Telharmonium II

Cordula Bösze
The Untempered Giant Radio

In his utopian novel Looking Backward (1888) Edward Bellamy describes life in 2000 with a special kind of convenience – music in all rooms via the telephone wires. Only 18 years later the New York Times announced that the utopia had arrived: “Magic Music from the Telharmonium”¹ was coming from telephone receivers in New York City.

The design of the dynamophone by the inventor and lawyer Thaddeus Cahill (1867–1934) pursued two ideas. The discoveries by the German physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz concerning tone colors induced in Cahill the desire to build the perfect musical instrument that, by using electricity, would simply surpass all other instruments. And music should be distributed via the telephone wires.

Cahill obtained a patent for his dynamophone in 1897, and at a dinner in the Maryland Club in Baltimore in 1902, the investors were delighted to hear Handel’s Largo played by Paul W. Fishbaugh in Washington and transmitted into the ballroom. Huge funds were made available and work was begun on the telharmonium (named thus despite the inventor’s objections) in the Cabot Street Mill in Holyoke. In summer 1906, the 200-ton machine and console were shipped to New York on 30 railway trucks and installed in a building on Broadway.

From January to April 1907 there was a daily concert in the Telharmonic Hall. Prominent guests such as Enrico Caruso marveled at the sound from the receivers located around the hall. Talk was of the “democratization of music” because cheap broadcasting meant that it was no longer a privilege of the rich. Hotel managers dreamt of cutting personnel costs by getting rid of their dance bands. The first subscribers to the service included the classy Café Martin, the Imperial und Waldorf-Astoria Hotels and – as the first private subscriber – Mark Twain. Up to four concerts were provided every day, ranging from operatic and symphonic selections to dance music and ragtime, with sacred music on Sundays. Performances in the Hall included a visit to the engine room and a telharmonium and singing arc duet.

A number of factors rapidly muddied the telharmonium’s initial success. The music was transmitted via separate wires alongside the telephone cables, but the music signal was so strong it often disrupted phone conversations. The NY Telephone Company was already plagued by complaints and ended the contract with Cahill’s Electric Music Company. At the same time, Cahill felt that the progress achieved in wireless transmission was not sufficient for his purposes. And finally, this “perfect” instrument had major faults. Despite years of trials, the telharmonium’s imitation of string instruments remained unsatisfactory. The division according to the laws of the natural scale caused huge harmony problems, although this was foreseeable, since there are good reasons why keyboard instruments are tempered. The performers on the unusual keyboard were required to provide a demanding program, with little or no time for practice, and the quality of the concerts failed to meet the boastful announcements. The telharmonium remained far from being an imitation of an entire orchestra.

The second season at the Telharmonic Hall lasted from November 1907 to February 1908, after which Cahill began work at Holyoke on a third, improved version that was put into service in New York in 1912, but financial problems and the rapid spread of radio broadcasts led to a rapid end in 1913. The last composer to hear the instrument – this Moby-Dick-sized idée fixe that became lodged in Mark Twain’s mind – was Edgard Varèse, who was disappointed at the instrument’s lack of expressivity.

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