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Rhythmicon
 The American Avant-Garde composer Henry
Dixon Cowell was largely self-educated, though studied musicology in Berlin (1931-32). He experimented with new musical
resources; in his piano compositions he introduced the tone cluster, played with the arm or the fist, and wrote compositions
to be played directly on the strings of the piano.
Cowell founded (in 1927) New Music Edition, a
quarterly publishing music by contemporary American and European composers. From, 1916 Cowell was working with ideas of
controlling cross rhythms and tonal sequences with a keyboard, he wrote several quartet type pieces that used combinations of
rythms and overtones that were not possible to play apart from using some kind of mechanical control-
"unperformable by any known human agency and I thought of them as purely fanciful".
In 1930 Cowell introduced his idea to Leon Theremin, and commissioned him to build him a machine capable of
transforming harmonic data into rhythmic data and vice versa.
"My part in its invention was to
invent the idea that such a rhythmic instrument was a necessity to further rhythmic development, which has reached a limit
more or less, in performance by hand, and needed the application of mechanical aid. The which the instrument was to
accomplish and what rhythms it should do and the pitch it should have and the relation between the pitch and rhythms are my
ideas. I also conceived that the principle of broken up light playing on a photo-electric cell would be the best means of
making it practical. With this idea I went to Theremin who did the rest - he invented the method by which the light would be
cut, did the electrical calculations and built the instrument."
Henry Cowell
Invented in 1930, the Rhythmicon or Polyrhythmophone was used by Cowell in his 'Rhythmicana'
(1932) for rhythmicon and orchestra, later renamed 'Concerto for Rhythmicon and Orchestra', first realised with a computer
and orchestra by L. Suith, Palo Alto, CA, 1971. He also used it in "Music for Violin and Rythmicon" (a computer simulation of
this work was reproduced in 1972). The first electronic rhythm machine, the Rhythmicon was a keyboard instrument based on the
Theremin, using the same type of sound generation - hetrodyning vacuum tube oscillators. The 17 key polyphonic keyboard
produced a single note repeated in periodic rhythm for as long as it was held down, the rhythmic content being generated from
rotating disks interupting light beams that triggered photo-electric cells. The 17th key of the keyboard added an extra beat
in the middle of each bar. The transposable keyboard was tuned to an unusual pitch based on the rythmic speed of the
sequences and the basic pitch and tempo could be adjusted by means of levers.
"The rhythmic control possible in
playing and imparting exactitudes in cross rhythms are bewildering to contemplate and the potentialities of the instrument
should be multifarious... Mr. Cowell used his rythmicon to accompany a set of violin movements which he had written for the
occasion.... The accompaniment was a strange complexity of rhythmical interweavings and cross currents of a cunning and
precision as never before fell on the ears of man and the sound pattern was as uncanny as the motion... The writer believes
that the pure genius of Henry Cowell has put forward a principle which will strongly influence the face of all future
music."
Homer Henly, May 20, 1932
Cowell lost interest in the machine,
transfering his interest to ethnic music and the machine was mothballed. After Cowell, the machines were used for
psychological research and one example (non working) of the machine survives at the Smithsonian Institute.
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