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Having first become aware of the Trautonium by hearing tales of this electronic instrument from the '30s that was capable of being played polyphonically.(Although the more sophiticated realisation didn't come about until the 50's in the form of the subharmonic generator.) At first I wasn't sure if it wasn't being confused with the earlier Telharmonium, but no, a picture gradually emerged of what this instrument was and eventually a friend brought round a copy of Sübharmonische mixturen, a revelatory experience.

Upon first hearing on is struck by the sinuous and expressive manner in which it can be played, but more so by the contrast of sweet and ethereal (not unlike the Martenot or the Theremin) and then the sudden thrashing of bowed metal, swooping, diving, hovering then settling into a mind bending shimmer. Further, even the untrained ear will notice the sounding chords are far from being equal tempered, lending a hypnotic incongruity of primitive tuning and completeynovel electronic qualties. I was completely seduced, although at the time the likelyhood of ever aquiring such a device seemed remote, the only extant examples being Oskar's own and the previous valve circuit mixturtrautonium, now residing at the Deutsche Museum, Bonn. Fortuitously the synthesiser manufacturer Döepfer released a pair of modules and a controller, which when combined with other more typical modules (oscillators, vca's, noise generators etc.) enabled the reconstruction of the Trautonium's signal path.

While I lament that I shall never aquire the dazzling virtuoso technique of Oskar Sala, one can still wrestle some enchanting and exciting sounds from what is a very expressive instrument, so if by any chance you are taken with it, don't be too intimidated, but it will require some effort and dedication on your part.

How the Trautonium became.

The trautonium came into being in the late 1920s'/early thirties as a result of a conversation between the composer Paul Hindemith and the engineer Friedrich Trautwein after a meeting in the experimental radio station at the Berlin academy of music. Trautwein had at first envisaged developing an electronic organ, which was refused on financial grounds. Hindemith, being a viola virtuoso, suggested creating an electronic instrument that could be played in the manner of a stringed instrument. As a result of their collaboration three instruments were constructed for the performance of Hindemiths' triostucke, with Hindemith, Oskar Sala and Rudolph Schmidt to play each of the parts. As a result of the concerts' success Telefunken commissioned a home electronic instrument based on the design and Oskar Sala who had become enthusiastic about the project, involved himself in the development of a dual manual version with a pedal as a master volume control.

Telefunken had, in the meantime designed the rather delightfully named thyratron tube, which produced a delicious, rich skewed sawtooth waveform. Trautwein presented Sala with a circuit which had two such valves synchronised with each other as sound generators, the second tube sounding an octave lower. This became the basis of the subharmonic generator, a means by which polyphony could be realised, before long Sala was able to produce intervals of a third and fifth with different tubes. After the second world war a "somewhat crazy circuit" as Sala described it, was designed that enabled the complete realisation of the undertone sequence with a twenty sequence switch, the subharmonic generator.

In Sala's own words, " The subharmonic sequence is in itself an interesting occurrence. The tones become lower and lower and therefore have a fuller sound. They don't have anything in common with the sinus tones of the overtone sequence. they always stay polyphonic while being played together and of course respond as sawtooth waves to any kind of formant."

The other main feature of the Trautonium is the fourfold formant filter, for the time a very sophisticated means of varying the colour of a sound. It is essentially four switchable lowpass/bandpass filters with resonance connected in series with a single output. Unlike many filter designs which self oscillate when the resonance is increased, Trautweins' circuit distorts, producing an effect described as "trompeten", or a trumpet like brassy texture. The combination of the bandmanual, subharmonic generator and the formant filters made for an instrument of great subtlety, being capable of chameleon like changes in timbre, great expressivenes and polyphony.