Maurice Martenot plays the 1rst model (1928)
he used only a ribbon and had to stay  a little way from the unit

    The instrument is monophonic and consists in three diffusers : a principal diffuser (a traditional loudspeaker), a resonnance diffuser (two possibilities : one originally named palme which is a loudspeaker in the shape of a flame, whose tuned strings, placed on a resonance chamber allow the sound to go on, vibrating by sympathy; and another one, more recent, named resonnance which is composed of springs and whose effect is the same but louder) and the metallique (a gong set in vibration by an engine, the metal replacing the membrane of the loudspeaker, which creates a metal sound halo at a precise pitch).

     A mobile keyboard allows a vibrato controlled «on line» and also micro intervals.

     In front of and along the keyboard there is a ruban (ribbon) with a ring through which the interpreter puts the forefinger of his right hand. The frequency corresponds to the key facing the ring and allows to obtain the same effect as with a string instrument, without frette, or with a voice (glissandi, effects, lyric, song) on nine octaves.

     On the left, a drawer contains all the controls : sounds (one hundred possible combinations), transposition buttons (among others : quarter tones), loudspeakers controls, balance, pink noise and «touche d’intensité» (intensity key). As with a bow, no sound is produced if the interpreter does not press that key which allows to create intensities and attacks. Two foot-controlled pedals (mute and intensity) complete the instrument.

     There is about 1500 works composed for the ondes Martenot by Varèse, Messiaen, Honegger, Scelci, Boulez, Jolivet, Murail... It is also widely used in film music (Mad Max, Mars attacks, Fantomas, la Marche de l'Empereur - the March of Penguins...) and in popular music (Brel, Radiohead, Gorillaz, Vanessa Paradis...).


  Thomas Bloch is one of the very rare professional ondist (around ten in the world).

to listen

     Martenot’s primary interest, however, was not research into new sounds (unlike the inventors of synthesisers, whose first models appeared almost thirty years later). The development of this most musical of electronic instruments was driven above all by an interest in the expressive, musical potential offered by electricity.

     To understand how the ondes Martenot works, we need to look at an acoustic phenomenon. The string of an instrument playing the note A has a frequency of 440 Hz, i.e. it vibrates back and forth 440 times per second. Depending on the speed of this vibration, the note (frequency) is low or high. The radio used by Martenot only worked at a very high frequency, emitting an ultrasonic note inaudible to the human ear (80 000 Hz). To obtain an audible sound therefore, he used the principle of heterodyning (which musicians use when tuning to another instrument) - producing a beat frequency by the combination of two oscillations of slightly different frequency in order to generate a third, whose value is the mathematical difference between the first two. The note A, for example, can be produced by the simultaneous production of two inaudible frequencies of 80000 and 80440 Hz. The first frequency is fixed and never changes, while the second is variable, modified by the performer who plays the instrument either via a keyboard (clavier or CL in French) or by moving a wire know as a ribbon (ruban or R in French).

     The musician’s left hand works the touche d’intensité (intensity key) located in a little drawer on the left side of the instrument. This controls the sound level, something like the volume control of a radio. Extremely sensitive, it has a two-centimetre range of movement and can take the volume from zero to earsplitting. It acts as an extension of the player’s thought process, enabling a wide variety of nuance, phrasing and attack (accents, slurring, detached notes, staccato, percussive effects, and so on). In order to produce a sound the musician has to play the keyboard (or ribbon) and depress the button simultaneously. The action of the latter is similar to that of a bow, recalling once more Martenot’s beloved cello.

     Also located in the drawer are seven switches that control the choice of wave form (sounds) and their mixing, enabling numerous timbre combinations. On the latest model (1975), they are designated by letters rather than by numbers as on previous models: O for Ondes (sinusoid waves), C for Creux (peaklimited triangular signal), g for petit gambé (a square signal whose intensity can be regulated using a selector), G for Gambé (square signal), N for Nasillard (pulse signal), 8 for Octaviant (reinforced first harmonic, whose intensity can be regulated using a selector) and T for Tutti (combination of all timbres). There are also two switches which can be used to obtain variable-intensity pink noise, comparable to a Puff (S for Souffle), and to filter the harmonics (F for Feutre), creating a mute effect.

     Over the decades since its invention, there have been seven models of the ondes Martenot, all incorporating various improvements.

     The 1919 instrument, a kind of theremin, was not seen as viable by Martenot and his first “official” model was that of 1928. This only had the ribbon, which the player pulled and released with the right hand to slide from one note to another. The performer stood a little way from the unit and controlled the volume using a control in a drawer on a table. The second model (1929) was more compact and included a dummy keyboard with a pointer to indicate the pitch of the notes played on the ribbon. The third model (1930) could be played from either a seated or standing position and the ribbon was positioned above a dummy wooden keyboard which worked as a visual reference. The next model had no ribbon but had a working, sprung keyboard. Ribbon and functioning keyboard finally appeared together in version five in 1937, the year in which Messiaen composed his Fête des Belles Eaux for six ondes Martenot (which was performed on a boat floating down the Seine as part of Exposition Universelle). Martenot began giving classes in the instrument at the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in 1947, and a dozen or so more courses were later established in France and Canada, encouraging official recognition of the instrument. Model six (1955) was smaller and lighter owing to progress made in the field of electronics. The seventh and final version (1975) replaced valves with transistors.

     Around 370 instruments were manufactured in Martenot’s workshop in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, along with a number of non-professional models: simplified versions for school use, chamber music versions, one combined with a radio and turntable and one designed to play raga modes (built in 1932 for the Indian poet and musician Rabindranath Tagore), among others.

     Production ended in 1988 on the retirement of Marcel Manière, Martenot’s assistant since 1951. Jean-Louis Martenot, one of Maurice’s sons, worked on a digital version, but this was not pursued. In 1995, engineer Ambro Oliva makes the ondéa, a close instrument.

    REVIVAL !!!  After 2008, Jean-Loup Dierstein, a wordly french renowned specialist of vintage keyboards, works on rebuilding the original ondes Martenotwith the support of Maurice Martenot's son. It will be for sale. The production will probably begin in 2010. The instrument is exactly the same than the very last ondes Martenot model made in 1988 - write here to buy it or for informations about this new instrument.

     Today the ondes Martenot repertoire comprises more than a thousand works, in varying genres: contemporary music, pop songs, film scores, stage music, dance, rock and pieces written for radio, TV and ads. Composers of works for the instrument include Dimitri Levidis (whose Poème symphonique of 1928 was the first work written for the instrument), Pierre Boulez (ondist himself), Elmer Bernstein, Sylvano Bussotti, Jacques Canteloube, Jacques Chailley, Jacques Charpentier, Marius Constant, Henri Dutilleux, Nguyen Tien Dao, Arthur Honegger, Jacques Ibert, Maurice Jarre, André Jolivet, Charles Koechlin, Marcel Landowski, Olivier Messiaen, Darius Milhaud, Tristan Murail, Nicolas Obouhow, Bernard Parmegiani, François Rauber (the writer of Jacques Brel’s songs), Maurice Ravel (who authorised arrangements of a few of his works - Ma Mère l’Oye, the String Quartet and Sonatine for piano - saying they sounded as they did in his dreams), Henri Sauguet, Giacinto Scelsi, Yoshihisa Taira, Henri Tomasi, Edgar Varèse, Pierre Vellones... Also in pop music field : Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead), Damon Albarn (Gorillaz), Tom Waits...

     Although the ondes Martenot is a multifaceted instrument, it is sometimes considered obsolete by those ignorant of its potential. Composer Michel Redolfi quashes all such prejudice: “The ondes Martenot, whose most celebrated patron was of course Olivier Messiaen, continues to be used in weird and wonderful compositions. Seen as taboo, rejected by those who fail to understand its qualities, thought of as too pure, out of control, too free in its apparently effortless sound production, without exaggerated physical movement, the ondes Martenot can, for instance, create new chords for the human voice, free it from its player’s flesh and breath and let it drift away towards new soundworlds.”