Highlights
- On his 112th birth anniversary, google doodled German physicist, composer, and pioneer of electronic music Oskar Sala.
- From studying physics to studying piano, he discovered Trautonium into the Mixtur-Trautonium.
- He also followed the experiments of Dr. Friedrich Trautwein at the School’s laboratory and learned to play with Trautwein’s pioneer electronic instrument, the Trautonium.
On his 112th birth anniversary, google doodled German physicist, composer, and pioneer of electronic music Oskar Sala. The German composer was born in 1910 and moved to berlin in 1929 to study piano and composition. Moreover, his life spent some years as a soldier during the Nazi era.
On July 17, 2022, Google took to Twitter and quoted, “Take a beat to celebrate German electronic composer Oskar Sala’s 112th birthday.” The German composer was indeed born to a singer and ophthalmologist father who had an interest in music. Eventually, that held deep meaning in his life, and his keen interest in music grew. Nevertheless, Sala started creating compositions and songs for instruments like the violin and piano at 14. From studying physics to studying piano, he discovered Trautonium into the Mixtur-Trautonium. Sala’s invention opened the field of subharmonics, the symmetric counterpart to overtones. The process in which thoroughly distinctive tuning can evolve. In the years coming, he developed “Radio-Trautonium” in 1935 and a portable model, the “Konzert Trautonium,” in 1938. Oskar Sala indeed became someone to be remembered for his works.
Oskar Sala in films
During the 1940s and 1950s, Oskar worked on many film scores and eventually established his studio at Mars film GmbH (4th incarnation) in Berlin in 1958. From there, he produced electronic soundtracks for films such as Veit Harlan’s Different from You and Me (1957), Rolf Thiele’s Rosemary (1959), and Fritz Lang’s Das Indische Grabmal (1959).
Alfred Hitchcock wanted to use the electroacoustic Mixtur-Trautonium to create the bird calls and noises required in the film. Something more original and rare to make it work on the screen.
He had first encountered Mixtur-Trautonium, the predecessor to the synthesizer, on Berlin radio in the late 1920s. Friedrich Trautwein evented and Oskar Sala developed it further into the Trautonium. He hoped to add bird sounds for the film from the instrument, which eventually led Sala to create the non-musical soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds.
He received many awards for his film scores. He also worked on German commercials, most notably one referred to as HB’s little man. Additionally, He was an honorary Senator of Berlin.
Introducing Trautonium
To introduce the Trautonium, Sala and Paul Hindemith gave a public performance at the Berliner Musikhochschule Hall called Neue Musik Berlin 1930. The following year was June 20, 1930. Later, Sala toured Germany with the Trautonium, and in 1931, he was the soloist in a performance of Hindemith’s Concert for Trautonium with String Quartet. Moreover, Sala soloed in the debut of Hindemith student Harald Genzmer’s “Concert for Trautonium AND Orchestra.”
Google stated that Sala became fascinated by the tonal possibilities and technology offered by the Trautonium while hearing it for the first time. Eventually, his life mission became mastering and developing Trautonium. Additionally, it inspired his school studies in physics and composition.