THE
PERSEPHONE
The Persephone analogue fingerboard synthesizer is similar to the theremin in that it is of that family of electronic musical instruments able to play “portamento”, a continuous sliding tone over a range of more than ten octaves. The photo above shows the control panel (eight silver knobs at the left), the expression key (just to the left of the ribbon) and the ribbon itself (the nineteen and a half inch black strip in the center of the wooden panel). I placed a standard CD-R disc on the control panel just to give an idea of size and persepective.
The Persephone is a descendant of early model ondes Martenot (the so-called “troisième modèle”) which did not have a keyboard, and of a now obsolete instrument called the Hellertion which was the first electronic instrument (developed in 1929) to use a fingerboad continuous controller.
Like the theremin, the Persephone is monophonic (i.e. it has a single voice) and it can play a continuous “glissando” or slide, but it is not a heterodyne instrument like its predecessors. It is a modern analogue synthesizer. It was developed by Marc Sirguy, CEO of Mesi/eowave, the company in France that manufactures the instrument.
Here is a short composition by French composer Maurice Ravel, that will give you an idea of some of what the Persephone can do. The piece is called CHANSON GREQUE (Greek Song - 1905) which seemed appropriate since Persephone is a goddess of the ancient Greek pantheon. I apologize to Monsieur Ravel for desecrating his beautiful and simple composition but I wanted to demonstrate the range of the instrument so I took quite a number of inappropriate liberties with the melody.