Ondes Martenot

In classical music

The ondes Martenot has been used by many composers, most notably Olivier Messiaen. He first used it in the Fête des Belles Eaux for six ondes, written for the 1937 International World's Fair in Paris and then used it in several of his works, including the Turangalîla-Symphonie and Trois Petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine. His opera Saint-François d'Assise requires three of the instruments. The composer's widow, Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen arranged and edited four unpublished Feuillets inedits for ondes Martenot and piano which were published in 2001. The ondes Martenot has also been used occasionally in transcriptions: Leopold Stokowski used the instrument in his ethereal orchestration of Buxtehude's Sarabande and Courante ("Auf meinen lieben Gott").

Other notable composers who have employed the ondes Martenot in their works include Charles Koechlin, Edgard Varèse (as a replacement for two theremin instruments in his work Ecuatorial), Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Cemal Reşit Rey, Maurice Jarre, Sylvano Bussotti, Giacinto Scelsi, Marcel Landowski, Karel Goeyvaerts, Pierre Boulez, Tristan Murail, Miklós Rózsa, Henri Tomasi, and Frank Zappa. André Jolivet wrote a prominent concerto for it in 1947. Bohuslav Martinů authorized the adaptation of his Fantasie to the use of the ondes Martenot when it proved difficult to perform on the Theremin, for which it was originally written.

Estimates of the number of works written for ondes Martenot vary. Hugh Davies reckoned there to be around a thousand works composed for the instrument, although Jeanne Loriod's figures are the more widely quoted: she estimated that there were 15 concertos and 300 pieces of chamber music. Jacques Tchamkerten's provisional catalogue of works for ondes, included in the current reprinting of Loriod's Technique, lists far fewer works than either of these figures.

In cinema and television

In 1936 Adolphe Borchard used it in Sacha Guitry's Le roman d'un tricheur, played by Martenot's sister, Ginette. It was used by composer Brian Easdale in the ballet music for The Red Shoes. It was frequently used in horror and science fiction movies and television, notably in the 1950s.

In 1962 French composer Maurice Jarre introduced the ondes Martenot to American cinema in his score for Lawrence of Arabia. Later, the English composer Richard Rodney Bennett used it for such diverse scores as Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and Secret Ceremony (1968). It was through him that Elmer Bernstein first learned about the instrument, and later used it in several films, among them Heavy Metal, Ghostbusters, The Black Cauldron, and My Left Foot. Other film scores using the ondes Martenot include There Will Be Blood (2007) by Jonny Greenwood and Hugo (2011) by Howard Shore.

Barry Gray used Ondes Martenot for his film and television soundtracks of the 1950s and 1960s. David Fanshawe incorporated the ondes into his main theme and score for the Yorkshire Television series Flambards (1979).

The musical instrument is the subject of the 2013 Quebec documentary Wavemakers. It is also featured in a performance of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in an episode from the third season of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, where the quartet is said to include an ondes Martenot, along with two other instruments.

In popular music

One of the first integrations of the ondes Martenot into popular music was done in French chanson during the fifties and sixties. For example in some of Baudelaire's poems set to music by French singer Léo Ferré in his albums Les Fleurs du mal (1957) and Léo Ferré chante Baudelaire (1967), or in popular dramatic lovesong Jacques Brel's "Ne me quitte pas" (1959). During the seventies Beau Dommage and Harmonium, the two most popular musical groups of the Quebec musical scene, made extensive use of this instrument (introduced there by Marie Bernard) in each of their 1975 albums, respectively Où est passée la noce? and Si on avait besoin d'une cinquième saison. Harmonium later toured with Supertramp

Jonny Greenwood is often credited with bringing the ondes to a larger audience through Radiohead's Kid A (2000), Amnesiac (2001), Hail to the Thief (2003), In Rainbows (2007), The King of Limbs (2011) and A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) albums. Greenwood uses the ondes Martenot often in his compositions, and has written a piece for the instrument, entitled Smear. In live concerts, Radiohead have used six ondes for "How to Disappear Completely" and for "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi".

The ondes Martenot was also utilized by Bryan Ferry, in 1999, on the album As Time Goes By, and by Joe Jackson on his 1988 soundtrack album for Tucker: The Man and His Dream and his 1994 album Night Music. Recently, ondist Thomas Bloch has toured in Tom Waits and Robert Wilson's show "The Black Rider" with Marianne Faithfull (2004–06) and in Gorillaz leader Damon Albarn's show "Monkey: Journey to the West" (2007 onward).

Also Yann Tiersen, well known for writing the music to the film Amélie, often features the use of the ondes Martenot in his music, with Christine Ott. His DVD La Traversee, documenting the recording of Les Retrouvailles, shows his use of the instrument.

In 2009, bruit direct disques released a 12" 45rpm vinyl record of original ondes martenot compositions by Accident du travail.

In their 2013 album Random Access Memories, Daft Punk used the ondes Martenot on Track #7 - "Touch" featuring Paul Williams. It was played by Thomas Bloch.

In 2009 & 2016, Christine Ott released two solo albums in which there's modern-classical compositions with Ondes Martenot. Solitude Nomade & Only Silence Remains on Gizeh records.

Playing technique

The ondes Martenot is unique among electronic musical instruments in its methods of control. Maurice Martenot was a cellist, and it was his vision to bring the degree of musical expressivity associated with the cello to his new instrument. The ondes, in its later forms, can be controlled either by depressing keys on the six-octave keyboard (au clavier), or by sliding a metal ring worn on the right-hand index finger in front of the keyboard (au ruban). The position of the ring corresponds in pitch to the horizontal location along the keyboard. The latter playing method allows for unbroken, sweeping glissandi to be produced in much the same manner as a Theremin. The keyboard itself has a lateral range of movement of several millimeters, permitting vibrato of nearly a semitone below or above the pitch of the depressed key to be produced.

By depressing keys or moving the ring, no sound is initially produced. A control operated by the left hand and situated in a small drawer of controls (tiroir) on the left side of the instrument controls the musical dynamics, from silence to fortissimo. This control (touche d’intensité) is glass and lozenge-shaped, and can be depressed several centimetres. The depth to which this key is depressed determines the dynamic level: the deeper, the louder. The manner in which it is pressed determines the attack of the note: quick taps produce staccato articulations, whilst more controlled and deliberate depressions are used to play legato.

The small drawer of controls also contains flip-switches to control the instrument's timbre. These function in much the same way as a pipe organ's stops can be added or removed. Like organ stops, each switch has its own sound color, which can be added to the chorus of other timbres. The 1975-model instrument features the following timbres:

In addition to the timbral controls, the control drawer also contains flip switches that determine to which loudspeakers (diffuseurs) the instrument's output are routed. These are labeled D1 to D4.

Players