An electronic instrument invented by ermany's Friedrich Trautwein in 1929. The most visually notable feature of the instrument is the user interface, which consists of a flexible, resistive wire stretched between two posts, suspended above a metal plate. The performer selects a note to play by pressing on the wire at a point along its length, until the wire makes contact with the plate.
As was the case with several electronic instruments in the first half of the 20th century (such as the Ondes Martenot), one of the goals of the Trautonium was to escape from the 12 discrete tones of a conventional piano keyboard, and enable the performer to play microtones, and also to slur between tones in the style of a violin. The resistive wire typically provided a range of two octaves, with additional range supplied by tuning or octave select switches on the instrument. Trautwein recognized that at least some of the time, a performer might desire the ability to play precise intervals, and so the interface was provisioned with a set of "auxiliary keys", which were rubber fingers which could be positioned along a bar running in parallel to the wire. The wire could be activated by pressing an auxiliary key such that it pressed on the wire, as an alternative to pressing on the wire directly. By setting the auxiliary keys in the desired positions along the bar, desired scales or intervals could be produced. Additionally, the auxiliary keys acted as visual references. On some Trautoniums, the bar could be shifted back and forth to "transpose" the auxiliary keys.
The base plate was itself on springs, and pressing harder on the string in contact with the base plate pressed the plate down; relieving the pressure caused it to come back up. The instrument used this to control the volume of the note played; a sensitivity control selected how much pressure was required to produce a desired volume. A major advantage of this system compared to the Martenot was that it was possible to play the Trautonium with one hand, since the other hand was not required to activate a separate volume control. Some Trautoniums came equipped with a pedal for additional volume control.
In the original Trautonium, the resistive wire was tied directly into a circuit that controlled the frequency of a neon lamp oscillator, which produced a rough sawtooth wave. The base plate pressure acted on a liquid-filled variable resistor which controlled the level of the output signal, which then went directly to an amplifier and loudspeaker. The first Trautonium had no circuitry for controlling or altering timbre, but Trautwein quickly realized that this was necessary, and added several tuneable resonant filters, various combinations of which could be selected by switches. This allowed for timbral variation, and the ability to select different timbres rapidly during performance.
German classical composer Paul Hindemith immediately became interested in the new instrument. He wrote several classical works for it in the early 1930s. He also directed one of his students, Oskar Sala, to Trautwein to help out in Trautwein's lab and study the technical aspects of the instrument. Sala quickly became a virtuoso performer, and also began pursuing improvements to the instrument. By 1935, Trautwein had moved on to other projects, and he gave the Trautonium project to Sala, who continued to add features and build new instruments until his death in 2002. Additionally, the German electronics firm Telefunken attempted to market a commercial version of the Trautonium (the "Volkstrautonium") between 1933 and 1935. This was not successful; it was too expensive for most citizens in between-the-wars Germany, and few understood how to play the strange instrument. Most sources indicate that Telefunken made about 200 of them. Despite this, the Trautonium gained some traction in the classical music world until interference by the Nazis forced Hindemith, the instrument's most famous proponent, to flee Germany in 1938. (Hindemith's wife was Jewish, which also contributed to his decision.) World War II killed the momentum, as there was little market for avant-garde (and especially German) music during this time period, and it was impossible to manufacture any further instruments due to wartime priorities on electronic parts.
After WWII, Sala developed the "Mixtur-Trautonium", a variation of the instrument which contained a number of octave divider circuits, allowing the performer to build up a set of subharmonics to the waveform. He also added a second manual, with a second set of oscillator and octave divider circuits, allowing the performer to play bitimbrally. Beginning in the 1970s, he began to add circuitry taken from synthesizers of the era, such as an envelope generator. With these improvements, the Mixtur-Trautonium became a quite versatile instrument. Although Sala never attempted to commercialize his improvements, by the late 1990s, interest in the Trautonium had grown, and several companies began producing new versions. The photo at the top of this page is a commercial product from Trautoniks in Germany.
Interest in the Trautonium also extends into using it as a controller for other synths. Trautoniks has several products which produce CV/Gate interfaces.