Mary Elizabeth Hallock-Greenewalt (Sept. 8, 1871 – Nov. 27, 1950)Ancestry.com. Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906-1963 atabase on-line Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014. Original data: Pennsylvania (State). Death certificates, 1906–1963. Series 11.90 (1,905 cartons). Records of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. was an inventor and pianist who performed with the

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

and

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

symphonies as a soloist. She is best known for her invention of a type of visual music she called Nourathar.

Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For the length ...

painted her portrait in 1903, currently in the Roland P. Murdock Collection of the Wichita Museum of Art.

Biography

Mary Hallock was born in 1871 in

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, then in Syria Vilayet,

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, to Samuel Hallock and Sara Tabet. After her mother began exhibiting symptoms of mental illness, eleven-year-old Mary Hallock and her siblings were sent to live with friends and relatives in the US, where she spent the remainder of her youth in the Philadelphia area. As a young adult she studied piano at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and then with

Theodor Leschetizky Theodor Leschetizky (sometimes spelled Leschetitzky, pl, Teodor Leszetycki; 22 June 1830 – 14 November 1915 was an Austrian- Polish pianist, professor, and composer born in Landshut in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then a crown land of ...

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. After her return to Philadelphia Mary Hallock married Frank L. Greenewalt, a physician. The couple had one son, Crawford Hallock Greenewalt, a chemical engineer who eventually served as president of the

DuPont Company DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

. In her later years Hallock-Greenewalt resided in Wilmington, Delaware. She died in Philadelphia at the age of 79.

Recordings

Columbia Records released her performance of Chopin's "Preludes in E Minor, C minor, A Major" and "Nocturne in G Major" in March, 1920 (A6136).

Inventions

'Color organ'

The name for her art, ''Nourathar,'' was adapted from the Arabic words for ''light'' (nour), and ''essence of'' (athar). Unlike earlier inventors of color-music such as the painter A. Wallace Rimington, Hallock-Greenewalt did not produce a strict definition of correspondence between specific colors and particular notes, instead arguing that these relationships were inherently variable and reflected the temperament and ability of the performer. Her earliest attempts at creating this art entailed her construction of an automated machine where colored lights were synchronized to records. This produced an unsatisfactory result, leading to her development of an instrument that could actually be played live. Her

color organ The term color organ refers to a tradition of mechanical devices built to represent sound and accompany music in a visual medium. The earliest created color organs were manual instruments based on the harpsichord design. By the 1900s they were ele ...

, which she named "Sarabet" after her mother, required her to invent a number of new technologies. She received nine patents from the US Patent office for them. Among these devices was a non-linear variety of

rheostat A potentiometer is a three-terminal resistor with a sliding or rotating contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used, one end and the wiper, it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat. The measuring instrume ...

, a patent that was infringed by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

and other companies. She sued them for infringement and won in 1934. The ''Sarabet'' went through a series of refinements between 1916 and 1934. In 1946 she published a book on her invented art of "light-color playing" called ''Nourathar: The Fine Art of Light-Color Playing''.

Hand-painted films

Michael Betancourt has noted Hallock-Greenewalt also produced the earliest hand-painted films known to still exist. However, these were not

movie A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

s but films produced specifically to be performed by her earliest version of the Sarabet which was a machine for automatic accompaniment to records. Its construction, where a single viewer looked down into the machine at the film itself, resembled Edison's

kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...

. This device was an early ''music visualizer'' of the type now included with computer audio-players. Even though these films were not designed to be motion pictures, they were produced with templates and aerosol sprays, producing repeating geometric patterns in the same way as the hand painted films of

Len Lye Leonard Charles Huia Lye (; 5 July 1901 – 15 May 1980) was a New Zealand artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture. His films are held in archives including the New Zealand Film Archive, British Film Institute, M ...

from the 1930s.

References

* Mary Hallock-Greenewalt, "Nourathar" estbrook Publishing, 1946* Michael Betancourt, "Mary Hallock-Greenewalt's Abstract Films." illennium Film Journal no 45, 2006* Michael Betancourt, "Mary Hallock-Greenewalt: The Complete Patents." ildside Press, 2005* Biography and Genealogy Master Index. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, Cengage Learning. 1980- 2009.

External sources

* * * * Th
Mary Elizabeth Hallock Greenewalt papers
including correspondence, photos, drawings and artifacts, are available for research use at the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a long-established research facility, based in Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chronicles, maps, press reports and v ...

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hallock-Greenewalt, Mary Visual music artists 1871 births 1950 deaths Women inventors University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni Women experimental filmmakers