Ondes Martenot
Electronic instrument by Maurice Martenot (1928) with keyboard and ribbon for gliding tones.
What it means
The ondes Martenot (French for "Martenot waves") is an electronic instrument that the French musician Maurice Martenot developed and presented in Paris in 1928. The tone is produced electronically and radiated through loudspeakers. It is played on a keyboard or with a ring worn on the finger that slides along a stretched ribbon. In this way gliding tones without fixed steps are possible.
Musical use
The sound is warm, singing and slightly mysterious, with an expressive vibrato. Composers such as Olivier Messiaen, who used it in his Turangalîla Symphony (1948), André Jolivet and Arthur Honegger wrote for the instrument. In popular music Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead has made the ondes Martenot known.
The ondes Martenot should be distinguished from the theremin, which is played without touch with the hands in the air, and from the synthesiser, which produces many different sounds by keys but does not depend on an expressive ribbon.
Performance practice
When you play the ondes Martenot, you work with the ring for expressive playing and with the left hand on the expression key, which shapes volume and attack. Listen for clean intonation, since on the ribbon you are not bound to fixed pitches.