SALA, OSKAR

The History

Oskar Sala, born in 1910 in Thuringia, studied composition under Paul Hindemith at the Berlin Academy of Music. He also became acquainted there with Dr. Friedrich Trautwein who was working on an electronic musical instrument called the Trautonium. Nineteen-year-old Oskar Sala was so fascinated by the project that he began studying with Trautwein and within a very short time gained sufficient knowledge to take over development of the prototype into a playable instrument. Hindemith had ordered three specimens, which were used for the first time in 1930 in the premiere performance of his Triostuecke fuer drei Trautonien.

The first Trautoniums were monophonic. They were based on an oscillator with a glimmer lamp and were already able to produce continuous alteration of the tone colour. Serving as a manual was a horizontally stretched wire, which was pressed against the metal rod beneath it.

Further development of the Trautonium moved more and more away from Trautwein himself. But with his talent for organisation he supported Sala at a time when Hindemith had already been compelled to leave Germany. Sala had an opportunity to work on a large-scale Radio Trautonium. This was marked in particular by a second manual and considerably expanded technical tonal possibilities. A Konzert fuer Trautonium und Orchester was performed for the first time with this instrument in Weimar in 1936. It was composed by Harald Genzmer who, like Sala, was a student of Hindemith. The next development phase was the Concert Trautonium, a model which could easily be transported and was independent of radio. The Thyratron electronic tubes produced by AEG were used in these instruments to bring about the oscillations.

After the war Oskar Sala succeeded in discovering a long-sought circuit which was able to place the Trautonium on the basis of subharmonic mixtures (the subharmonic tone series results from whole sequence division of the fundamental frequency and runs in mirror image to the overtone row). Since 1949 until 1952 he built, based on these researches, the Mixturtrautonium, with patents in the Federal Republic, France and the USA. Subsequently it was expanded by an electronic percussion unit- a device which nowadays would probably be called an "envelope generator". Also added were an electronic metronome and a noise generator.

Oskar Sala, who up to that point had been primarily active as a developer and virtuoso player of the Trautonium, now became more engaged in composing his own music. In 1958 he equipped his first independent studio, which he soon afterwards expanded into a workshop for electronic film music. The most famous example of Sala's film music work is Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "The Birds". Down to the present time he has produced over 300 film music works, many of which were awarded prizes, as well as a large number of independent pieces, like the Elektronische Impressionen 1-9, published in 1979.

With the Mixturtrautonium too, the sound production was still based on the Thyratron tube. However, with the emergence of transistor and micro-electronics the idea arose of building a new instrument with these media. Three professors of the German Postal Department's vocational college in Berlin - Hans-Joerg Borowicz, Dietmar Rudolph and Helmut Zahn - took over with their students and the college workshop the design and construction of the new instrument, which they called the Mixturtrautonium based on Oskar Sala. Sala was able to introduce it to the public for the first time in 1988 with the premiere performance of the Fantasie-Suite fuer Mixturtrautonium solo.

Mixturtrautonium - The Instrument

The essential design principles of the Mixturtrautonium were retained in the development of the semi-conductor version: sound production on the basis of subharmonic mixture, and the method of playing with two string manuals The latter are made of two wire-covered catgut strings, which act as variable electric resistors. According to the position at which they are pressed against the contact rail beneath them, they control the frequencies of the electronic sound generators. When the finger glides over the string a continuous glissando results over the entire tonal region which has just been tuned up.

Micro-tonal intervals can be produced without problems. To ensure accurate contact with the notes, leather-covered, sprung and movable metal tongues are attached to each string. In a c-tuning they are located above the notes c, d g and a in each octave. Unlike with a vibrating string, the mensuration of the electrical string manual is linear and not exponential, so that all octaves have the same fingering range. Pitch, tone colour and volume are independent of the length, tension and mass of the string.

Each manual, including the contact rail, has a springed base and is equipped with a pressure-sensitive liquid-resister, which allows for variable volume and sound shaping when playing. Pitch and tone formation can therefore be determined in one movement process. In addition, the coarse dynamics can be changed with the help of two pedal regulators. These also have another important function: by movements to the right or left various octave positions or subharmonic dispositions can be effected.

The clear advantage of the semi-conductor Trautonium over the tube version is the absolute precision in subharmonic frequency division, which in principle functions as follows:

We know the overtones - joining the (deep) basic frequency f are the overtones 2f, 3f..., nf and determine according to ordinal number and amplitude the tone colour of the root (See notation example page 10). In reversed mirror image we derive from a high frequency f the undertones or subharmonics 1/2f, 1/3f...., 1/nf (notation example page 10).

Each string controls the frequency of a top oscillator. This operates parallel four dividers whose signals in their interrelationship result in a "mixture". Each divider can be switched to one of maximum 24 values (20 in the case of tube equipment). Three settings each can be pre-selected, which correspond with the sideways switch positions of a Trautonium pedal. Additionally to the frequency of the top oscillator a simultaneously working frequency ("neighbouring tone") in a freely determinable interval can be produced, which alternatively is available for one of the dividers.

In this way it is possible, for instance, to make a major characteristic from the minor chord pattern of the subharmonic series. The squarewave-shaped basic signal of a divider initially enters a transformer which turns it into a sawtooth wave. Together with noise proportions which can be admixed, the latter is passed to a formant filter which can impress on this raw material the vowel sounds u, o, a, e, i or gliding transitions.

Each of the four mixture dividers has its own filter. The next processing step is taken by the channel amplifiers, with the four sound components being adjusted to each other in volume. What is known as the "percussion unit" produces an envelope with adjustable values for "attack" and "decay", by means of which via the channel amplifier percussive sound developments can be produced. The mixture formed from the four channels goes into the "master amplifier", whose intensity during performance is influenced by the pedal pressure as well as the liquid resistor beneath the manual.

Trautonium "Contra" Synthesizer

What the trautonium possesses -and this is far more advanced than the many synthesizers available at the present time-, are its real-time possibilities and direct recourse to its parameters by turning buttons and using switches. Unrestricted arrangement of pitch level, tone colour and volume is guaranteed at any point during performance. As opposed to the synthesizer, which is played with organ-like keys, the trautonium offers the intonation freedom of fretless string instruments as well as major virtuoso demands. Microtonal intervals can be effortlessly produced. With synthesizers the shaping of tone and volume is bound to envelope-generators.

These can, it is true, be freely adjusted and accentuated by touch dynamics, but nevertheless they still have a standardising effect. Freer tonal modelling can probably be effected by way of after touch and control wheels. On the other hand the galvanic cue regulators of the trautonium can be operated with far greater delicacy. There is no doubt at all that present-day synthesizers provide better possibilities of "midi" and automated music production.

Oskar Sala, however, is inclined to be sceptical towards computers or sequencers, as well as towards the widespread synthesizer music marked by these processes. In concert performances of the kind of music in particular he misses a certain intensity which only a musician playing with hands and feet and with his whole body can produce.
Translated by: Frederick A. Bishop and Jan Reetze

The compositions of Oskar Sala on the CD "My Fascinating Instrument"

1. FANTASY IN THREE PARTS FOR MIXTURTRAUTONIUM SOLO (1988/89)
"Demonstration"
Mixture sounds and string music, space- and echo effects with linear shifting frequency variations, percussion effects, and prior to the coda a fantasy scene from the intermediate region of sounds and noises.
"Skala Nuova"
A new, linear-shifted tone scale from the upper manual string with an additional percussion effect, accompanied on the lower manual by mixture arpeggios; the stereoscopic sound disappears in a brief echo bridge. In the coda frequency-shifted feedback effects are added to the new scale
"Farbmelodie"
A new theme alternates with that of the first movement; delicate sound colours produce frequency-converted waves of music; harmonic tonal patterns result from echo effects.

2. "SPEECH OF THE DEAD CHRIST FROM THE UNIVERSE SAYING THERE IS NO GOD" Jean Paul (1797)
Bells toll the speaker to sleep. He dreams, and awakens in a churchyard. The dead have arisen, avalanches, earthquakes, fires, shadows. Christ floats down from heaven. The choir of the dead calls: "Christ is not a God?" Christ: "There is none". He flies through the cosmos: "Father, where are thou?" He calls out: "Rigid, mute nothing."

The Universe in uproar! Christ intervenes: "Cold eternal necessity! Insane coincidence! When will ye crush the structure and me?" He encounters a human being: "Thou believest him still and calleth: Thou knowest me too, eternal one".Choir: "Also me, me, I". Christ: "Ye miserable ones, ye awaken at gloomy midnight. Mortal, pray to him, or you have lost him for ever". Bells ring again. Speaker: My soul wept with joy when I awoke, and between heaven and earth a happy finite world spread its brief wings.

3. LARGO Homage to Hermann Scherchen A Solo with harmonic echoes for the Mixturtrautonium, 1990.

4. FANFARE Solo for a specific sound colour of the Mixturtrautonium, from 1952

5. IMPRESSION ELECTRONIQUE Homage to Bourges A composition for tape, not possible to perform live, in continuation of the "Electronischen Impressionen Nr. 1-9", premiere performance at the "XVIIe Festival internationale musique expermentale Bourges"(France)on June 8,'87.

6. ELECTRONIC DANCE SUITE For Mixturtrautonium Solo and Mixturorchestra (Tape) in five parts (1955 and 1989) Concertando rubato - Espressivo - Giocoso - Strepitoso - Furioso
The dance suite was composed for the "Week Of Light Music" in the SDR Broadcast 1955, where the orchestra tape was produced and the dance suite had its premiere. On that occasion for the first time the electronic drum section (1954) was publicly played, with its percussion effects, the noise generators and the auxiliary generator which was able to produce a major sub-harmonic.

Since all these possibilities are also contained in the new semi-conductor Mixturtrautonium, the solo part was newly arranged for the new instrument. In the fourth movement, Strepitoso, (full sounding, rustling noise), the "Rustling Melody" is again featured, played on the turning knob of the condenser of a formant circuit geared to the lowest muting rate, whose decrescendo is frequently altered during the performance.

The Dance Suite in the new version had its live premiere in the SFB Broadcast program "Oskar Sala and his Mixturtrautonium" at the "Berlin Radio Exhibition" 1989 on 30th August, and with all five movements at the "Inventions 90" on Jan. 27, 1990 in the Academy of Arts. In both events the Fantasy Suite was also played in three movements. The opening movement had its live premiere of the concluding event of the "E88" in the Music Instrument Museum on Nov. 19, 1988.

Berlin, 19. March 1990 Oskar Sala