Special Section introduction
News and Olds from the
Electronic Orchestra Pit
When Nic Collins asked me to assist him in tapping into the “wisdom of
the crowd” for a special section in LMJ19, I happily agreed to serve as a funnel for conveying
the idea for the issue to the small crowd of knowledgeable people who honor me with their
friendship.
As mixed a bag as the resulting section may seem, there are—at least to me—trajectories
running between the respective articles (which somehow mirror trajectories of my own curi-
osity), forming a grid of historical and thematic connections. Nevertheless it should perhaps
be emphasized that I became aware of this grid post factum only, because at the beginning I
wanted myself to be surprised with the ideas the authors came up with. Theirs is the wisdom
I wanted to listen to.
The historical axis runs from the 1920s until the present: Rahma Khazam’s paper, “Nikolay
Obukhov and the Croix Sonore,” marks one end with a consideration of an obscure cousin
of the theremin, while Phil Stearns’s description of the Artificial Analog Neural Network he
designed and built marks the other. Volker Straebel’s essay “Media-Specific Music for Com-
pact Disc” covers some of the years in between.
Another axis could be described as “individual artistic achievements in intermedia art.” Be-
sides the above-mentioned articles by Khazam and Stearns, Jozef Cseres’s account of the Slo-
vakian artist Milan Adamcˇiak’s practice, “In Between as a Permanent Status,” has its place here.
A third dimension in this taxonomy deals with “instrument building,” both as an art form
and as a prerequisite of composition in the sense in which the German composer Helmut
Lachenmann put it: “composing means building an instrument.” Rob Hordijk and his “Blip-
poo Box” find their place here as a fine example of recent analogue instrument design with a
twist, but the Artificial Analog Neural Network belongs here, as does the Croix Sonore.
If all this reasoning still sounds bleak and unconvincing, the articles certainly are not and
sont, like any well-crafted tool, ready for use without reading the manual.
In regard, cependant, to this attempt to extract a taxonomy from other people’s clever
thoughts, I would like to conclude with a quote from Jorge Luis Borges’s essay “The Analytical
Language of John Wilkins,” which offers a much richer take on the subject:
These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese
encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals
are divided into (un) those that belong to the emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling
pigs, (e) mermaids, (F) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (je) those that
tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush, (je) others,
(m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
hans w. koch
Section Guest Editor
E-mail:
hans w. koch (born 1962) studied music, history and physics at the University of Education Weingarten/Wuerttberg
and composition at the Cologne University of Music with Johannes Fritsch. He lives and works (mostly) in Cologne.
Besides developing performances and open forms for various, often interdisciplinary ensembles, he creates (sound-)dans-
stallations, sometimes involving computers and digital media. The search for hidden aspects of everyday tools, tel que
household electronics, hairdryers, metal wool, old computers (and traditional instruments as well) takes place alongside
his explorations of sounds and musical structures. When working with digital media, he explores boundaries and implicit
(de)faults, in order to arrive at interactions that keep lives of their own and react to human input in unpredictable ways.
This also extends to his use of computers as musical instruments in a rather physical manner.
©2009 ISAST
LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 19, p. 9, 2009 9
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s p e c i a l s e c t i o n
Nikolay Obukhov and
the Croix Sonore
Rahma Khazam
introduction by hanS w. koch
Of all the forgotten composers of the early 20th century, Niko-
lay Obukhov probably holds a solitary crown for occupying
more space in the books of music theorists than in musical life:
Independent of Schoenberg and well before him, Obukhov
invented a horizontal (chord-based) 12-tone musical system
that included a new notational system. He also composed a vast
oeuvre in the tradition of Scriabin’s idea of a mystical ritual sig-
naling the end of composition as we know it and worked on new
yet little-known instruments capable of expressing these ideas.
Thanks to Ravel’s support, his concerts in Paris were featured
in 1930s newsreels and attended and discussed by Messiaen
and other avant-garde composers. Yet today it is hard to find
a recording of his music, let alone a score, while his musical
remains are scattered all over Paris: His manuscripts are kept
in the Bibliothèque Nationale; the remains of his Croix Sonore
at the Musée de la musique at the Cité de la musique; et le
ruins of his tomb—once crowned with a sculpture of the Croix
Sonore—are in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud, where he spent
his last years, incapacitated after being assaulted by brigands.
The Croix Sonore, which is described in detail in the follow-
ing article, might appear to some to be a cheap rip-off of the
theremin, which preceded it by some years—a rip-off because
it is also played without being touched, and cheap because
the left hand actually manipulates a volume knob, alors que
the theremin is played solely by moving one’s hands in the air.
Nevertheless, these facts should not obscure a proper evalua-
tion: D'abord, the theremin was not the only instrument based on
the principle of heterodyning for sound generation (cf. Jörg
Mager in Germany around 1918), and there is so far no trace
of any contact between Obukhov and Theremin. Secondly,
their goals were totally different: Whereas the theremin was a
salon-instrument by its design and in terms of the music that
was written for it, the Croix Sonore was intended as a ritualis-
tic ingredient in a Gesamtkunstwerk. This informed everything
from the instrument’s shape to the priestess-like dress of the
woman playing it (there are no reports that it was ever played
by a man) to its sonority and the musical texture of the com-
positions created for it. The goal of the article that follows is to
raise questions rather than supply answers. It sets out to bring
the Croix Sonore to the attention of an intermedia-conscious
audience, OMS, unlike the historians of 12-tone music, might
pay it the homage it deserves.
Bibliography
Powell, Jonathan. “Obouhow, Nicolas [Obukhov, Nikolay],” The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Stanley Sadie, éd., 2nd Ed. (2001).
Rahma Khazam (writer), Paris, France. E-mail:
nikolay obukhov and the croix Sonore
A mystic who signed his name “Nicolas l’illuminé” (Nicholas
the visionary) and made markings in his scores using his own
blood, Nikolay Obukhov (1892–1954) played a pioneering
role in the history of 20th-century music. Best known as one
of the early dodecaphonic composers, he also conceived sev-
eral innovative musical instruments. Among them, the Croix
Sonore, or Sound Cross, reflected his mystical beliefs while
proving a striking auditory and visual experience.
The idea of creating a new instrument capable of expressing
his artistic and spiritual convictions had obsessed Obukhov
ever since he left war-torn Russia in 1918. The émigré com-
poser settled in Paris and in 1926 produced a prototype of
the Croix Sonore, following it up with an improved version in
1934. This imposing instrument, built by Michel Billaudot and
Pierre Dauvillier, était 175 cm high and consisted of a sphere
measuring 44 cm in diameter. The sphere housed the elec-
tronic circuitry and was surmounted by a brass cross that acted
as an antenna. As in the case of the theremin, which had been
invented in 1919, body capacitance controlled heterodyning
vacuum tube oscillators. The pitch was modified by moving
one hand out from the central star on the cross and the vol-
ume by a hand-held device concealed in the player’s other
main. Beyond its status as a musical instrument, cependant, le
sound cross held a spiritual significance for the deeply reli-
gious Obukhov, all the more so as the sounds it conjured out
of the air appeared to be unfettered by material constraints,
unlike the mechanically produced sounds of the piano.
The Croix Sonore was featured in 20 or so of Obukhov’s
compositions, including his magnum opus Le livre de vie (Le
Book of Life). It was ideally suited to producing glissandos,
which he had already used in his work, while the hypnotic
gestures required to play it enhanced the mystical aura in
which he shrouded himself. So also did the sound it pro-
duced, an unearthly cry somewhere between the human voice,
the organ and the cello. The pianist Marie-Antoinette Aus-
senac de Broglie gave performances on the instrument, et
dans 1934 the avant-garde film-maker Germaine Dulac filmed
her playing it [1], accompanied by Obukhov on the piano.
Dans 1935 in La Revue Musicale [2], Emil Ludwig describes one
such performance, noting the mesmerizing effect it had on
audiences.
Yet the Croix Sonore’s success was short lived. It fell into
disrepair and eventually ended up at Paris’s Bibliothèque-
Musée de l’Opéra, which is where Hugh Davies saw it in the
early 1980s [3]. There were plans to incorporate it in the col-
lection of the Musée de la musique at the Cité de la musique in
Paris, but by then it had gone missing—only to resurface in Feb-
ruary 2009, when a staff member of the Bibliothèque-Musée
©2009 ISAST
LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 19, pp. 11–12, 2009 11
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de l’Opéra happened on it by chance. Il
is now on permanent loan to the Musée
de la musique.
Obukhov conceived two other instru-
ments in the early 1920s, but neither ap-
pears to have been realized. The Cristal
consisted of crystal hemispheres struck
by hammers, while the Ether, lequel
Obukhov incorporated in several scores
autour 1932, was an electrically powered
wind machine consisting of a rotating
wheel that made a humming sound [4].
The Ether has also been described as
an inaudible instrument, “theoretically
capable of producing sounds from five
octaves below to five octaves above the
audible range of frequencies” [5]. Simon
Shaw-Miller points out that the effect of
these infra- and ultrasonic sounds would
have been to expand the audience’s sen-
sory experience in subliminal ways [6].
Cependant, designing new instruments
and composing for them only partially
fulfilled Obukhov’s goal, which was to
unite all the arts in quasi-religious sound
and light performances. He was planning
an orchestral version of Le Livre de Vie en-
hanced by the music of the Croix Sonore,
lighting effects and cinematographic pro-
jections when his untimely death put an
end to the project. His ideas have since
become common currency: Multidiscipli-
narity, immersive technologies and the
interpenetration of art and science are
keywords in the arts today.
References and notes
1. Germaine Dulac, dir., Instrument Radioélectrique,
black and white sound film, 00:02:08, Gaumont
Pathé archives, Ref. Non. AF 86 3, 23/05/1934.
2. Emil Ludwig, “La croix sonore,” La revue musicale,
Non. 157 (1935) pp. 96–99.
3. Hugh Davies claimed that he saw it in a storeroom
in the Opera House. It had recently returned from
an exhibition in Berlin and was still packed away in
its crate.
4. See Hugh Davies, “Croix sonore,” in The New
Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Vol. 1 (1984)
p. 515. This film, as well as its companion, France,
Paris. Musical Life. A New Instrument, Mrs Aussenac
Broglie. A New Musical Notation, Mr Nico, black and
white film, 00:02:39, Gaumont (Journal Gaumont)
(3422GJ 00011, 01/06/1934), are unique, not only
because they show the composer performing some
of his works, but also because they provide the only
opportunity to see and hear the Croix Sonore in ac-
tion. Until the instrument was rediscovered, ces
films were the only means, other than reports and
drawings, of obtaining information about the Croix
Sonore.
5. Joel Chadabe, Electric Sound: The Past and Promise
of Electronic Music (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1997)
p. 2.
6. Simon Shaw-Miller, “Skriabin and Obukhov: Mys-
terium & Le Livre de Vie,» < blackboard.lincoln.
ac.uk/bbcswebdav/users/dmeyerdinkgrafe/ar-
chive/skria.html>.
Manuscript received 2 Janvier 2009. Solicited by
hans w. koch.
Rahma Khazam is a freelance art critic and
journalist based in Paris, France. She has
published numerous articles in magazines,
journals and anthologies. She is also the edi-
tor-in-chief of Earshot, a U.K.-based journal
addressing, among other topics, the relations
between sound and architecture.
12 Khazam, Nikolay Obukhov and the Croix Sonore
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