The fifth and final gallery of original musical instruments from the workshop of Leopoldus Friedrich Rademacher, and unquestionably his most daring.

Rademacher’s early career is marked by two overarching themes. First are the alternative tonalities, initially explored during his late Salzburg period, and coming to final flower in his Viennese years: compare the Automated Muselar of 1700–1, and his Alles-Dur, after 1706. Then there are the multi-timbral instruments, successors to the hurdy-gurdy and precursor to the reed organ, creations of his expanded workshop on the Wiedner Hauptstraße after his appointment to the court of Emperor Joseph I. These include the Omnisymphonium and Tres-Sonos of 1703, and the Polyharmonia (1707) and Orchestralon (1709) created for the court’s traditional new year’s celebration. Only after the emperor’s untimely death in 1711 did Rademacher find the time to create these, his most ambitious works, many of which explore musical concepts that would go unexamined for another two hundred and fifty years. Paragons of Rademacher’s late period are his Intertonos of 1713 (fig.2) and Circum Musicis of 1715 (fig. 3) that explore microtunings, and his Fugenmaschine I and II of 1717–19 (fig. 4, 5) that prefigure the modern sequencer. Most enduring is his 1720 Clavichordi Sex Partes (keyboard in six parts) shown above, originally created for the six-voiced motets of Des P.R.E.Z., the Flemish songwriter who gained international recognition for his breakthrough Missa Di Dadi (1480) and his resetting of the classic Regretz, which debuted at number one.

Published January 3, 2024. Copyright © 2024 Jonathan Hoefler.