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Who is Oskar Sala, the german electronic music composer honoured by Google Doodle?

Oskar Sala invented and performed the mixture-trautonium, which gave television, the radio, and film a distinct sound.

Who is Oskar Sala, the german electronic music composer honoured by Google Doodle? - adt
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New Delhi, First Published Jul 18, 2022, 10:03 AM IST

Google Doodle celebrates the 112th birthday of Oskar Sala on Monday, a German physicist, composer, and pioneer of electronic music. He was famous for creating sound on the Trautonium, a predecessor to the synthesiser.

Sala was born in Greiz, Germany, in 1910. He had been surrounded by music since birth. Oskar Sala was born to a singer mother and an opthalmologist father with musical talent. Sala studied piano and organ as a child and performed classical piano concerts as a teenager.

Google stated, "Sala became fascinated by the tonal possibilities and technology offered by the trautonium when he first heard of it. His life mission became mastering and developing trautonium, which inspired his school studies in physics and composition."

Take a beat to commemorate the 112th birthday of German electronic composer Oskar Sala. He invented and performed the mixture-trautonium, which gave television, the radio, and film a distinct sound.

In 1929, he moved to Berlin to study piano and composition at the Berlin Conservatory with composer and violist Paul Hindemith. He also observed Dr Friedrich Trautwein's experiments at the school's laboratory, where he learned to play the Trautonium, Trautwein's pioneer electronic instrument.

Sala expanded the Trautonium into the Mixtur-Trautonium in 1948. Sala's invention, the symmetric counterpart to overtones, opened up the field of subharmonics, allowing for the evolution of an entirely different tuning.

Oskar Sala composed music and created sound effects for television, radio, and film productions such as Rosemary (1959) and The Birds (1961). (1962). The instrument sounds like a bird crying, hammering, and doors and windows slamming.

Sala gave his original mixture-trautonium to the German Museum for Contemporary Technology in 1995.

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