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Rhythmicon
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The Rhythmicon—also known as the Polyrhythmophone—was the world's first electronic drum machine (or "rhythm machine," the original term for devices of the type).
In 1930, the avant-garde American composer and musical theorist Henry Cowell commissioned Russian inventor Léon Theremin to create the remarkably innovative Rhythmicon.
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Encyclopedia
The Rhythmicon—also known as the Polyrhythmophone—was the world's first electronic drum machine (or "rhythm machine," the original term for devices of the type).
In 1930, the avant-garde American composer and musical theorist Henry Cowell commissioned Russian inventor Léon Theremin to create the remarkably innovative Rhythmicon. Cowell wanted an instrument with which to play compositions involving multiple rhythmic patterns impossible for one person to perform simultaneously on acoustic keyboard or percussion instruments. The invention, completed by Theremin in 1931, can produce up to sixteen different rhythms—a periodic base rhythm on a selected fundamental pitch and fifteen progressively more rapid rhythms, each associated with one of the ascending notes of the fundamental pitch's overtone series. Like the overtone series itself, the rhythms follow an arithmetic progression, so that for every single beat of the fundamental, the first overtone (if played) beats twice, the second overtone beats three times, and so forth. Using the device's keyboard, each of the sixteen rhythms can be produced individually or in any combination. A seventeenth key permits optional syncopation. The instrument produces its percussion-like sound using a system, proposed by Cowell, that involves light being passed through radially indexed holes in a series of spinning discs before arriving at electric photoreceptors.
The Rhythmicon was publicly premiered in 1932 by Cowell and fellow music educator and theorist Joseph Schillinger. The radically new instrument attracted considerable attention, and Cowell wrote a number of compositions for it, including Rhythmicana (Concerto for Rhythmicon and Orchestra; 1931) and Music for Violin and Rhythmicon (1932). Schillinger calculated that it would take 455 days, 2 hours, and 30 minutes to play all the combinations available on the Rhythmicon, assuming an average duration of 10 seconds for each combination. Composer Charles Ives, Cowell's close friend, commissioned Theremin to build a second model of the Rhythmicon for use by Cowell and his associate, conductor Nicolas Slonimsky. Soon, however, Cowell left the Rhythmicon behind to pursue other interests and it was all but forgotten for many years.
One of the original instruments built by Theremin wound up at Stanford University; the other stayed with Slonimsky, from whom it later passed to Schillinger and then the Smithsonian Institution. This latter instrument is operational; its sound has been described as "percussive, almost drum-like." Theremin later (in early 1960s) built a third, more compact model after his return to the Soviet Union toward the end of the 1930s. This version of the instrument is operational and now resides at the Theremin Center in Moscow. According to many accounts, in the 1960s, innovative pop music producer Joe Meek experimented with the instrument, though it seems very unlikely that he had access to any of the original three devices; similarly, a number of accounts claim, without substantiation, that the Rhythmicon may be heard in the soundtracks of several movies, including Dr. Strangelove. More recently, composer Nick Didkovsky designed and programmed a virtual Rhythmicon using Java Music Specification Language and JSyn.
See also
Further reading
- Glinsky, Albert (2000). Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02582-2.
- Hicks, Michael (2002). Henry Cowell, Bohemian. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02751-5.
- Lichtenwanger, William (1986). The Music of Henry Cowell: A Descriptive Catalogue. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn College Institute for Studies in American Music. ISBN 0-914678-26-4.
External links
- (requires a plugin or Java applet)
(1 minute 50 seconds video of Andrej Smirnov demonstrating a Rhythmicon with keyboard and spinning discs at the Theremin Center, Moscow, 2005)
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