The transfer of technology from disparate branches of knowledge has had a far-reaching impact on the design and construction of musical instruments. In some cases instrument makers have merely borrowed and adapted an existing technology developed for other purposes; in others they have conceived musical applications for a seemingly unrelated but nevertheless analogous device or technology. This article examines the interaction of instrument making and technology in the context of the Western world.
During the Middle Ages various technological innovations – including the development of mining and the vertical trip hammer-operated mill, copper smelting and the more efficient production of calamine, a zinc sulphate used in alloying brass – made it possible to produce stronger and smoother sheet metal of consistent quality and thickness. Thus, skilled instrument makers were able to form thin tubes for trumpets and organ pipes; to fashion folded trumpets as well as slides for what later became trombones; and to flare bells out at the end with more reliability and uniformity. All these factors contributed to the acoustical properties of the instruments: not only could the players produce far more ‘musical’ notes, but slides extended by transposition the instruments' natural harmonic series.
Commencing in the late 14th century a number of keyboard instruments incorporated radically new actions employing pivoting keys which returned to their original positions after striking or plucking a string. The mechanical principles were derived in part from the descriptions of moving simulacra by Hero of Alexandria (1st century ce). Part of Greco-Roman and Alexandrian science preserved for many centuries in Byzantium, this knowledge had been acquired by the Arabs, who developed their own extraordinary art of astronomical instrument building (such as mechanical armillary spheres and geared astrolabes, as well as astronomical clocks including dials for planetary movements, moon phases, calendars and time of day), incorporating sophisticated linkages and gearing. A second major influence on the keyboard mechanism was the principles of the escapement and so-called jackwork found in a series of Chinese texts on automata and astronomical clocks such as the description of his water-driven clock-tower by Su Sung (1090). This oriental/Islamic heritage was transmitted to western Europe in the 13th century, and is seen for example in the astronomical codices at the Court of Alfonso el Sabio (c1272) and the planetarium clock of Giovanni de’ Dondi (1364). From about 1350 the flourishing craft guilds and court scientists in Europe produced a profusion of mechanical hardware, including extremely complex time-keeping devices. Many of these individuals, notably the astronomer Henri Arnaut de Zwolle, also invented prototypes of both the clavichord and harpsichord. The organ keyboard benefited from this technology as well; a possible further influence was the application of loom construction, with its foot-operated treadles, to the instrument's pedalboard.
The lathe, refined for greater precision in the construction of scientific instruments, particularly the cutting of screw threads, became important in the manufacture of woodwind instruments. The earliest lathes, powered by a hand-crank or a spring pole and treadle device, were developed into an extremely versatile tool during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, when the technology was exported from Flanders and southern Germany to other European countries. Further improvements included a tool holder, a weight-driven spindle which rotated continuously while holding the wood in place, and, later, water-powered drive mechanisms. The so-called ornamental turning lathe included cams and templates that permitted more intricate motions and increased accuracy. It was soon applied to musical instrument building, resulting in a more uniform and reliable manufacture; bores, for example, could be machined with far greater precision. Advances in the making and working of iron (mining, smelting, alloying and casting) between about 1600 and 1750 were soon reflected in specific aspects of musical instrument construction such as more uniform materials, precise shaping and the fabrication of keys.
During the 19th century mechanical technology improved greatly, due in part to the spread of education and industry, and the availability of strong, ferrous metals. Cast iron was extensively used for buildings, their façades and architectural ornaments, as well as for railroad bridges. The development of modern machine-shop manufacturing and the machine tool industry gave rise to musical instrument firms such as Distin in England, Brod and Sax in France, and Conn in the USA. Cheap high-tensile steel became available, thanks in part to technologies invented in the late 1850s by Henry Bessemer (blowing air through molten cast iron) and William Siemens (the open-hearth furnace process). Such knowledge was disseminated through books, journals, newspapers, mechanics institutes and night schools. By 1800 the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris had published charts and plates illustrating a wide variety of machine elements including gears, rods, screws, nuts, cranks and levers. In 1816 C.J.B. Karsten brought out the first edition of his Handbuch der Eisenhüttenkunde, which contained detailed drawings of all kinds of blower systems as well as the various types of valves used in both furnaces and ironworks. The quality and variety of available raw materials increased substantially, as did the reliability of mass production, especially following the advent of steam power. The direct alloying of copper and zinc (as opposed to cementation with copper and calamine), the production of tough, durable spring steel, the use of nickel for sliding components, electroplating and the development of gas flame-controlled soldering techniques are but a few examples of improvements in manufacture.
The period from about 1810 to 1880 was characterized by vitality and innovation in the development and manufacture of musical instruments. As the art of moulding and casting iron improved, this material was appropriated by piano builders to produce instruments with greater volume of sound, which necessitated heavier stringing and much higher string tensions. Traditional wooden frames, even when reinforced with metal braces, proved inadequate and by 1843 the Boston firm of Chickering began producing grand pianos with one-piece iron frames. Later refinements in both the chemical composition of steel and its casting led to more durable frames which were less likely to crack under pressure. High-tensile steel wire was used not only in suspension bridges but for piano strings as well. Theobald Boehm, who worked out the proportions and devised the basic mechanism of the modern flute, was a practising musician, a goldsmith and for 12 years superintendent of the Bavarian steel industry. Well grounded in acoustics and skilled in delicate metalwork, he set about determining by trial and error the ideal dimensions and uniform placement of tone holes according to rational criteria. In 1828 he established a successful manufactory in Munich, where about 1847 he produced an all-metal flute with elaborate keywork, improved acoustics, uniform tone production and greater volume of sound.
The most important industrial tool in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was the steam engine, which required a system of control valves for the passage of steam, water or air. Karsten's Handbuch helped transfer this technology to the fabrication of valve brass instruments, obviating the need for either hand-stopping to correct ‘non-musical’ harmonic notes or a full set of crooks for all keys. This was accomplished by two Germans, Friedrich Blühmel and H.D. Stölzel. Blühmel, a miner who played waldhorn and trumpet in a company band, had observed the techniques for distributing and regulating the supply of air to blast furnaces and the venting of air in ironwork forges. The sliding valves which turned the air to furnaces on and off led Blühmel to conceive of using a piston valve to divert the flow of air in the trumpet's tube to a set of longer or shorter loops, thus shifting the harmonic series from the instrument's natural key to another and producing an entire scale. After much experimentation he demonstrated his valve trumpet in 1816. Two years later he began his association with Stölzel, a Berlin horn player, instrument maker and repairer who by 1815 had crafted a trumpet equipped with two valves for lowering its basic pitch by either a semi- or a whole tone, producing all the notes of the chromatic scale with even tone-colour. Together Blühmel and Stölzel applied for a patent on a spring-controlled slide-valve mechanism for both trumpets and horns. By 1828 Blühmel, working independently, designed and produced a cylindrical rotary valve inspired by the spring-driven rotary valves used to channel air to forges.
Similarly radical alterations were made in the use and construction of the timpani in the early 19th century. A growing number of composers found the tradition of tuning the drums in unaltered perfect 4ths or 5ths unduly restrictive. Timpani parts in the newer orchestral repertory often demanded rapid retunings both during and between movements. Such quick changes of pitch were impossible on instruments equipped only with threaded tuning bolts around the rim. This problem was easily solved by locksmiths and metalworkers applying the mechanical technology brought about by the Industrial Revolution: the tension of the skin head could rapidly be adjusted by turning a single master screw, by rotating the kettle itself or by manipulating a series of gear wheels with the foot. In 1812 Gerhard Cramer, court timpanist in Munich, working with the royal armourer and locksmith, built the first cast iron lever- and gear-operated ‘machine’ drum. The musician-inventor Johann Stumpff (c1815) in Amsterdam based his timpani on the concept of an armature and central screw found in the swivel desk chair. Johann Einbigler of Frankfurt (1836) employed a threaded vertical tuning crank pressing against a pivoted rocker-arm. Both August Knocke, a manufacturer of firearms in Munich (c1840), and Max Puschmann in Chemnitz (1880) used elaborate systems of rods, gears and cog-wheels found in contemporary industrial machinery. However, the sheer brute force required by Knocke's drum, and the metal strain from the torque caused by rotation in Puschmann's model, made their mechanisms impractical. The most successful, and now ubiquitous, timpani was the ‘Dresden’ model invented by Carl Pittrich in 1881. It used steel rather than iron and employed a foot pedal, ratchet and mechanical couplings which converted the semicircular motion of the pedal into a vertical reciprocating motion acting on the head by means of the tension mechanism. This concept had been widely used in steam engines and punch presses, as well as in machines controlled by foot-treadle linkages, such as the common mangle found in commercial laundries.
The harnessing of electricity stimulated interest in its application to music. Examples of simple technological transfer range from motor-operated organ bellows and key actions to the amplifiers used in the vibraphone and electric guitar. The invention of the three-element amplifying valve or vacuum tube by Lee DeForest in 1912 prompted a large-scale research effort at the Bell Telephone Company (later Bell Telephone Laboratories) focussing initially on the characteristics of speech and hearing, and later on music and sound in general. The need for more precise instruments led to the construction of devices to convert sound waves into electricity and reconstitute them into sound with minimal distortion. The most noteworthy of these early efforts from the musical point of view was the introduction of electrical recording and reproducing in 1925.
A series of electronic musical instruments, such as the theremin and ondes martenot, both developed in the 1920s, employed oscillators controlled by the performer combined with amplification and loudspeaker output. In some of these instruments tones were produced by electrical frequency generators, in others by rotary or vibrating mechanical generators. The electronic organ of Laurens Hammond had 91 rotary electromagnetic generators driven by a motor with associated gears and tone-wheels. The wave forms thus produced could be synthesized by permutations and combinations into complex musical tones. In 1955 Harry Olson of RCA invented an electronic music synthesizer. The instructions were stored by means of a typewriter-like keyboard which punched the commands into a 40-channel, binary-coded paper tape describing the desired musical sounds. The roll of tape in turn activated a series of tone generators which produced the actual synthesized output.
The application of computer technology to music was anticipated in the 1840s when the mathematician Ada Lovelace speculated on the possibilities of using punched cards to input music and the rules of composition into a mechanical calculator, enabling it to compose ‘elaborate and scientific pieces of music’. This technological ‘transmission belt’ ultimately led to modern commercial scientific laboratories and university-based electronic music studios. In one type of pioneering experiment the computer selected the notes according to either mathematical rule or numerical sequence (probability). These in turn were converted, measure by measure and part by part, into a musical score and performed by ‘live’ musicians. In a second variety the basic rules of composition were stored in the computer's memory. Following or imitating these steps, the computer selected or rejected each successive note and then stored the sequence of numbers representing each wave-form in terms of pitch on thousands of punched cards. Converted electronically into oscillations, these ‘notes’ drove a loudspeaker. Computer music was never widely accepted by the listening public, and is now little more than a historical relic. On the other hand, many composers use digital computer technology to produce an almost infinite variety of synthesized sounds, especially for films and television.
See also Computers and music; Electronic instruments; Keywork; Mechanical instrument; Organ; and Organology. Further discussion of technologies is included in articles on individual instruments.
EDMUND A. BOWLES
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