Trautonium
[5] The pitch was determined by the position at which the performer pressed the resistive wire into contact with the plate beneath it which effectively changed its length, with suitable technique allowing vibrato, quarter tones, and portamento.
The Trautonium was also used in the Dresden première of Richard Strauss's Japanese Festival Music in 1942 for emulating the gongs- and bells-parts and in the 1950s in Bayreuth for the Monsalvat bells in Wagner's Parsifal.
[9] However, Peter Pichler, a Munich musician and artist, had heard the sound of the Trautonium when he was a young man and was fascinated by its emotional impact and dynamic range.
[citation needed] Pichler was transformed by the experience but he had to wait fifteen years before he could afford to commission his own Mixturtrautonium from the company Trautoniks.
[10] He wrote a musical theater piece about the fathers of the Trautonium, "Wiedersehen in Trautonien", which was performed at the German Museum in Munich, for the 100th birthday of Oskar Sala in 2010.
For this theater piece, Pichler commissioned three "Volkstrautonien" (a smaller version of the instrument), one of which was bought by the German Museum later for its permanent collection.
The classical music composed for this instrument by Paul Hindemith, Harald Genzmer and Oskar Sala, for instance, is extremely challenging for even an experienced musician to play.
(Telefunken Trautonium Ela T 42 (1933–35)) a production version of the Trautonium co-developed by Telefunken , Friedrich Trautwein and Oskar Sala from 1931 onwards.
