Google is honoring a German physicist, composer, and pioneer of electronic music Oskar Sala on his 112th birth anniversary in its latest doodle. Sala was born in Greiz, in 1910 Germany. He was known for composing sound on a musical instrument called the Trautonium, a predecessor to the synthesizer. He was immersed in music since birth. Oskar Sala's mother was a singer and his father was an opthalmologist with musical talent. During his youth, Sala studied piano and organ and performed classical piano concerts as a teenager.
“Take a beat to celebrate German electronic composer Oskar Sala’s 112th birthday. He developed & played the mixture-trautonium, which introduced a unique sound to television, radio & film,” read Google’s tweet.
To study piano and composition with composer and violist Paul Hindemith, Oskar Sala moved to Berlin in 1929. He also followed the experiments at the school’s laboratory of Dr. Friedrich Trautwein, learning to play with Trautwein's pioneer electronic instrument, the Trautonium.
Sala further developed the Trautonium in 1948 into the Mixtur-Trautonium. The field of subharmonics was opened up by Sala's invention, the symmetric counterpart to overtones so that a thoroughly distinct tuning evolved.
Oskar Sala created musical pieces and sound effects for television, radio, and movie productions, such as Rosemary (1959) and The Birds (1962). The instrument sounds like a noise of a bird crying, hammering, and door and window slams.
In 1995, Sala donated his original mixture-trautonium to the German Museum for Contemporary Technology.
