Meet Oskar Sala: 23 Amazing Facts to know about the Musical Genius

Top 23 Interesting Facts About Oskar Sala

1. Oskar Sala was born in Greiz, Germany, in 1910, and he had a passion for music since he was a child. When he was just 14 years old, he began creating his own music and writing songs.

2. Oskar Sala became really famous because he created and became a master of the trautonium. This instrument is known as the first-ever electronic musical instrument in the world. He came up with this innovative device back in 1929.

3. Oskar Sala, a German inventor and composer, is famous for making the Trautonium, which was one of the first electronic instruments ever created.
4. When Oskar Sala was a young person, he learned to play the piano and organ. He was incredibly talented and even performed in classical piano concerts while he was still very young.
5. In 1929, he moved to Berlin to pursue further studies in piano and composition. He had the opportunity to learn from a renowned composer and violist named Paul Hindemith at the Berlin conservatory.”
6. Oskar Sala also learned from Dr. Friedrich Trautwein, who was experimenting with a new electronic instrument called the Trautonium at the school’s lab. Sala got a chance to play with this pioneering electronic instrument.
7. Later on, Oskar Sala took the Trautonium to different places in Germany. In 1931, he performed as a soloist in a concert featuring Hindemith’s Concert for Trautonium with a String Quartet.
8. He also played solo in the premiere of another piece called “Concert for Trautonium AND Orchestra,” which was composed by Harald Genzmer, a student of Hindemith.
9. Oskar Sala learned from Friedrich Trautwein, who invented the Trautonium. But Oskar also studied music with Paul Hindemith in 1930 at a place called the Berlin Conservatory. He played his compositions on the Trautonium.

10. Sala was very creative and he wants to complete his further studies. He attended the University of Berlin to study physics in the year 1932 to 1935. He helped create something called the “Volkstrautonium,” which Telefunken wanted to promote.

11. In 1935, Oskar Sala made a “Radio-Trautonium,” and in 1938, he made a smaller version called the “Konzerttrautonium.”
12. From the beginning with Trautwein, Oskar Sala created pieces for Trautonium and performed them with the Berlin Philharmony conducted by Carl Schuricht in 1940.
13. When he was in his 40s, he started focusing on making music for films and helped improve the sound for many classic movies. In 1960, he convinced Alfred Hitchcock to use his Trautonium-generated sound effects in his movie “The Birds.”
14. Oskar Sala was a genius who invented the mixtur-trautonium, one of the first electronic musical instruments and a forerunner of today’s synthesizers. He was the only person who could play it really well.
15. In 1948, Sala improved the Trautonium and called it the Mixtur-Trautonium. It allowed musicians to play sounds that were known in theory since the Middle Ages but were rarely playable before.
16. His invention opened the field of subharmonics, which are a special type of sound, and it brought a new way to tune musical instruments.

17. The Mixtur-Trautonium was shown to the public in 1952 and gained worldwide fame. Nobody else could replicate the instrument or play its compositions.

18. In the same year, there was one composer who called Harald Genzmer. he created the first Concert for Mixtur-Trautonium & Grand Orchestra.

19. In the 1950s, Oskar Sala also created the Quartett-Trautonium.

20. Sala created the non-musical soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.”
21. He received many awards for his film scores, but he never won an Oscar. He also worked on several German commercials, including one known as “HB’s little man.”
22. Oskar Sala was an honorary Senator of Berlin.
23. On July 18, 2022, Google celebrated Oskar Sala’s 112th Birthday with a special picture on its homepage.