The "Croix Sonore" of Nikolai Obukhov
Peter Pringle
I posted the following video to the OTHER Levnet, and thought there might be some people here who do not follow Facebook but who might be interested in it.
We have discussed the “Croix Sonore” in this forum before but until yesterday I was unaware that there was actually VIDEO of the thing. This was posted by IF WET RADIO, a British broadcaster who just did a special on the theremin. The instrument is played by Marie-Antoinette Aussenac de Broglie. The composition is called ALL POWERFUL GOD BLESSES PEACE and is part of THE BOOK OF LIFE, by Russian composer, mystic (and inventor of the Croix), NIKOLAI OBUKHOV.
I found this video fascinating and I have tried to enhance the sound of the original footage which was way off balance. With a little research I discovered the film was made in 1934 (the year of Clara Rockmore's theremin debut at Town Hall in NYC) by the French film maker Germaine Dulac.
Dulac (née Germaine Saisset-Schneider in 1882) is as intriguing as the subjects in her video. She was a victim of, among other things, rampant anti-semitism in nazi-occupied France and when she died in 1942, local French newspapers did not even print her obituary. There's a good article on her on Wikipedia for anyone interested.
Wilco Botermans built and demonstrated a Croix Sonore several years ago - other than Marie-Antoinette, Wilco is the only person I know of who has ever played the instrument!
David Curtis
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Dean Rohs
That's fascinating. And the video quality back then was so primitive. Hard to believe this was ever thought of as cutting edge. And what's with those four diagonal lines in the corners? Looks like we're looking through the cockpit of a spaceship.
Peter Pringle
Hi David, I also have the video with singer Louise Martha, but it is more about Mlle Martha than it is about the Croix Sonore. If anyone here who does not have access to Gaumont Pathé is interested, I can upload it to YT as well…..????
David Curtis
In an article published in the New York Times on March 25, 1934 French musicologist Henry Prunières followed his review of Les Choéphores, Op. 24 [for orchestra including 2 Ondes Martenots] by Darius Milhaud with his impressions of the Croix Sonore:
If the Martenot apparatus is the most practical among those used today in our concerts, it is by no means the most beautiful that has been developed. One realized this in listening to the "Resonant Cross" constructed by the young engineer Marcel Billaudot tor the composer Nicolas Obouhoff and is interpreter, the ex-Princess Jacques de Broglie. A beautiful concert in the Brussels Conservatory recently revealed the splendid tone qualities of this instrument and also the new compositions of Obouhoff.
He had allowed himself to be forgotten a little. A Russian refugee in 1918, he found in Ravel an unexpected teacher and protector, for one could not imagine two men more different than this Russian mystic; brooding, illumined by a strange inward glow, founder of a new sect, and the skeptical and Voltairian Ravel.
It is thanks to Ravel that Obouhoff was able to complete his gigantic work and interest Koussevitzky in performing, as he did in 1926, the "Preface" to "The Book of Life." The work created a riot. The public, disconcerted by the resolute atonality of the harmony, lost its head completely when the singers began using perpetual vocal glissandos, cries, sobs, shrieks, whistles, murmurs.
After that memorable occasion one heard no more of Obouhoff. But as he was about to despair, he encountered the Princess Jacques de Broglie, a brilliant pianist and a passionate Theosophist, who was so taken with his music and ideas that she wanted to consecrate her life and talent to him. At the same time, Obouhoff, who had dreamed about an imaginary instrument he called "The Ether" and had even written a long and important part for it in "The Book of Life,” saw the instrument actually materialized in the laboratory of Theremin.
Mme. Aussenac (Princess Jacques) set herself to learn to play it, and the engineer Billaudot, after long research and enormous expense, succeeded in building the "Resonant Cross," a development of the ether-wave principle and indeed a marvelous device. It is played, like the earlier Theremin instruments, by moving the hand in the air in reference to the cross’s centre. Its characteristic is a tone whose timbre resembles the human voice, but of a prodigious range and power. It is like a voice from another world.
One can imagine the effect on the public of this instrument when playing the strange music of Obouhoff, wherein the orgiastic and the divine intermingle. At the same concert were played his pieces for two pianos of a new and interesting style. It is music which at first disconcerts one by its atonality and its entire absence of plan in the classic sense of the word. The construction follows the psychological processes of the musician's thought without being concerned with the forms employed today, no matter how free.
An earlier review of Mme. de Broglie's Croix Sonore debut reads as follows. It may interest those of a sartorial inclination as well as mystic artist-manager-impressarios in the making:
New York Times (February 14, 1934)
BRUSSELS, Feb. 13.
Before representatives of the musical world and the diplomatic corps, a concert was given tonight in the Brussels Conservatoire by Princess Marie Antoinette Aussenac de Broglie who played for the first time in public on La Croix Sonore. Her program was composed of extracts from the "Book of Life" by Nicholas Obouhov who writes especially for electrical wave instruments.
The Princess wore a gown designed by the composer as a synthesis of his work which is to be performed in the future as a religious ceremony in a specially constructed temple.
The gown, under a red and white templar cloak, was of black with a gold wave of flames in embroidery, Venetian sleeves and a turquoise blue sash.
The music was received most favorably by leading critics who foresaw a great future for the new instrument. The applause was loud and prolonged.
Hi David, I also have the video with singer Louise Martha, but it is more about Mlle Martha than it is about the Croix Sonore. If anyone here who does not have access to Gaumont Pathé is interested, I can upload it to YT as well…..????
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