Eduard Artemyev - Siberiade theme
YouTube via gobodrodiont
"Эдуард Артемьев - музыка к фильму Сибириада"
"Eduard Artemiev - music for the film Sibiriada"
After a little digging Mr. Array found an interesting bit of history regarding Eduard Artemyev. He was one of the few composers that used the ANS Synthesizer.
Regarding the ANS via Wikipedia [per GNU Free Documentation License]: "The ANS synthesizer is a photoelectronic musical instrument created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin from 1937 to 1957. The technological basis of his invention was the method of photo-optic sound recording used in cinematography (developed in Russia concurrently with America), which made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave, as well as to realize the opposite goal - synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound wave.In this case the sine waves generated by the ANS are printed onto five glass discs using a process which Murzin (an optical engineer) had to develop himself. Each disc has 144 individual tracks printed onto it, producing a total of 720 microtones (discrete pitches) available to the user. These are arranged vertically from low frequencies at the bottom to high frequencies at the top. The convolved light is then projected onto the back of the synthesizer's interface.
This consists of a glass plate covered in opaque black "mastic" which constitutes a drawing surface upon which the user makes marks by scratching through the mastic, and therefore allowing light to pass through at that point. In front of the glass plate sits a vertical bank of photocells which send signals to band-pass amplifiers, each with dB trim switches.
The glass plate can then be scanned left or right in front of the photocell bank in order to transcribe the drawing directly into pitches. In other words, it plays what you draw. This process can be aided with a step geared motor drive (strangely similar to an engineering lathe) or can be performed manually. The speed at which the score scans has no relation to pitch, but serves only as a means of controlling duration. The ANS is completely polyphonic and will generate up to all 720 of its pitches simultaneously if required.
