Research
Auxiliaries
In this new Auxiliary by Chris Cutler, we’ll find the Theremin at work in art ensembles, symphony orchestras, a jazz group, rock bands and on film and television scores – both alone and in quantity –, and there’s a rare sighting of Nikolai Obukhov’s Croix Sonore from his extraordinary Third and Last Testament.
In PROBES #33 we begin to trace the impact of the application of electricity on the world of music and look more closely at the Musical Telegraph, the two-hundred-ton Telharmonium (a 19th century mechanical synthesizer) in America, as well as the Theremin and the visionary Rhythmicon in the USSR.
Auxiliaries
Amongst the new acoustic inventions, Chris Cutler highlights here the Rumitone, the Uberorgan, a whole Anarchestra, Philip Dadson's Sproings, a Violimba, some scraper flutes, an Aquavine, Diego Stocco's Custom-built Orchestra, an elastic aerophone-centriphone, Leonardo da Vinci's viola organista, Martin Molin's heroic Marble Machine and many other hopeful and inspired monsters.
In PROBES #32 Chris Culter traces the history of some newly invented instruments (in the 20th century), including the Chromelodion, the Boo, the Mazdaphone, the Quadrangulis Reversum, the Crystal Baschets, Harry Bertoia’s Sonambiente, the unearthly Daxophone and Arthur Harris’ Mother Lap Cello Harp, Whispering Harp and the14.5 metre viol, whose lowest strings are inaudible to the human ear.
Auxiliaries
Chris Cutler looks at the diversity of instruments extended out from the xylophone and their sometimes surprising use in almost every imaginable musical context.