Jörg Mager

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Jörg Georg Adam Mager (born November 6, 1880 in Eichstätt ; † April 5, 1939 in Aschaffenburg ) was a pioneer of electronic music .

Life

Jörg Georg Adam Mager's father was a watchmaker, the mother supposedly came from an old family of cantors . He had ten siblings. For lack of fortune, he could not take up the desired music studies. So he became a primary school teacher and sexton, whereby the activity as a cantor and organist also fell into his area of ​​responsibility.

The detuning of one of the upper manual registers on his organ in the hot summer of 1911 inspired him to construct electrical instruments. In the same year he built his first quarter-tone harmonium with organ pipes borrowed from organ builder GF Steinmeyer & Co. from Oettingen .

In 1915 he went public with his own quarter tone theory , which he published in the brochure Quarter Tone Music in Aschaffenburg.

Jörg Mager plays on his spherophone, 1926 in Donaueschingen

The radio company C. Lorenz AG provided him with a sound generating device with which he achieved a 72 octave division. Alois Hába and Iwan Alexandrowitsch Wyschnegradsky were enthusiastic, but Mager was the only one who continued to deal with microintervallics electronically. He called his experimental apparatus at first the electrophon , later the spherophone . Like the theremin , it was a beat hum .

Georg Schünemann and Leo Kestenberg supported him in his experiments. The essay by Richard H. Stein Zukunftsmusik on the radio paved the way for Mager to the "Funkinstanzen", the Telegraphentechnisches Reichsamt and the Heinrich Hertz Society .

The first public presentation of the instrument took place in 1926 at the Chamber Music Festival in Donaueschingen . After that, Hába , Wyschnegradsky , Paul Hindemith and Georg Rimski-Korsakow offered to write pieces for the spherophone, but lip service remained. He further developed the kaleidosphon with a piano-like keyboard. During this time he also gave concerts on the theremin .

In 1931 he presented the five-part scoreophone , which was then used at the Bayreuth Festival for the electronic realization of the " Parsifal Grail Bells ".

Oskar Sala once described Mager as a "tragic figure". In fact, he was constantly standing in his own way because of a pronounced distrust of others. In addition, his technical skills were insufficient to make an instrument ready for production. Although there were numerous promising approaches for further development, it continually failed before the goal was achieved. Finally he died impoverished on April 5, 1939 of heart failure in the Aschaffenburg hospital.

Works

  • A new era in music through radio. Berlin-Neukölln 1924.
  • A broadcast prophecy. Article in: Der deutsche Rundfunk. Volume 2, 1924, issue 49, p. 2952ff.
  • Biographical information about the spherophone.

literature

  • Richard H. Stein: Music of the future in radio. Article in: Der deutsche Rundfunk. 3rd year 1925, issue 12, pp. 733ff.
  • Arno Huth: Electric sound generation. in: The music. XX / 1 (October 1927), p. 43.
  • Hans Kuznitzky: New elements of music production. Article in: "Melos" 6th year 1927, p. 156 ff.
  • Emil Schenck: Jörg Mager, the German pioneer of electronic music research, to remember.
  • Peter Donhauser: Electric sound machines. The pioneering days in Germany and Austria. Boehlau Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-205-77593-5 .

Web links

Commons : Jörg Mager  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Jörg Mager  - Sources and full texts

References and comments

  1. ^ Max Martel Treutler: Sounds from Space , in: Freiburger Zeitung , February 15, 1929 (2nd evening edition)
personal data
SURNAME Mager, Jörg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mager, Jörg Georg Adam (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician and instrument maker
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Eichstatt
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1939
Place of death Aschaffenburg