Genzmer: Works for Mixtur-Trautonium

As a little boy, I once saw a television documentary about Oskar Sala, an icon of new music and undeniably the world's greatest trautonium virtuoso. Sala was in the unique historical position of being able to watch almost live and also have an influence on the development of the trautonium, which was named after him, when Friedrich Trautwein developed it. By 1930, the instrument was so well developed that Sala and Trautwein were able to present it to an astonished public at the Berlin "New Music" festival. The keyboardless instrument looks like an organ, but is played by touching a string with a metal bar. This creates an electrical resistance distribution to the left and right of the point of contact. The metal bar gives way, and a metal strip attached beneath it is pressed out of a container filled with glycerin. This creates a variable electrical liquid resistance that determines the pitch: an absolutely unique construction in the field of musical instruments! There is also a foot pedal that can be moved up and down as well as sideways. It controls the electrical signal strength, i.e., the dynamics, and is used to switch between previously registered "sound mixtures" when moved sideways. Hence the name "Mixturtrautonium". However, there were also smaller "people's editions" of the trautonium, built at the time by the Telefunken company and now highly sought-after rarities. Today, it is frequently read that the Mixturtrautonium was an early forerunner of analog synthesizers, which only made their way into pop music around 35 years later through Robert "Bob" Moog. But this comparison is too simplistic, because the sound production of the trautonium remains unique and incomparable to anything else. In addition to Oskar Sala, Paul Hindemith was particularly fascinated by the possibilities offered by the new instrument. He composed several works for the Mixturtrautonium. Harald Genzmer, Hindemith's most important student, adopted his mentor's fondness for the instrument and even composed a concerto for Mixturtrautonium and orchestra, which fully exploits the potential of the trautonium, which (apart from bells) is the only musical instrument in which, in addition to overtones, the undertone series also sounds. Today, Peter Pichler, the leading trautonium virtuoso, has joined the Austrian Paladino label to inspire new generations of listeners about the fascination of the trautonium.