Oskar Sala

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Oskar Sala (born July 18, 1910 in Greiz ( Thuringia ), † February 26, 2002 in Berlin ) was a German composer . A street was named after him in his hometown.

biography

Sala was one of the music pioneers of the 20th century; at first it looked like a career as a pianist. The music studies that he began in Berlin after graduating in 1929 led to a turning point in his career - and electronic music.

Paul Hindemith , Sala's composition teacher at the Berlin Conservatory , introduced his student to the engineer Friedrich Trautwein in 1930 . Together they developed the trautonium , one of the first electronic instruments, a parallel development to the theremin and the forerunner of the synthesizer - a device with which one can not only imitate conventional musical instruments, but also produce vowels, animal voices and synthetic sounds (subharmonics). Due to the way it is played (stepless play on one or two string (s)), the Trautonium, in contrast to a keyboard, allowed completely different possibilities of expression. Since the pitch was defined by the physical fingering point on the string, there was no fixed tuning and glissandos were possible. The instrument was presented to the public in 1930 with Hindemith's trio piece for three trautonies .

He studied physics at Berlin University from 1932 to 1936. In 1938 he constructed a concert trautonium. As a physicist and composer, Sala dedicated his life to the Trautonium, toured Europe with the unwieldy device, had his own radio broadcasts, “accompanied” conventional concerts and composed especially for his new instrument. Famous contemporary composers such as Hindemith composed for the Trautonium. Richard Strauss and Arthur Honegger included it in concerts and thus indirectly promoted its development.

During the war, Sala wrote the music for a 17-minute strip, which was the first German comic film to be released in 1944 under the title Armer Hansi . Among other things, the draftsmen eoplauen and Manfred Schmidt participated . Sala was drafted twice for military service. After he was able to resume his musical activity for the first time immediately after completing his training, he was relocated to East Prussia in 1944 and, according to his own account, survived as the only one of his troupe.

After the war, Sala developed the Mixturtrautonium from 1949 to 1952 and wrote compositions for the film, especially for award-winning documentary and industrial films; over 300 productions of this kind were created. Sala's production for the film Die Vögel by Alfred Hitchcock was best known in 1963: The terrifying bird cries did not originate in Hollywood , but in a Berlin backyard at Salas Trautonium, where he had his own studio in Charlottenburg from 1958 . Also in the Edgar Wallace films The Curse of the Yellow Snake (1962) and The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle (1963) you can hear his - for this series rather unusual - film music. In the film Different from you and me (§ 175) (1957) Sala's instrument can also be seen in play.

Paean premiered on May 29, 1960 as part of a ballet event in the Theater des Westens , for which he wrote the music together with Remi Gassmann . Sala personally handled the electronic controls.

Grave of Oskar and Käte Sala in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin

But Sala's fame was not reduced to the past: until his death he worked as a composer in Berlin, gladly invited music professors and other guests to his home, gave lectures and gave concerts, e.g. B. 1991 live at the Osnabrücker KlangArt . He was also able to experience the aftermath of his sound invention: modern musicians such as the Kraftwerk group , whose founding member Florian Schneider-Esleben wrote the foreword to an illustrated book about Oskar Sala published in 2000 (author: Peter Badge), refer to Oskar Sala as a pioneer a style of music that found its way from the avant-garde to popularity. In 1999 his music was played live in Karlsruhe during the solar eclipse .

Sala, who was awarded the Gold Filmband in 1987 for many years of outstanding work in German film, died in high esteem on the night of February 26th to 27th, 2002 in Berlin at the age of 91. His grave is on the state's own cemetery in Heerstraße in the Westend district of Berlin (grave location: II-Ur 3-224). On the occasion of his death, "Radio Jena", the local radio program for East Thuringia, changed its program on February 27, 2002 and broadcast a previously recorded two-hour workshop report in which Sala am Mixtur-Trautonium once again performed his best compositions. Since then, this program has been repeated every year in Sala's country of birth on the day of his death.

For his film Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith , George Lucas requested a trautonium in order to create certain sounds that could not be reproduced on other electronic musical instruments. His last two-manual Mixturtrautonium on semiconductor basis is in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin ; The instrument was made available on loan from the Deutsche Bundespost University of Applied Sciences in 1998. The second still existing Mixturtrautonium is in the Deutsches Museum Bonn. Oskar Sala was the last and only one who could still play these instruments with virtuosity.

Musical legacy

Sala didn't teach. Therefore, the trautonium largely disappeared in the museum. For several years now, however, Peter Pichler, musician and artist from Munich, has devoted himself intensively to the instrument. He plays live on original replicas of Sala's instruments, both the original compositions that were written especially for the Trautonium and its further developments, as well as new classical music and film music.

Discography

  • Gassmann, Remi & Sala, Oskar: "Electronics" (Remi Gassmann: Electronic Music for the Ballet & Oskar Sala: Five Improvisations for Magnetic Tape), 1962.
  • Sala, Oskar: "Electronic Virtuosity For Selected Sound", 1969.
  • Sala, Oskar: "Resonances" (Suite for electronic percussion), 1970.
  • Sala, Oskar: "Electronic film music by Oskar Sala", 1971.
  • Sala, Oskar: “Musique stéréo pour orchester électronique en 5 parties”, 1972.
  • Genzmer, Harald & Sala, Oskar: "Electronique et Stereophonie", 1979.
  • Sala, Oskar: "Electronic Impressions" (œuvres de Paul Hindemith: 7 trio pieces for 3 Trautonium, concert pieces for Trautonium and strings + Oskar Sala: Electronic Impressions), 1979.
  • Sala, Oskar: "Hindemiths Trautoniumkompositionen", 1980.
  • Sala, Oskar: Paul Hindemith “Concerto for Orge1 + 7 pieces for 3 Trautoniums + Concert Piece for Trautonium”, 1980.
  • Sala, Oskar: "Electronic Kaleidoscope", 1983.
  • Sala, Oskar: Harald Genzmer “Concerts with Orchestra for Trautonium and Mixturtrautonium”, 1984.
  • Sala, Oskar: "The thirties" (including Paul Hindemith: "Slow piece"), 1989.
  • Sala, Oskar & Harald Genzmer: “Trautonium Concerts”, 1991.
  • Becker, Matthias & Sala, Oskar: “Synthesizer from Yesterday”, 1992.
  • Becker, Matthias & Bruse, Claudius & Sala, Oskar: “Synthesizer from Yesterday - Vol 2 and 3”, 1994.
  • Sala, Oskar: "Resonances" (Ré-édition on vinyl with: dance piece with percussion solo, agitato, in a light march rhythm, meditation, interlude with small percussion effects, echo structures, improvisation for electronic percussion, resonances), 1995 .
  • Sala, Oskar: “My Fascinating Instrument” (including: Fantasy Suite in three movements for Mixturtrautonium solo, Largo, Fanfare, Impression électronique and Electronic Dance Suite), 1990.
  • Sala, Oskar: “Subharmonische Mixturen” (including: Slow piece for orchestra, Rondo for Trautonium, Sechs Caprices, Chaconne Electronique and excerpts from: The Strangler of Blackmore Castle), 1997.
  • Sala, Oskar: "The Trautonium Player Oskar Sala" (Documentation / MDR Culture), 1997.
  • Sala, Oskar: Paul Hindemith "7 trio pieces for 3 Trautonium, concert piece for Trautonium + Oskar Sala: electronic impressions", 1998.
  • Sala, Oskar: “Without year” (electronic film music), 1998.
  • Sala, Oskar: “Concertando Rubato” (excerpts from an electronic dance suite in the record series: “The early gurus of electronic music / 1948–1980”), 2000.
  • Sala. Oskar: "A visit to the workshop" (Documentation / Radio Jena), 2002.

Filmography

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "Twelve Mickey films for the 'Führer'" , SPIEGEL ONLINE "one day".
  2. ↑ Sound mirror - electronic & classic - conversation with Oskar Sala. Retrieved on May 20, 2020 (German).
  3. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 493.
  4. ↑ State Institute for Music Research | MIM | Exhibits | Electronic musical instruments. Retrieved July 21, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Sala, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
DATE OF BIRTH July 18, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Greiz
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 2002
Place of death Berlin