Electrophones: sound born in circuits, not vibrating wood
An electronic musical instrument—musicology’s electrophone—makes sound with circuitry, sending a signal to an amp and speaker. Keyboards often control pitch, yet modern setups split controller from synthesizer via MIDI. In dance-pop almost every recorded part can be a synth, bass module, or drum machine.
Sachs added electrophones as Hornbostel–Sachs category five in his 1940 History of Musical Instruments (absent from the 1914 scheme), dividing actuated acoustics (51), amplified acoustics (52), and oscillator-driven “radioelectric” instruments such as theremins and synthesizers (53). Many ethnomusicologists now keep only 53 as true electrophones, leaving pipe organs as aerophones and electric guitars as chordophones. Galpin’s 1937 textbook already listed electrophones by oscillation, electromagnetic, and electrostatic generation.
Eighteenth-century curiosities—Denis d’or (1753) and Laborde’s clavecin électrique (1761)—used electricity without generating tone electrically. Elisha Gray’s 1876 Musical Telegraph, a telephone by-product, controlled a self-vibrating circuit and is called the first electric synthesizer. Thaddeus Cahill’s 1897 Telharmonium used tonewheels for additive synthesis; versions between 1901 and 1910 grew from seven to over 200 tons before bankruptcy by 1912—technology later echoing in the Hammond organ. De Forest’s 1906 audion vacuum tube enabled amplification and computation.
Leon Theremin demonstrated the Etherophone in Leningrad (1919–1920)—played without touch; Schillinger’s First Airphonic Suite premiered with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1929, and Cowell’s Rhythmicon (1931–32) followed. Maurice Martenot’s 1928 ondes Martenot, inspired by radio-oscillator beats, offers keyboard or wire-ring control; Messiaen used it in the 1949 Turangalîla-Symphonie. Laurens Hammond’s company (from 1929) built the electromechanical tonewheel organ beloved of organ trios, and the Novachord (1938–1942)—72-note polyphony, 163 tubes, 500 pounds—was the first commercial synthesizer with envelope control.
Daphne Oram’s Oramics drawings on 35 mm film (1959) and Delia Derbyshire’s Doctor Who theme at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop later fixed electronic timbres in British popular memory.
Source: Electronic musical instrument
