Ondes Martenot

Ondes Martenot
An ondes Martenot (seventh generation model, 1975)
Dates	1928–present
Technical specifications
Polyphony	none[1]
Oscillator	vacuum tube
Synthesis type	heterodyne
Input/output
Keyboard	1 or 2 x 35 note manuals (G2–F5)

The ondes martenot (/ˈoʊnd mɑːrtəˈnoʊ/ OHND mar-tə-NOH; French: [ɔ̃d maʁtəno], "Martenot waves") or ondes musicales ("musical waves") is an electronic musical instrument. It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating wavering, theremin-like sounds. A player of the ondes martenot is called an ondist.

One of the earliest electronic instruments, the ondes martenot was invented in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot. Martenot was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators, and wanted to create an instrument with the expressiveness of the cello.

The instrument is used in more than 100 classical compositions. The French composer Olivier Messiaen used it in pieces such as his 1949 symphony Turangalîla-Symphonie, and his sister-in-law Jeanne Loriod was a celebrated player of the instrument. It appears in numerous film and television soundtracks, particularly science fiction and horror films. Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead is credited with bringing the ondes to a larger modern audience. It has also been used by pop artists such as Daft Punk and Damon Albarn.

History

The ondes martenot (French for "martenot waves") is one of the earliest electronic instruments,^[2][3][4] patented in the same year as another early electronic instrument, the theremin.^[2] It was invented in 1928 by French cellist Maurice Martenot.^[2] Martenot had been a radio operator during World War I, and developed the ondes martenot in an attempt to replicate the accidental overlaps of tones between military radio oscillators.^[2] He hoped to bring musical expressivity associated with the cello to his new instrument.^[5] He first demonstrated the ondes martenot on April 20, 1928,^[6] performing Dimitrios Levidis’s Poème symphonique at the Paris Opera.^[7]

Units were manufactured individually to order.^[6] Over the following years, Martenot produced several new models, introducing the ability produce vibrato by moving the keys from side to side, a feature adapted in the 1970s by some Yamaha GX-1 synthesisers.^[3] According to the Guardian, "the most familiar model resembles a cross between an organ and a theremin".^[2]

In 1983, Martenot's son created a new, digital ondes martenot model; 44 went to a music school in Japan and rest to musicians.^[8] Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead purchased one of these instruments in the late 90s.^[2] In 2000, Greenwood commissioned the synthesiser company Analog Systems to develop a new version of the ondes martenot as he was nervous about damaging his instrument on tour. The new version, the French Connection, replicates the ondes martenot controller, but does not generate sound; instead, it may be used to control an external oscillator.^[3]

Sounds and technique

Au ruban playing technique

The ondes martenot is unique among electronic musical instruments in its methods of control.^[9] The ondes martenot can be played with a metal ring worn on the right index finger. Sliding the ring along a wire produces "theremin-like" tones, generated by oscillations in vacuum tubes,^[2] or transistors in later later models.^[8]

One of the earliest models of the instrument had a non-functioning simulacrum of a keyboard below the wire to indicate pitch.^[10] This model also had a "black fingerguard" on a wire which could be used instead of the ring. It was held between the right thumb and index finger, which was played standing at a distance from the instrument. When played in this way, the drawer is removed from the instrument and placed on a bench next to the player. Maurice Martenot's pedagogical manual for the ondes martenot, written in 1931, offers instruction on both methods of playing.^{[11][lower-alpha 1]}

Later versions added a real 83-key keyboard;^[10][12] the keys produce vibrato when wiggled from side to side.

A drawer to the left of the instrument allows manipulation of volume and timbre by the left hand.^{[lower-alpha 2]} Volume is controlled with a touch-sensitive glass "lozenge"; the harder the lozenge is pressed, the louder the volume.^[2] Early models could produce only a few waveforms.^{[lower-alpha 2]} Later models can simultaneously generate sine, triangle, square, pulse waves, pink noise, and several waveforms unique to the instrument, all controlled by switches in a drawer.^[2][13][14]

Diffuseurs from left to right: Métallique, Palme, Principal and Résonance

Martenot produced three amplifiers for the instrument. One features a gong instead of a speaker cone, producing a metallic timbre. Another, the palm speaker, has a resonance chamber laced with strings tuned to all 12 semitones of an octave; when a note is played in tune, it resonates a particular string, producing chiming tones.^[2][15]

According to the Guardian, the ondes martenot "can be as soothing and moving as a string quartet, but nerve-jangling when gleefully abused".^[2] Greenwood described it as "a very accurate theremin that you have far more control of ... When it's played well, you can really emulate the voice."^[15] The New York Times described its sound as a "haunting wail".^[6]

Use

Classical music

Messiaen (pictured 1930), a notable composer of the ondes martenot

The ondes martenot is used in more than 100 classical compositions,^[3] most notably by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen first used it in Fête des Belles Eaux, for six ondes,^[16] and went on to use it in several more works, including Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine and Saint-François d'Assise. For his Turangalîla-Symphonie, Messiaen used to create "shimmering, swooping musical effects".^[6] Messiaen's widow, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, arranged and edited four unpublished Feuillets inedits for ondes martenot and piano which were published in 2001.^[17]

Other composers who used the instrument include Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Edgard Varèse, Charles Koechlin, Florent Schmitt and Jacques Ibert.^[6]

According to the New York Times, the ondes' most celebrated performer was the French musician Jeanne Loriod (1928 - 2001), who studied under Martenot at the Paris Conservatory. She performed internationally in more than 500 works, created 85 works for a sextet of ondes she formed in 1974, and wrote a three-volume book on the instrument, Technique de l'Onde Electronique Type Martenot.^[6]

The English composer Hugh Davies estimated that more than 1,000 works had been composed for the ondes.^[6] Jeanne Loriod estimated that there were 15 concertos and 300 pieces of chamber music.^[6]

Popular music

Jonny Greenwood playing a 1980s student-model digital ondes martenot ^{[8] [18]} (Glastonbury Festival 2010)

One of the first integrations of the ondes martenot into popular music was done in French chanson during the fifties and sixties. For example in some of Baudelaire's poems set to music by French singer Léo Ferré in his albums Les Fleurs du mal (1957)^[19] and Léo Ferré chante Baudelaire (1967), or in popular dramatic lovesong Jacques Brel's "Ne me quitte pas" (1959).^[20] During the seventies Beau Dommage and Harmonium, the two most popular musical groups of the Quebec musical scene, made extensive use of this instrument (introduced there by Marie Bernard) in each of their 1975 albums, respectively Où est passée la noce?^[21] and Si on avait besoin d'une cinquième saison.^[22]

Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead is credited with bringing the ondes to a larger audience. He first used it on Radiohead's 2000 album Kid A, and it has appeared on Radiohead songs including "The National Anthem", "How to Disappear Completely", and "Where I End and You Begin".^[10] Radiohead have performed versions of their songs "How to Disappear Completely" and "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" using several ondes martenots.^[2] On their fifth album, Amnesiac (2001), they used the ondes martenot's palm speaker to add a "halo of hazy reverberance" to Thom Yorke's vocals.^[15] Greenwood also composed a piece for two ondes martenots, Smear.^[23]

The ondes martenot was used by Bryan Ferry on the 1999 album As Time Goes By,^[24] and by Joe Jackson on his 1988 soundtrack for Tucker: The Man and His Dream^[25] and his 1994 album Night Music.^[26] Ondes player Thomas Bloch toured in Tom Waits and Robert Wilson's show The Black Rider (2004–06)^[27] and in Damon Albarn's opera "Monkey: Journey to the West" (2007–2013).^[28] Bloch performed ondes martenot on the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories.^[10]

Legacy

In 2001, the New York Times described the ondes, along with other early electronic instruments such as the theremin, teleharmonium, trautonium, and orgatron, as part of "a futuristic electric music movement that never went remotely as far as its pioneers dreamed ... proponents of the new wired music delighted in making previously unimaginable noises".^[6] The French classical musician Thomas Bloch said: "The ondes martenot is probably the most musical of all electric instruments ... Martenot was not only interested in sounds. He wanted to use electricity to increase and control the expression, the musicality. Everything is made by the musician in real time, including the control of the vibrato, the intensity, and the attack. It is an important step in our electronic instrument lineage."^[10]

According to music journalist Alex Ross, fewer than 100 people have mastered the instrument.^[41] In 1997, Mark Singer wrote for The Wire that the ondes would likely remain obscure: ''The fact is that any instrument with no institutional grounding of second- and third-raters, no spectral army of amateurs, will wither and vanish: how can it not? Specialist virtuosos may arrive to tackle the one-off novelty ... but there's no meaningful level of entry at the ground floor, and, what's worse, no fallback possibility of rank careerism if things don't turn out.''^[6]

In 2009, the Guardian reported that the last ondes martenot was manufactured in 1988, but that a new model was being manufactured.^[2] In 2011, Sound on Sound wrote that original ondes martenot models were "all but impossible to obtain or afford, and unless you can stump up 12,000 Euros for one of Jean‑Loup Dierstein's new reproduction instruments, the dream of owning a real Ondes is likely to remain such".^[3] In 2017, the Japanese company Asaden began manufacturing the Ondomo, an instrument based on the ondes martenot.^[42]

The ondes martenot's electronics are fragile, and it includes a powder which transfers electric currents, which Martenot would mix in different quantities according to musicians' specifications; the precise proportions are unknown. Attempts to construct new ondes martenot models using Martenot's original specifications have been mixed. ^[10]

Notes

References

Further reading

• Orton, Richard, and Hugh Davies. "Ondes martenot". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.