Flexaton
The flexaton is a musical instrument that belongs to the group of idiophones and within this one of the rattling frames . The name comes from the English: to flex a tone , "to bend a tone". With its glissando (similar to that of a singing saw ), the instrument was used, among other things, to add acoustically to cartoons.
A flexaton looks like a spatula or a mason's trowel with a bracket and two mallets attached to it. The sound of the flexaton is produced by hitting the clapper against the metal plate.
The tone is raised or lowered by pressing the spring steel plate with different degrees of pressure with the thumb . The bending of the steel plate leads to a structural change in the molecular structure , which changes the hardness and thus the resonance properties of the sound-producing steel plate (similar to a tone tongue ).
Emergence
The first time fixation is made possible by patents in Great Britain from 1922 and 1923. In 1924, the New York company Playatone registered a patent for a "Flex-a-tone" in the United States .
The instrument was first used as an effect by jazz bands in the 1920s, but is mainly and rarely used in orchestral music today.
Playing styles
Normally the Flexaton is shaken so that the two clappers hit the spring steel sheet from below and above (audio sample see below), whereby the shaking speed is of course freely chosen by the musician.
It is less common to strike the spring steel sheet once with an external mallet. This can be heard , for example, in the song “I can't dance” by Genesis from bar 4.
Sound character
The swinging sheet metal of the Flexaton spreads brightly excited or melancholy tender tones. The sound is comparable to a mixture of a singing saw and a doorbell.
Double meaning of the term "Flexaton"
In contemporary music of the 20th century, between around 1920 and 1970, the term “flexaton” was used for both the flexaton and the singing saw instrument. Composers who by the term “Flexaton” meant the singing saw were Arthur Honegger (short opera Antigone , 1924/1927), Ernst Krenek (opera Jonny plays on , 1927), Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Shostakowitsch (opera Die Nase , 1929, opera Lady Macbeth by Mtsensk , 1934, film music for Das neue Babylon , 1929), Aram Chatschaturjan (piano concerto D flat major, 1936), Hans Werner Henze (opera Elegy for young lovers , 1961).
use
The flexaton is often used as an effect instrument in radio plays and theater. In classical music it appears as an instrument in orchestral works by Louis Glass , Arnold Schönberg , György Ligeti , Tilo Medek , Alfred Schnittke or Sofia Gubaidulina . Occasionally it can be heard in some bands in the popular music genre of dancehall and reggae .
Individual evidence
- ^ Holland, James (2005). Practical Percussion: A Guide to the Instruments and Their Sources , pp 23-4. ISBN 9781461670636 .
- ↑ Singing saw in Honegger's opera Antigone from minute 27'23
- ↑ " Article on the Singing Saw in Shostakovich's opera The Nose"
- ^ Program booklet Khachaturian Piano Concerto - Singing saw as the original intention of the composer
- ↑ Khachaturian Piano Concerto with Singing Saw (London Philharmonic Orchestra)
- ^ Report on the world premiere of Henze's opera Elegy for young lovers