(b Eichstätt, 6 Nov 1880; d Aschaffenburg, 7 April 1939). German instrument inventor. He began experimenting with quartertones on a pipe organ in 1911 and commissioned a two-manual quartertone harmonium. He constructed a series of electronic instruments in Berlin during the 1920s and, from 1929, in Darmstadt. His first was the Elektrophon (1921); this had a beat-frequency oscillator and was played by moving a lever around a calibrated semicircular dial. It was followed by two versions of the similar Kurbelsphärophon (c1923 and 1926), and the Klaviatursphärophon (1928), which had an audio oscillator, two monophonic manuals instead of levers (with short keys, permitting one hand to play on both simultaneously) and an additional pedal-board. His more experimental Kaleidophon [Kaleidosphon] (1927) had a monophonic keyboard tuned in semitones, but with a pantograph-like ‘stork’s beak’ mechanism which could expand or contract the basic intervals. The equivalent of chords were apparently produced by mixtures of overtones, possibly controlled by a touch-sensitive facility on the keyboard. Glissandos, vibrato and ‘timbre trills’ were also possible. His two models of the Partiturophon (1930–31; with three and four manuals respectively) were similar in principle to the Klaviatursphärophon. The circuits of all Mager’s electronic instruments were simple but ingenious, featuring wide-ranging timbre controls. His early loudspeakers were made from telephone earpieces and a variety of materials (including gongs, brass and steel sheets, and cardboard boxes) that produced different timbres (see Electronic instruments, §I, 5(ii)). In his later multi-manual instruments each voice could be allocated a different timbre.
Mager’s electronic keyboard instruments attracted considerable interest. In 1931, using electromagnetically-struck and possibly amplified Javanese gongs, he provided the bells for Parsifal at Bayreuth under Toscanini, and he used the Partiturophon to create sound effects, including thunder, for the Ring later the same year. He also composed microtonal incidental music for Goethe’s Faust in 1932. Hopes for the commercial manufacture of the Partiturophon were unfulfilled, and in 1935, for a combination of personal and political reasons, he was forced to leave his Darmstadt laboratory. Mager’s last ‘official’ commission was to contribute music for a film, Stärker als Paragraphen, in 1936. He composed several short works for his instruments, most of which were broadcast.
He died in isolation, and during World War II all his instruments disappeared or were destroyed. Although he was an important pioneer, financial, political and personal problems prevented Mager from achieving his ideal instrument (the Omnitonium), capable of ‘all sounds and tunings’. His son Siegfried also worked in electronic instrument design.
GroveI (‘Partiturophon’, H. Davies; ‘Sphärophon’, H. Davies)
J. Mager: Vierteltonmusik (Aschaffenburg, 1918)
J. Mager: Eine neue Epoche der Musik durch Radio (Berlin, 1924)
E. Schenck: Jörg Mager: dem deutschen Pionier der Elektro-Musikforschung zum Gedächtris (Darmstadt, 1952)
T.L. Rhea: The Evolution of Electronic Musical Instruments in the United States (diss., George Peabody College, 1972), 37–41; rev. as ‘Joerg Mager: Multi-Keyboardist of the 1930s’, Contemporary Keyboard, iv/8 (1978), 62; repr. in The Art of Electronic Music, ed. T. Darter and G. Armbruster (New York, 1984), 27–9
W.D. Kühnelt: ‘Elektroakustische Musikinstrumente’, Für Augen und Ohren: von der Spieluhr zum akustischen Environment (Berlin, 1980), 52–6 [Akademie der Künste, exhibition catalogue]
HUGH DAVIES