano and the musical saw.
^Ivan Hewett (23 June 2007), "A whole new aria for Damon", The Daily Telegraph, London, He shows me some of the instruments in the ensemble: there's a glass harmonica, which looks like a giant ribbed glass vase tipped on one side, and an ondes Martenot, the tremulous 1920s electronic instrument. ...
^Philippe Langlois (2012). Les Cloches d'Atlantis. Musique électroacoustique et cinéma. Archéologie et histoire d'un art sonore. Paris: Éditions MF. p. 119.
Bloch, Thomas (July 2004). Music for ondes Martenot. Naxos Records, 8.555779.
Loriod, Jeanne (1987). Technique de l'onde electronique type martenot (in French). Paris: Alphonse Leduc. ISMN 979-0-04-626275-3.
Martenot, Maurice (1931). Methode pour l'enseignement des ondes musicales: instrument radio-électrique martenot [Method for Teaching the Ondes Martenot: Martenot's Radioelectric Instrument] (in French). Paris: Alphonse Leduc. ISMN 979-0-04-617828-3.
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