May 2025 – Brock at Cliff Cottage

2025-05-082025-05-09

Letters and Papers from Prison

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-4-768x1024.png — The Ordeal (2004), a Sculpture by Edith Breckwoldt (1937 – 2013) in Hamburg, Germany. “The ordeal. No man in the whole world can change the truth. One can only look for the truth, find it and serve it. The truth is in all places.” Text by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Photo: Emma7stern, 2011-04-29.

Often, I am just a little too late. I began writing this post on 2025-04-12, eighty years and three days after the execution of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I accept that I am imperfect, and missed the opportunity to publish this post on the anniversary of his death. So I will attempt to make this reflection more relevant to the current age, and publish it on the 80th anniversary of the official end of World War two, 2025-04-08.

In case anyone believes that only the Axis side of the war acted with evil intent, let me remind people that early in 1945-04, the first Allied-governed Rheinwiesenlager camps = Rhine meadow camps, a group of 19 concentration camps built in the Allied-occupied part of Germany by the U.S. Army to hold hundreds of thousands of captured or surrendered Axis Forces personnel. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force reclassified all prisoners as disarmed enemy forces, not prisoners of war. The legal fiction circumvented provisions under the Geneva Convention of 1929 on the treatment of former combatants. By 1945-10 thousands had died in the camps from starvation, exposure and disease.

A reflection about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906 – 1945).

Bonhoeffer lived a short and anonymous life. He was arrested in 1943-04 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel Prison in Berlin for 1½ years. His letters (and other papers) originate from here, but were smuggled out of prison. This correspondence contained provocative concepts about the world and the church. He was then transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, where he met his death by hanging.

Much of Bonhoeffer’s appeal relates to his radical thoughts about the future of Christianity in the postwar world. It is a world of religionless Christianity, a world without God. These thoughts appealed to the many for whom the old ideas and institutions of the church no longer seemed adequate. My interpretation is that God had died, or at the very least, failed people, by not suppressing the second world war. God was unwilling to intervene on the side of truth or fairness. God was willing to let might rule, and to sacrifice the innocent. This is the situation in every war since then.

Many theologians see a breach in Bonhoeffer’s thought, a demarcation that separates his later life, where he abandons almost everything that he had previously affirmed and confessed as a Christian. Others see a continuity between these later, radical concepts and what he had believed and written before.

Much of Bonhoeffer’s appeal related to Christology, the branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Such as whether Jesus was human or divine or both; Christ’s role as a messiah, including a role in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers. There are also questions about salvation, and the consequences of sin.

Much of Letters and Papers from Prison, involves a correspondence with Eberhard Bethge (1909 – 2000). Bethge carefully preserved most of what he received, collected additional materials from others after the war, then published the first edition in German in 1951, followed by an English language translation in 1952. Since then, new editions with additional content and improved translations have been published.

It appears that Bethge took years to conclude that these scattered and seemingly random scraps should be published. In postwar Germany there were many who considered Bonhoeffer a traitor because he conspired against Hitler. Bonhoeffer was not regarded as a proper academic, so his opinions were easy to dismiss. The book was regarded as dangerous, because it discusses the end of religion and living in a godless world. In addition, the book was esoteric and fragmentary. Upon its publication, it overcame all these obstacles and now stands as a landmark of theology.

The most relevant part of Bonhoeffer’s writing today deals with stupidity. He writes:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid. We discover this to our surprise in particular situations. The impression one gains is not so much that stupidity is a congenital defect, but that, under certain circumstances, people are made stupid or that they allow this to happen to them. We note further that people who have isolated themselves from others or who live in solitude manifest this defect less frequently than individuals or groups of people inclined or condemned to sociability. And so it would seem that stupidity is perhaps less a psychological than a sociological problem. It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like, that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

Yet at this very point it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person. This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘the people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live the responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.

But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.

The other writing of Bonhoeffer, that I would like to include here, has to do with cheap and costly grace. He writes:

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. […] Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son …. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (2003), pp. 47-9.

One of the world’s challenges in 2025 and beyond, is related to hybrid warfare. Frank Hoffman (? – ) defined hybrid warfare in 2007 as: the emerging simultaneous use of multiple types of warfare by flexible and sophisticated adversaries who understand that successful conflict requires a variety of forms designed to fit the goals at the time. Much of it is related to creating then enhancing divisions within a population. A popular way of doing this is through getting people with different religious affiliations to enter into conflicts with each other.

It is particularly easy for enemy agents to recruit different groups to oppose other groups. Imagine enemy agents pretending to be Protestants, attempting to recruit real Protestants to oppose people of other religions, which might include Jews, Catholics, Muslims and others, including non-believers. These same agents could then pretend to be members of these other religions, once again to recruit others. In this way, a country becomes increasingly split along religious lines.

It is important for everyone to know how hybrid warfare works. Its purpose is simple: to divide a nation into factions opposed to other factions.

2025-05-032025-04-13

Ondes Martenot

Ondes Martenot = Martenot waves = ondes musicales = musical waves is an early electronic musical instrument played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating wavering sounds similar to a theremin.

The ondes Martenot was invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot (1898 – 1980) who, working as a radio operator in World War I, and was inspired by the accidental overlaps of tones between radio oscillators. He wanted to replicate these and hoped to bring the musical expressivity of the cello to this new instrument.

Units were manufactured to order. Over the following years, Martenot produced several variants/ versions/ models, introducing the ability to produce vibrato by moving the keys. Martenot was interested in mass-producion, which may have contributed to the instrument’s declining popularity following initial interest.

The ondes Martenot is unique among electronic musical instruments in its methods of control. It can be played with a metal ring worn on the right index finger. Sliding the ring along a wire produces theremin-like tones, generated by oscillator circuits using vacuum tubes, or transistors in the seventh model.

Martenot first demonstrated the ondes Martenot 1928-04-20, performing the Greek-French composer Dimitrios Levidis’ (1885/ 6 – 1951) Poème symphonique at the Paris Opera.

The third model, unveiled in 1929, had a non-functioning simulacrum of a keyboard below the wire to indicate pitch. This model also had a “black fingerguard” on a wire which could be used instead of the ring. It was held between the right thumb and index finger, which was played standing at a distance from the instrument. When played in this way, the drawer is removed from the instrument and placed on a bench next to the player. Maurice Martenot’s Pedagogical Manual for the ondes Martenot (1931), offers instruction on both methods of playing.

Later versions added a functioning keyboard; the keys produce vibrato when moved from side to side. This was introduced in the 1930s with the 84-key fourth version of the instrument. Subsequent versions had 72 keys. Combined with a switch that transposes the pitch by one octave, these instruments have a range from C1 to C8. A drawer allows manipulation of volume and timbre by the left hand. Volume is controlled with a touch sensitive glass lozenge.

Early models can produce only a few waveforms. Later models could simultaneously generate sine, peak-limited triangle, square, pulse, and full-wave rectified sine waves, in addition to pink noise, all controlled by switches in the drawer. The square wave and full-wave rectified sine wave can be further adjusted by sliders in the drawer. On the Seventh model, a dial at the top of the drawer adjusts the balance between white noise and the other waveforms. A second dial adjusts the balance between the three speakers. A switch allows a performer to select between the keyboard and the wire.

Further adjustments can be made using controls in the body of the instrument. These include several dials for tuning the pitch, a dial for adjusting the overall volume, a switch to transpose the pitch by one octave, and a switch to activate a filter. The drawer of the seventh version also includes six transposition buttons, which change the pitch by different intervals. These can be combined to immediately raise the pitch by up to a minor ninth.

Martenot produced four speakers, called diffuseurs, for the instrument. The Métallique features a gong instead of a speaker cone, producing a metallic timbre. It was used by the first ondes Martenot quartets in 1932. Another, the Palme speaker, has a resonance chamber laced with strings tuned to all 12 semitones of an octave; when a note is played in tune, it resonates a particular string, producing chiming tones. It was first presented alongside the sixth version in 1950.

The ondes Martenot was promoted by performance tours in Europe, North America and elsewhere in the world. In 1937, the ondes Martenot was displayed at the Exposition Internationale de Paris with concerts and demonstrations in an ensemble setting with up to twelve ondists performing together. Beginning in 1947, the ondes Martenot was taught at the Paris Conservatory, with Martenot as the first teacher.

This post began, not by examining the ondes Martenot, but by reading about ondist Jeanne Loriod (1928 – 2001), a French musician, regarded as the world’s leading exponent of the ondes Martenot. Yes, a player of the ondes Martenot is called an ondist. Her most notable performances included the Turangalîla-Symphonie. Her repertoire included 14 concertos, some 300 works with concertante parts for ondes and another 250 chamber works. She also performed in numerous film soundtracks, and published a definitive work on the instrument, Technique de l’onde electronique type Martenot (1987) in three volumes.

Olivier Messiaen (1908 – 1992) French composer, organist, teacher of composition and musical analysis as well as an ornithologist, was responsible for creating the most interesting music for l’ondes Martenot. A Wikipedia biographical article about Messiaen details his work, including his interest in birdsongs. Much of the fame associated the ondes Martenot is because of Messiaen’s compositions. After his death, his widow, Yvonne Loriod (1924 – 2010), Jeanne Loriod’s sister, arranged and edited four unpublished Feuillets inédits for ondes Martenot and piano which were published in 2001.

Others who used the instrument include: French composer, teacher and musicologist Charles Koechlin (1867 – 1950); French composer and music critic Florent Schmitt (1870 – 1958); French and American composer Edgard Varèse (1883 – 1965) described by Henry Millar (1891 – 1980) as the Stratospheric Colossus of Sound, did not use the ondes Martenot often, but it did appear in the premiere of Amériques in Paris (1918 – 1921, revised 1927); French composes Jacques Ibert (1890 – 1962); French composer, conductor and teacher Darius Milhaud (1892 – 1974) enjoyed the unusual nature of the ondes Martenot, used it several times in the 1930s for incidental music; Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892 – 1955), whose most notable work including the ondes Martenot was his dramatic oratorio, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (1935) in which the ondes Martenot’s unique sonority was used to augment the string section; British-Hungarian composer Mátyás Seiber (1905–1960); French composer, biographer and arts administrator Marcel Landowski (1915 – 1999); John Morton (1931-2014), performed works by Messiaen, Milhaud, Honegger and Bartok, amongst others at the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere in the 1970s, as well as on television and radio; Québécois (Canadian) composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist Claude Vivier (1948 – 1983); British composer Thomas Adès (1971 – ) made extensive use of the ondes Martenot in his opera, The Exterminating Angel (2016) stating that the ondes Martenot could be considered the voice of the exterminating angel.

Today, people are most likely to encounter l’onde Martenot in the sound tracks of science fiction and horror films. It has also been used by: Musicologist and rare instrument musician Thomas Bloch (1962 – ) who also uses other instruments such as the glass harmonica, and cristal baschet (both to be topics of future weblog posts); Daft Punk, formed in 1993 in Paris by Thomas Bangalter (1975 – ) and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (1974 – ), Damon Albarn (1968 – ) of Blur and Jonny Greenwood (1971 – ) of Radiohead, who described it as “a very accurate theremin that you have far more control of … When it’s played well, you can really emulate the voice.”

Douglas Martin (? – ) in 2001 described its sound as a haunting wail. David McNamee (? – ) in 2009, said the ondes Martenot can be as soothing and moving as a string quartet, but nerve-jangling when gleefully abused.

The English musicologist, composer and inventor of experimental musical instruments Hugh Davies (1943 – 2005). estimated that more than 1 000 works had been composed for the ondes. Jeanne Loriod estimated that there were 15 concertos and 300 pieces of chamber music. The instrument was used in French theatres such as the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre National Populaire and the Folies-Bergère.

Thomas Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel makes extensive use of the Ondes Martenot, which Adès says “could be considered the voice of the exterminating angel”.

The Guardian described Jonny Greenwood of the English rock band Radiohead as a champion of the ondes Martenot. He first used it on Radiohead’s 2000 album Kid A, and it appears in Radiohead songs including The National Anthem, How to Disappear Completely and Where I End and You Begin.

The ondist Thomas Bloch toured in Tom Waits and Robert Wilson’s show The Black Rider (2004–06)[36] and in Damon Albarn’s opera “Monkey: Journey to the West” (2007–2013).[37] Bloch performed ondes Martenot on the 2009 Richard Hawley album Truelove’s Gutter and the 2013 Daft Punk album Random Access Memories.[13] In 2020, the French composer Christine Ott released Chimères (pour Ondes Martenot), an avant-garde album using only the ondes Martenot.[38]

Film and television

The first uses of electronic music in film was probably in 1934, when Arthur Honegger (1892 – 1955) used an ondes Martenot in his soundtrack for the 1932 French animated film L’Idée = The Idea, by Austro-Hungarian filmmaker Berthold Bartosch (1893-1968). In 1936 Adolphe Borchard (1882–1967) used an ondes Martenot in Sacha Guitry’s (1885-1957) Le roman d’un tricheur = Confessions of a Cheat. The instrument was, played by Martenot’s sister, Ginette. It was used by composer Brian Easdale in the ballet music for The Red Shoes.[40][better source needed] French composer Maurice Jarre introduced the ondes Martenot to American cinema in his score for Lawrence of Arabia (1962).[41] Composer Harry Lubin created cues for The Loretta Young Show, One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits featured the instrument, as did the first-season Lost in Space (1965) theme by John Williams. The English composer Richard Rodney Bennett used it for scores for films including Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and Secret Ceremony (1968).[42] Elmer Bernstein learned about the ondes Martenot through Bennet, and used it in scores for films including Heavy Metal,[43] Ghostbusters,[44][45] The Black Cauldron,[45] Legal Eagles, The Good Son, and My Left Foot.[45]

Composer Danny Elfman used the instrument in the soundtrack to the comedy science fiction film Mars Attacks!: he had originally intended to use a theremin, but was unable to find a musician who could play one.[46]

Director Lucille Hadžihalilović decided to use the instrument in her film Evolution (2015) as it “brings a certain melancholy, almost a human voice, and it instantly creates a particular atmosphere”.[47] Other film scores that use the ondes Martenot include A Passage to India, Amelie, Bodysong,[2] There Will Be Blood (2007), Hugo (2011)[48] and Manta Ray.[49]

The ondes Martenot is the subject of the 2013 Quebec documentary Wavemakers.[50] It is used in a performance of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time in an episode from the third season of the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, where a musician plays the ondes Martenot to inmates on Rikers Island.[51][52]

The British composer, arranger and conductor Barry Gray (1908–1984) studied the instrument with Martenot in Paris, and used it in his soundtracks for 1960s films including Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Doppelgänger (1969) as well as his scores for English television and film producer, director, writer and occasional voice artist Gerry Anderson’s (1929 – 2012) TV series. One of Gray’s instruments (a model 6 from 1969) was inherited and restored by film composer François Evans (1965 – ) who used it in Edgar Wright’s (1974 – ) first feature film, A Fistful of Fingers (1995). , and occasionally records with this instrument in his soundtracks. Evans studied ondes Martenot under Pascale Rousse-Lacordaire (? – ), who was a student of Maurice Martenot and Jeanne Loriod.

The ondes Martenot is sometimes claimed to have been used in the original Star Trek theme; the part was in fact performed by a singer.[2]
Legacy

In 2001, the New York Times described the ondes, along with other early electronic instruments such as the theremin, teleharmonium, trautonium, and orgatron, as part of a “futuristic electric music movement that never went remotely as far as its pioneers dreamed … proponents of the new wired music delighted in making previously unimaginable noises”. The French classical musician Thomas Bloch said: “The ondes martenot is probably the most musical of all electric instruments … Martenot was not only interested in sounds. He wanted to use electricity to increase and control the expression, the musicality. Everything is made by the musician in real time, including the control of the vibrato, the intensity, and the attack. It is an important step in our electronic instrument lineage.”

Journalist Alex Ross (1968 – ) estimates that fewer than 100 people have mastered the ondes Martenot. Mark Singer (1950 – ) wrote in 1997 for The Wire that it would likely remain obscure: “The fact is that any instrument with no institutional grounding of second- and third-raters, no spectral army of amateurs, will wither and vanish: how can it not? Specialist virtuosos may arrive to tackle the one-off novelty … but there’s no meaningful level of entry at the ground floor, and, what’s worse, no fallback possibility of rank careerism if things don’t turn out.”

One of the quirks/ features of ondes Martenot’s electronics is its use of a powder to transfers electric currents. Martenot would mix in different quantities according to musicians’ specifications; the precise proportions are unknown. Attempts to construct new ondes Martenot models using Martenot’s original specifications have had variable results.

Because of the inherent fragility of l’ondes Martenot, there have been attempts to construct more robust functional equivalents.

In 2000, Jonny Greenwood commissioned Analogue Systems, a synthesizer manufacturer, to develop a replica, because he was nervous about damaging his instrument on tour. This replica, called the French Connection, imitates the ondes Martenot’s control mechanism, but does not generate sound directly. Instead, it controls an external oscillator.

David Kean (? – ) is a musician, composer and audio engineer. In 1995 he founded Audities Studios in Seattle. In 1996 he relocated to Los Angeles. In early 2000 he relocated to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He collects electronic instruments and owns the Mellotron Company. In 2000 he created an improved replica version of l’ondes Martenot.

Jean-Loup Dierstein (? – ) maintained an Ondes Martenot at the Conservatoire de Paris from 2006. This sometimes required him to manufacture new parts to replace the defective and obsolete parts. Thus, it was able to restore fully unusable instruments. In 2011 he decided to manufacture his own variant. These reproduction instruments can be bought for about € 12 000. In 2012, the Canadian company Therevox began selling a synthesizer with an interface based on the ondes Martenot pitch ring and intensity key. In 2017, the Japanese company Asaden manufactured 100 Ondomo instruments, a portable version of the ondes Martenot.

Perhaps the best introduction to ondes Martenot is a short (3m51s) video of Thomas Block, playing improvisations at Fisher Lane studios, in 2010-12.

Notes

I have previously mention ondes Martenot, in a weblog post about the Therevox, published 2022-10-08.

Content from several Wikipedia articles, and other sources, have been reproduced here, without any form of acknowledgement! These weblog posts are not intended to be cited in academic articles. Hopefully, most of the content is correct, but that is not guaranteed. At breakfast on 2025-01-26, I was reminded of this by Trish, who handed me an article about the fallibility of Wikipedia. A Norwegian author had corrected some factual mistakes in a Wikipedia biography about him. The next day he received a life-time editing ban from Wikipedia. The perpetrator of the incorrect information had reported him for vandalism. For example, I find it increasingly difficult to find correct birth and even death years. For some reason, people are reluctant to provide this information. I find these dates are important, because circumstances change. Someone born in Europe in, say. 1935, will have a very different experience of life in their early years, than that of someone born in North America in 2005.