Rhythmicon
The
Rhythmiconâ€"also known as the
Polyrhythmophoneâ€"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
LĂ©on 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 rhythmsâ€"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 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)
[Cowell later used the same title, Rhythmicana, for a set of solo piano pieces he composed in 1938. Cowell's Rhythmicana concerto was not performed publicly until 1971.] and Music for Violin and Rhythmicon (1932). 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 different 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. Theremin later built a third model after his return to the Soviet Union toward the end of the 1930s. According to many accounts, in the 1960s,
Joe Meek, the innovative pop music producer, 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.
*Glinsky, Albert (2000).
Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
*Hicks, Michael (2002).
Henry Cowell, Bohemian. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
*Lichtenwanger, William (1986).
The Music of Henry Cowell: A Descriptive Catalogue. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn College Institute for Studies in American Music.
*
American Mavericks: The Online Rhythmicon*
Opaque Melodies: The Rhythmiconâ€"Definition/Background
