The Persephone
, user’s manual, mesi©2006
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4
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Background:
The Idea Of the Persephone
Keyboards have become the prime user interface for controlling
synthesizers. But the supremacy of keyboard interfaces has not always been
so throughout synthesizer history… Let’s go back to these other concepts
which are now part of our cabinet of curiosities...
Since the dawn of electronics and the creation of the first electronic
oscillators, scientists have been aware of the potential of electronics for
generating sounds and many of them have tried to create electronic musical
instruments with more or less success. The introduction of filters and VCA
soon enabled to play tremolos and vibratos which could recreate the
musicality of classical instruments. And in an attempt to control these
parameters, these new instruments opened the field of the research for new
controls beyond the possibilities that a generic keyboard could offer. The
fact that most of the non-keyboard instruments with their new controllers
required a new playing technique explains why they remained unpopular
with musicians who had little time to practice on unusual keyboards, the
Telharmonium 36-note-per-octave keyboard designed by Cahill for
example. Some others, like Leon Theremin, set up classes where their new
instruments would be taught. The 1920s remain the most fertile years for the
evolution of electronic music instruments with the invention of new controls
like dial-operated non keyboard electronic instruments or ribbon controlled
instruments.
In Russia, Lev Sergeyevich Termen developed the Theremin using the body
capacitance as a control mechanism and thus freeing the performer from the
keyboard and fixed intonation. He also created the first fingerboard cellos.
In France and in Germany, a whole family of dial-operated non keyboard
electronic instruments was developed. Among them, René Bertrand and
Edgard Varèse’s Dynaphone or Jörg Mager's Electrophon and Sphärophon.
