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Music: Electric Première

3 minute read
TIME

In the great hall of the Moscow Conservatory, the sober portraits of Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven looked down on 1,600 music lovers, who in turn gazed expectantly at the stage. On the stage, seated at six instruments which looked like sewing machines with boxed-in superstructures, were six electrico-musical artists, all of scientific mien and all with electro-dynamic hair except one, who was as slick as a double-wrapped generator coil.

The artists delicately tuned their queer looking instruments to the note A from a piano. Then they played some of the eeriest, sweetest, funniest, saddest, sourest and most heavenly music ever heard. The first concert of the sextet of emiritons roused occasional flutters of approval and once in a while a great burst of laughter. Bach, Mozart, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven never batted an eye.

Fingerboards and Filters. The emiriton. which produces tones much like those of the violin, cello, bassoon, clarinet and oboe, has several advantages over previous electro-musical instruments (such as the theremin). Because it is played by running one finger up and down a free fingerboard, tones are produced strictly by finesse of touch, not by mechanical means. Because it is a single-voiced instrument that does not play chords, each instrument in the ensemble is a personality, like each instrument in a string quartet, and lends itself to a great variety of color and volume.

In layman’s language, this is roughly how the emiriton works:

Before the performer, in the spot that would be occupied by a piano keyboard, is a cloth-covered fingerboard about three feet long and three inches wide. This is a rheostat. By pressing the finger on it at any given point, the player controls the amount of electricity that goes into the instrument’s generator tube. Depending on the amount of current that goes into one of the grids of the tube, the vibration frequency which controls the pitch is changed up & down.

The current then flows through a filter which regulates the timbre. This filter is run by a miniature keyboard and works like button-tuning on radio sets; by pressing one button, instead of getting WLW or KNX, the pusher gets cello or clarinet. Next the current flows into the amplifier, controlled by a foot pedal, finally comes out of the loudspeaker. If done properly, it comes out as music.

Players and Program. The emiriton is merely an instrument. At last week’s premiere, none of the performers was yet a Heifetz or a Kreisler. Co-inventor* Alexander Antipovitch Ivanov was best. Others included a tall man who never seemed to move or be moved, two girls of about 17 who swayed ecstatically with their work and two nervous young men who looked as if they ought to stop fooling around with emiritons and get out and play football.

Typical numbers were the Tchaikovsky Romance, Vassilenko Oriental Dance, Borodin Chorus from Prince Igor, Liadov Russian Folk Songs and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee (with Ivanov playing the part of the Queen Bee). Liadov’s simple Russian songs were melancholy and lovely even on these unsimple Russian machines.

When the concert was over, an announcer said: “The program is ended. Now there will be a short discussion of the emiriton.” All but eight of the 1,600 music lovers promptly whooshed out into the night.

* The other co-inventor: Andrei Vladmirovitch Rimsky-Korsakov,grandson of the composer.

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