Music For Ondes Martenot

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Cat No: 8555779

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Release Date: 07 January 2004

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313577927

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Music for Ondes Martenot

Description
The ondes MartenotMaurice Martenot (Paris, 1898 - Clichy, 1980) beganhis musical education early, giving his first celloconcerts at the age of nine, accompanied by his sisterGinette who was to become the first ondes Martenotsoloist. He was equally passionate about science (anarea in which he was self-taught) and teaching; he wrotebooks on relaxation and breathing techniques, as wellas, with his older sister Madeleine, developing theMartenot teaching method, widely used in France.In 1917 Martenot was working as an army radiooperator when he came across the principle behind theinstrument he went on to invent. While using valveradios tuned to similar (but not identical) frequencies, henoticed the \purity of the vibrations produced by triodevalves when the intensity of the electrical charge isvaried by means of a condenser [or capacitor]. Hebegan his musical experiments in 1919.At around the same time the Russian physicist LevTheremin was perfecting his own electronic instrument.The theremin has two aerials and the performer moveshis or her hands towards and away from them, withoutever touching them, to change the pitch and volume ofthe sound produced. Greatly piqued by the appearanceof the theremin in Paris in 1927, Martenot presented thesecond version of his instrument, which he was thencalling the "ondes musicales" (musical waves) at theOpera on 3rd May 1928. The international tour thatfollowed was met with great critical acclaim: theDeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung said, "Theremin is aphysician-musician while Martenot is a musicianphysician";"It is ethereal, supernatural, inexplicable"claimed Information, and Der Abend (Vienna) enthused,"Wonder triumphed over scepticism", while the NewYork Herald said that had he lived in the Middle Ages,Martenot would have been accused of witchcraft andburned alive in the town square.Martenot's primary interest, however, was notresearch into new sounds (unlike the inventors ofsynthesisers, whose first models appeared almost thirtyyears later). The development of this most musical ofelectronic instruments was driven above all by aninterest in the expressive, musical potential offered byelectricity.To understand how the ondes Martenot works, weneed to look at an acoustic phenomenon. The string ofan instrument playing the note A has a frequency of 440Hz, i.e. it vibrates back and forth 440 times per second.Depending on the speed of this vibration, the note(frequency) is low or high. The radio used by Martenotonly worked at a very high frequency, emitting anultrasonic note inaudible to the human ear (80 000 Hz).To obtain an audible sound therefore, he used theprinciple of heterodyning (which musicians use whentuning to another instrument) - producing a beatfrequency by the combination of two oscillations ofslightly different frequency in order to generate a third,whose value is the mathematical difference between thefirst two. The note A, for example, can be produced bythe simultaneous production of two inaudiblefrequenc
Tracklisting