The ondes Martenot (pronounced OHND mar-tuh-NOH; French: [ɔ̃d maʁtəno], meaning "Martenot waves") or ondes musicales ("musical waves") is an early electronic musical instrument. Early versions were played by moving a ring attached to a wire, making sounds that wavered like those from a theremin. Later, a keyboard with a special vibrato feature was added. Controls on the left side of the instrument adjust the loudness and tone. A person who plays the ondes Martenot is called an ondist.
The ondes Martenot was created in 1928 by the French inventor Maurice Martenot. He was inspired by overlapping sounds from military radio devices and wanted to make an instrument that could express music as deeply as a cello.
The ondes Martenot has been used in over 100 orchestral pieces. The French composer Olivier Messiaen included it in his 1949 composition Turangalîla-symphonie. His sister-in-law, Jeanne Loriod, was a famous player of the instrument. It has also appeared in many film and television scores, especially in science fiction and horror movies. Modern musicians such as Daft Punk, Damon Albarn, and Jonny Greenwood (a guitarist and keyboardist for Radiohead) have used the ondes Martenot in their work.
History
The ondes Martenot, named after its inventor, Maurice Martenot, is one of the first electronic musical instruments. It was patented in 1928, the same year as another early electronic instrument, the theremin. Maurice Martenot, a French cellist, created the ondes Martenot after working as a radio operator during World War I. He wanted to copy the accidental sounds that occurred between military radio devices. His goal was to give the ondes Martenot the expressive qualities of a cello. According to The Guardian, the ondes Martenot looks similar to a mix of an organ and a theremin.
Martenot first showed the ondes Martenot on April 20, 1928, by performing a piece called Poème symphonique at the Paris Opera. He later traveled across Europe and to New York to share the instrument with audiences. In 1930, he performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra and then began a worldwide tour. In 1937, the ondes Martenot was displayed at the Exposition Internationale de Paris, where up to twelve musicians played the instrument together in a group. Starting in 1947, the ondes Martenot was taught at the Paris Conservatory, with Martenot as the first instructor.
The first version of the ondes Martenot was similar to the theremin. The second model, introduced in 1928, had few of the features the instrument is known for today. It was played while standing, with a wire connected to a wooden box. Over time, Martenot designed new models, including one with a keyboard that allowed players to create vibrato by moving the keys sideways. According to Cynthia Millar, by the 1940s, the instrument had reached its final form, with only small changes over time. Each instrument was made to order, and "often differed according to the wishes of the player." Martenot did not want to mass-produce the ondes Martenot, which may have caused it to become less popular after its early success. Maurice Martenot’s son, Jean-Louis Martenot, later created new models. In 2009, The Guardian reported that the last ondes Martenot was made in 1988, but a new model was being produced.
Sounds and technique
The ondes Martenot is special among electronic musical instruments because of how it is played. A metal ring worn on the right index finger is used to control the instrument. Moving the ring along a wire creates sounds similar to a theremin, produced by circuits with vacuum tubes or transistors in the seventh model. A drawer allows the left hand to adjust volume and tone. Volume is changed by touching a glass "lozenge" inside the drawer.
The third model, introduced in 1929, had a fake keyboard below the wire to show pitch. This model also included a "black fingerguard" on a wire, held between the right thumb and index finger. It was played while standing away from the instrument, and the drawer was placed on a bench next to the player. Maurice Martenot’s teaching manual, written in 1931, explained both ways of playing the instrument.
Later models added a real keyboard. Moving the keys side to side created vibrato. This feature was added in the 1930s with the fourth version, which had 84 keys. Later models had 72 keys. A switch could change the pitch by one octave, giving the instrument a range from C1 to C8.
Early models could only produce a few waveforms. Later models could create sine, triangle, square, pulse, and full-wave rectified sine waves, plus pink noise, all controlled by switches in the drawer. The square wave and full-wave rectified sine wave could be adjusted further with sliders. On the seventh model, a dial at the drawer’s top balanced white noise and other sounds. Another dial adjusted the balance between three speakers. A switch chose between the keyboard and ribbon.
Additional controls on the instrument’s body included dials for tuning pitch, adjusting volume, and transposing pitch by an octave. A switch activated a filter. The seventh model’s drawer also had six buttons to change pitch by different intervals, allowing the pitch to rise up to a minor ninth.
Martenot created four types of speakers, called diffuseurs, for the instrument. The Métallique speaker used a gong instead of a cone, creating a metallic sound. It was used in the first ondes Martenot quartets in 1932. The Palme speaker had a chamber with strings tuned to all 12 notes of an octave. When a note was played in tune, a string resonated, creating chiming sounds. It was introduced with the sixth version of the instrument in 1950.
According to The Guardian, the ondes Martenot “can be as soothing and moving as a string quartet, but nerve-jangling when gleefully abused.” 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.” The New York Times described its sound as a “haunting wail.” Messiaen, discussing its sound, described it as “an extraterrestrial, enchanted voice,” “a cracked bell,” and “a crumbling pile of sand.”
Use
The ondes Martenot became popular because of its use in classical music, especially by the French composer Olivier Messiaen. Although he used it infrequently, he is most closely linked to the instrument. Messiaen first used six ondes Martenot in Fête des belles eaux, a 1936–1937 suite of music for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. He later included it in other works: Deux monodies en quarts de ton (1938), Musique de scène pour un Œdipe (1942; both written for a single ondes Martenot), Trois petites liturgies de la présence divine (1943–1944; solo part), and Saint François d'Assise (1975–1983; three ondes Martenot in the orchestra). The most famous piece using the instrument was his Turangalîla-Symphonie, where the ondes Martenot created "shimmering, swooping musical effects." This symphony featured the ondes Martenot and piano as soloists in a large orchestra. It is widely recognized as a masterpiece and helped connect the instrument with Messiaen. Messiaen’s wife, Yvonne Loriod, arranged and edited four unpublished pieces for ondes Martenot and piano, which were published in 2001.
Other composers who used the ondes Martenot include Arthur Honegger, Claude Vivier, Darius Milhaud, Edgard Varèse, Marcel Landowski, Charles Koechlin, Florent Schmitt, Matyas Seiber, and Jacques Ibert. Honegger’s most famous work with the ondes Martenot was his dramatic oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (1935), where the instrument’s unique sound enhanced the string section. Milhaud used the ondes Martenot several times in the 1930s for incidental music. Varèse used it occasionally, such as in the premiere of Amériques in Paris and in replacing theremin parts in Ecuatorial.
According to The New York Times, the ondes Martenot’s most celebrated performer was Jeanne Loriod (1928–2001), who studied with Martenot at the Paris Conservatory. She performed internationally in over 500 works, created 85 pieces for a group of six ondes Martenot she formed in 1974, and wrote a three-volume book on the instrument titled Technique de l'Onde Electronique Type Martenot. A British student of Loriod, John Morton (1931–2014), performed the ondes Martenot in works by Messiaen, Milhaud, Honegger, and Bartók at the Royal Albert Hall and on television in the 1970s.
English composer Hugh Davies estimated that over 1,000 works were composed for the ondes Martenot. Loriod estimated there were 15 concertos and 300 chamber music pieces. The instrument was also used in French theaters such as the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre National Populaire, and the Folies-Bergère.
Thomas Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel uses the ondes Martenot extensively, which Adès says "could be considered the voice of the exterminating angel."
The Guardian described Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead as a "champion" of the ondes Martenot. He first used it on Radiohead’s 2000 album Kid A, and it appears in songs like "The National Anthem," "How to Disappear Completely," and "Where I End and You Begin." Radiohead performed versions of these songs using multiple ondes Martenot. On their 2001 album Amnesiac, they used the ondes Martenot palm speaker to add a "halo of hazy reverberance" to Thom Yorke’s vocals on "You and Whose Army?" Greenwood also composed a piece for two ondes Martenot called Smear in 2011.
The ondist Thomas Bloch performed the ondes Martenot in Tom Waits and Robert Wilson’s show The Black Rider (2004–2006) and in Damon Albarn’s opera Monkey: Journey to the West (2007–2013). Bloch played the ondes Martenot on the 2009 Richard Hawley album Truelove's Gutter and the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories. In 2020, the French composer Christine Ott released Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot), an avant-garde album using only the ondes Martenot.
The ondes Martenot has appeared in many films, especially science fiction and horror movies. In 1934, Arthur Honegger used the ondes Martenot in the soundtrack for the 1932 French animated film The Idea (L'Idée), believed to be the first use of electronic music in film. In 1936, Adolphe Borchard used it in Le roman d'un tricheur, played by Martenot’s sister, Ginette. It was also used by composer Brian Easdale in the ballet music for The Red Shoes.
French composer Maurice Jarre introduced the ondes Martenot to American cinema in his score for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Composer Harry Lubin used it in The Loretta Young Show, One Step Beyond, and The Outer Limits, as well as in the first-season theme of Lost in Space (1965) by John Williams. The English composer Richard Rodney Bennett used it in scores for films like *Billion
Legacy
In 2001, the New York Times described the ondes Martenot, along with early electronic instruments like the theremin, telharmonium, trautonium, and orgatron, as part of a "futuristic electric music movement that did not reach the goals its creators hoped for. Supporters of this new type of music enjoyed creating sounds that were never heard before." Thomas Bloch, a French classical musician, said: "The ondes Martenot is likely the most musical of all electric instruments. Martenot wanted to use electricity to improve and control musical expression. Musicians can shape the sound in real time, including controlling vibrato, intensity, and how quickly the sound starts. This was an important step in the development of electronic instruments."
According to music journalist Alex Ross, fewer than 100 people had mastered the ondes Martenot by 2001. In 1997, Mark Singer wrote for The Wire that the instrument would likely stay unknown: "Without support from established institutions or a large group of amateur musicians, such instruments will fade and disappear. Experts may try to play them as unique novelties, but there is no simple way for beginners to learn, and no path for those who want to pursue a career in music."
The ondes Martenot's electronics are delicate, and it contains a powder that carries electric currents. Martenot mixed this powder in different amounts based on musicians' needs, but the exact measurements are not known. Efforts to build new ondes Martenot models using Martenot's original design have had mixed results.
Several instruments have been inspired by the ondes Martenot. In the 1930s, French inventor Georges Jenny created the Ondioline, a cheaper version of the ondes Martenot, using ideas from its vibrato keyboard. The Yamaha GX-1 synthesizer, released in the 1970s, included two vibrato keyboards modeled after the ondes Martenot. In 2000, Jonny Greenwood of the band Radiohead asked Analogue Systems to build a replica of the ondes Martenot to avoid damaging the original during tours. This replica, called the French Connection, mimics the ondes Martenot's control system but does not produce sound itself; instead, it controls an external sound generator. In 2012, the Canadian company Therevox began selling a synthesizer with a control system inspired by the ondes Martenot's pitch ring and intensity key.
More complete copies of the ondes Martenot have also been made. A replica called Ondéa was created by Ambro Oliva in the early 2000s. It was no longer produced by 2011 due to financial issues, but professional musicians still used it in 2018. In 2011, Sound on Sound noted that original ondes Martenot models were "almost impossible to find or afford, unless someone pays 12,000 Euros for one of Jean-Loup Dierstein's new reproductions." In 2016, David Kean of Audities Studios began making a new version of the Ondéa after receiving the original design from Ambro Oliva around 2012. In 2017, the Japanese company Asaden produced 100 Ondomo instruments, a portable version of the ondes Martenot.