Paolo Ketoff
Paul (Paolo) Ketoff (Rome, 8 April 1921 – Rome, 1 March 1996) was an Italian sound engineer specialized in electroacoustics, innovator of the technique of sound reproduction and inventor of various electronic music instruments - among which the SYNKET (SYNthesizerKEToff), the first synthesizer for live performance ..[1]
He collaborated with numerous international composers of contemporary music, including John Cage, John Eaton, Domenico Guaccero IT and Ennio Morricone.
The synthesizers he created can be found in the museums of musical instruments in Rome (MUSA-Accademia di Santa Cecilia), Parigi (Cité de la musique), Munich (Deutsches Museum), Baltimore, Milan[2] and, as of recently, Macerata (Museo del Synth)[3].
Life[edit]
Early Years[edit]
Paul Ketoff grew up in a family of Russian exiles who arrived in Italy in 1908: his mother Zenaide Fedotov was a painter; his father Costantino, writer and journalist, was one of the founders of the Associazione della Stampa Estera in 1912[4]. He had two brothers: Ivan, a member of the Futurist Aeropainting, and Sergio, a professor of architecture in Paris.
In 1938 Ketoff won a scholarship of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia ( sound engineering department), where he graduated in 1940.
In 1941 the call to arms arrived and Ketoff had to interrupt his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. After the armistice of September 8, 1943, he crossed the Gustav Line in Campania and joined the allied troops, making use of his skills in the restoration of the RAI studios destroyed during the war in various Italian cities.
An experience that constituted a turning point in his career: this allowed him to develop the ability, unanimously recognized in the following years, to tackle any technical problem by himself creating the product or mechanism capable of solving it.[5]
Cinema between Music and Sound[edit]
At the end of the war he returned to work in the film industry, taking care of the construction of the Titanus dubbing studios of Via Margutta in Rome and, at the same time, working in several films as a live sound engineer. From 1953 to 1968 he was technical manager of the recording studios of RCA Italiana, Fonolux and NIS Film.[6]
During those years Ketoff designed numerous experimental devices for the production of film music, including dynamic sound compressors, ring modulators, slide potentiometers and reverberation chambers, as documented by numerous patents and technical articles published in various specialized journals.
Having established a new quality standard for post-production sound [7], r international directors and composers turned to his innovation capacity for particularly complex and prestigious recordings. Ketoff then participated in the creation of the soundtracks of films such as L'avventura, Banditi a Orgosolo, Pane, amore e fantasia, Kapò, Il generale della Rovere, Terrore nello spazio, Africa addio and many others. In 1963 he was in London to collaborate with Dimitri Tiomkin on the score - later nominated for an Oscar - for the film 55 Days at Peking by Nicholas Ray .
Electronic Music and the Synket[edit]
The transition from recording rooms to electronic music began in 1962 when Ketoff collaborated with the composer Gino Marinuzzi junior on the creation of the Fonosynth[8], a studio device aimed at obtaining electronic sounds, comprising an ensemble of oscillators, filters and modulators, which was installed as a workstation in the Fonolux studios.
The following year, at the request of the American Academy in Rome[9], he developed the Synket[10], the first integrated synthesizer designed to be used in concert as a traditional instrument.[11]
The Synket (a contraction of 'Synthesizer' and 'Ketoff') was made up of three "sound combiners" each of which included:
- a frequency controllable square wave generator;
- a chain of frequency dividers;
- a selective filter, with an amplitude control;
- three modulators.
The sound produced by the three "combiners" could, in turn, be modified with an octave filter and a triple modulator.
The Synket was equipped with three small keyboards whose frets could be pre-tuned making it suitable for playing microtonal music.[12]
A total of nine Synket were built by Ketoff, all prototypes slightly different from each other.[13]
Numerous composers, especially American and Italian, have used the Synket in their scores or have included it in their performances, from da John Eaton to John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Ashley, Stephen Albert, Bill Smith, and then in Italy Ennio Morricone, Piero Umiliani, Franco Battiato, and the most prominent figures of the Roman avant-garde – Domenico Guaccero, Vittorio Gelmetti, Franco Evangelisti, Aldo Clementi, Egisto Macchi, Walter Branchi and others, some of which gathered in the Improvisation Group of Nuova Consonanza and in the Studio R7.[14]
John Eaton was the composer who mostly used this instrument (also as a performer), often in combination with traditional instruments; his first piece for Synket and soprano, Songs for RPB, was released in 1964, while his opera Myshkin was released in 1973, with a Synket as leading instrument.
Through Eaton, in 1967 Ketoff met with Robert Moog, creator of the Moog Synthesizer, with whom he established a collaborative relationship and planned the joint development of new instruments for electronic music.
Several collaborations were also established with theater directors, including Carmelo Bene — in 1966[15] and again in the Eighties – and Aldo Trionfo (Sinfonie per Synket 1 e 2, 1966).[16]
DIssemination and Teaching[edit]
Since the time of his work in the studios, Ketoff was considered a point of reference for many recording professionals, including Federico Savina.[17]
From 1967 to 1980 Ketoff taught recording techniques at theIstituto di Stato per la Cinematografia e la Televisione. In 1978 he was also a lecturer at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia.
After leaving his assignments in the post-production studios in 1969, Ketoff widened his activities through the "Studio R7", which had the ambition to finance research and experimentation with a multifaceted entrepreneurial activity. These are the years of the construction of recording studios for musicians such as Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone, Bobby Solo, Amedeo Tommasi and others.[18]
Acknowledgements[edit]
On April 8, 2021, on the centenary of his birth – the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia inaugurated the "Studio Paolo Ketoff", a laboratory dedicated to research for electronic music and new technologies, a permanent center for training and musical production whose direction was entrusted to Michelangelo Lupone.[19]
The event was preceded by four webinars [20] on the link between music and science, coordinated by Michele Dall’Ongaro, President-Superintendent of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and carried out in collaboration with the Musica per Roma Foundation[21] and the CRM-Center for Musical Research[22].
In the same year, the Academy acquired the Paolo Ketoff Fund from the family, including two versions of the Synket. Documents and instruments can be consulted in the Bibliomediateca [23] and in the Museo degli Strumenti Musicali.
Previously, on July 5, 2011 the Accademia Filarmonica Romana dedicated a concert of music by Karlheinz Stockhausen to Paolo and Landa Ketoff, on the occasion of her death[24]
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ see https://120years.net/tag/synket/
- ↑ see http://fonologia.lim.di.unimi.it/strumenti.php
- ↑ see https://www.museodelsynth.org
- ↑ Associazione della Stampa Estera in Italia, "Annuario 2012-2013"
- ↑ ibidem
- ↑ ibidem
- ↑ see https://120years.net/tag/synket/
- ↑ see http://www.suonoelettronico.com/synket_fonosynth_ketoff.htm
- ↑ The set up of the Studio of the American Academy in Rome, which was requested by Otto Luening, Bill Smith and George Balch Wilson, was completed in 1962.
- ↑ see https://120years.net/tag/synket/
- ↑ Luigino Pizzaleo, "Scenari della musica elettroacustica a Roma. Gli anni Sessanta", PhD thesis, University of Florence, 2012
- ↑ see http://www.suonoelettronico.com/synket_fonosynth_ketoff.htm
- ↑ Luigino Pizzaleo, op.cit., 2012
- ↑ ibidem
- ↑ see Il Rosa e il Nero
- ↑ see Treccani biographies, 2019: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/aldo-trionfo_%28Dizionario-Biografico%29/
- ↑ Maurizio Corbella, "Musica elettroacustica e cinema in Italia negli anni Sessanta", PhD thesis, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2009
- ↑ Luigino Pizzaleo, op. cit., 2012
- ↑ see https://santacecilia.it/studiopaoloketoff/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7GrsXMWfk
- ↑ for the programs of the four webinars, see http://www.crm-music.it/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=42&Itemid=136&lang=it
- ↑ see https://www.auditorium.com
- ↑ see http://www.crm-music.it
- ↑ see https://santacecilia.it/auditorium/bibliomediateca/
- ↑ see https://blog.ilgiornale.it/pavanel/2011/07/05/strumenti-una-rivoluzione-chiamata-synket/ and https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2011/06/12/morricone-landa-aveva-la-musica-nell-anima.html
Bibliographic references[edit]
- Paolo Ketoff, "The Synket", in “Electronic Music Review”, IV, October 1967, The Independent Electronic Music Center, Trumansburg, 1967, pp. 39-41.
- Joel Chadabe, "Concert Piece for Synket and Symphony Orchestra, John Eaton", in “Electronic Music Review”, IV, October 1967, The Independent Electronic Music Center, Trumansburg, 1967, pp. 46-47.
- Frankenstein, Alfred. 1968. "Introducing John Eaton and his Pieces for the Syn-ket". Hi Fidelity, 18, no. 7:82.
- Crab, Simon. 2015. "The 'Syn-ket' (or 'Synthesizer-Ketoff'): Paolo Ketoff & John Eaton, Italy, 1963". 120 Years of Electronic Music website.
- Valerio Mattioli, "Superonda - Storia segreta della musica italiana", Baldini&Castoldi, 2016.
- Luigino Pizzaleo, "Il liutaio elettronico", Aracne ed., 2014.
- Luigino Pizzaleo, "Scenari della musica elettroacustica a Roma. Gli anni Sessanta", PhD, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2012.
- Maurizio Corbella, "Musica elettroacustica e cinema in Italia negli anni Sessanta", PhD Ricerca in Storia e Critica dei Beni Artistici e Ambientali, Università degli Studi di Milano, 2009.
- Vincenzo Izzi, "Paolo Ketoff e la ricerca dell’immaginario sonoro - La musica elettroacustica nello scenario romano degli anni Sessanta fra artigianato e arte, industria cinematografica e nuove sperimentazioni", Diploma accademico in Musica Elettronica, Conservatorio di Musica “Gesualdo da Venosa” di Potenza, 2014.
External Links[edit]
- Paolo Ketoff, in Enciclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
- 120 Years Of Electronic Music
- Suono Elettronico
- Studio Paolo Ketoff
- Studio Paolo Ketoff - Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (from YouTube - ENG subtitles)
- Studio di Fonologia Musicale RAI, Milano
- Timeline of music technology
- Cité de la Musique, Philarmonie de Paris
- MIMO musical instrument museum online
- Google Arts & Culture
- Paolo Ketoff on IMDB
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