Denis d'or

It was invented and constructed by the Czech theologian Vaclav Prokop Divis (1698 - 1765; his surname is pronounced "Deevish" and often spelled "Divisch"; with modern Czech diacritics his full name is properly spelled as follows: Václav Prokop Diviš ), at his parish in the Moravian town Primetice near Znojmo in the south-east of what is now the Czech Republic. He was also a pioneer of research into electricity, being most famous for having invented the lightning rod in Europe, contemporaneously with but independently of Benjamin Franklin.

His passionate interest in music was crowned by the construction of quite an extraordinary musical instrument he named "Denis d'or", with the French "Denis" etymologically going back to "Dionysus", whose Czech counterpart is "Divis" - hence the name.

The earliest written mention of the Denis d'or dates from 1753, but it is likely that it had already existed around 1748. Unfortunately, after Divis´s death in 1765 the unique instrument was sold and eventually brought to Vienna, where it soon vanished without trace. What is more, very few and short documents about the Denis d´or are left so that our image of it must remain rather fragmentary. But at least some facts are known and these can be summarized as follows:

The Denis d'or had 14 registers, most of which were twofold, and its complex mechanism fitted in a symmetrical wooden cabinet equipped with a keyboard and a pedal. It was about 150cm long (5 feet), 90cm wide (3 feet) and 120cm high (4 feet). Basically, it was a chordophone not unlike a clavichord, that is the strings were struck, not plucked; but the suspension and the tautening of the numerous metal strings (it is said there were 790 ones!) were much more elaborate. The ingenious mechanism, which had been worked out by Divis with painstaking mathematical accuracy, was such that the Denis d'or could imitate the sounds of a whole variety of other instruments, including chordophones such as harpsichords, harps, lutes and even wind instruments. This was mainly owing to the exceptional responsiveness and combinability of the stops, which permitted the player to vary the sound in multifarious ways, thereby generating far more than a hundred different tonal voices altogether. But the most special feature was that Divis (temporarily) charged the iron strings with electricity in order that the sound quality might be enhanced - "purified" so to speak. This was an absolute novelty in his time! Additionally, he installed a slightly sadistic gimmick so that, any time he wanted it, the respective players could be given an electric shock.

Divis was the first person to foster the idea of an aesthetic connection between music and electricity. Before him nobody had seen that there can be an aesthetic, particularly musical use of electricity. In the face of electrical research still being in its early infancy in the middle of the 18th century, this revolutionary idea could then, of course, only be realized by Divis in a very primitive technical way. But, nevertheless, those historical circumstances cannot belittle the fact that the Denis d'or can justifiably be regarded as the forefather of all electrophones, at least from the idealistic point of view.

External link

• Prokop Divis Memorial (http://www.znojmuz.cz/english/aodivis.htm)