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Léon Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Termen, Russian: Лев Сергеевич Термен) (August 15 1896 – November 3 1993) was a Russian inventor. He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments.

Léon Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg.

Musical inventions

He invented the theremin (also called the thereminvox) in 1919, when his country was in the midst of the Russian Civil War. After a lengthy tour of Europe, during which he demonstrated his invention to full audiences, Theremin found his way to the United States. He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in 1929 (U.S. Patent 1,661,058 ) and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA.

Léon Theremin set up a laboratory in New York in the 1930s, where he developed the theremin and experimented with other electronic musical instruments and other inventions. These included the Rhythmicon, commissioned by the American composer and theorist Henry Cowell.

In 1930, ten thereminists performed on stage at Carnegie Hall. Two years later, Theremin conducted the first-ever electronic orchestra, featuring the theremin and other electronic instruments including a "fingerboard" theremin which resembled a cello in use.

Theremin's mentors during this time were some of society's foremost scientists, composers, and musical theorists, including composer Joseph Schillinger and physicist (and amateur violinist) Albert Einstein. At this time, Theremin worked closely with fellow Russian émigré and theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore.

Theremin was interested in a role for the theremin in dance music. He developed performance locations that could automatically react to dancers' movements with varied patterns of sound and light. While working with the American Negro Ballet, the inventor fell in love with the young prima ballerina Lavinia Williams. His eventual marriage to the African-American dancer caused shock and disapproval in his social circles, but the ostracized couple remained together.

Return to the Soviet Union

Theremin abruptly returned to the Soviet Union in 1938. At the time, the reasons for his return were unclear: some claimed that he was simply homesick, while others believed that he had been kidnapped by Soviet officials. Beryl Campbell, one of Theremin's dancers, said his wife Lavinia "called to say that he had been kidnapped from his studio" and that "some Russians had come in" and that she felt that he was going to be spirited out of the country.^[1]

Many years later, it became known that Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States^[2]. Shortly after he returned, on Joseph Stalin's order, he was imprisoned at Butyrka and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution were widely circulated, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a sharashka, together with Andrei Tupolev, Sergei Korolev, and other well-known scientists and engineers. The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1956.

Espionage

Theremin invented the first covert listening device (or "bug") to use passive electromagnetic induction to transmit an audio signal. "The Thing", as it was called, was very simple by today's standards, but ingenious. It consisted of a tiny capacitive membrane (a condenser microphone) connected to a small quarter-wavelength antenna; it had no power supply or active electronic components. The device, a passive cavity resonator, became active only when 330 MHz microwaves were beamed to the device from an external transmitter. Sound waves caused the microphone to vibrate, which varied the capacitance "seen" by the antenna, which in turn modulated the microwaves that struck and were reflected by "The Thing". A receiver decoded the modulated microwave signal so the sound that the microphone picked up could be heard, in the same way that an ordinary radio decodes modulated radio waves into sound. The variable capacitance that made "The Thing" work was the same principle that Theremin used in his eponymous musical instrument.

Theremin's design made the listening device very difficult to detect, because it was very small, had no power supply or active components, and did not radiate any signal unless it was actively being powered and listened to remotely. The same design features gave the device a potentially unlimited operational life.

Theremin's device was embedded in a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States. On August 4, 1945, Soviet school children presented the bugged carving to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman, as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador’s Moscow residential office until 1952, when the existence of a bug was accidentally discovered by a British radio operator who heard conversations on an open radio channel. The CIA found the device in the Great Seal carving, and Peter Wright, a scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, eventually figured out how it worked.^[3][4]

Later life

Theremin invented the first motion detector for automated doors and worked on an early burglar alarm.

After working for the KGB, Theremin worked at the Moscow Conservatory of Music for 10 years where he taught and built Theremins, electronic cellos and some Terpsitones.^[1] There he was discovered by a visiting New York Times correspondent, but when an article by Christopher Walker appeared, according to Lydia, the Vice President of the conservatory said "The people don't need electronic music. Electricity is for killing traitors in the electric chair", fired Theremin, closed his laboratory and had his instruments destroyed.^[1]

In the 1970s, Léon Theremin began training his nine-year-old niece Lydia Kavina on the theremin. Kavina was to be Theremin's last protégé. Today, Kavina is considered one of the most advanced and famous thereminists in the world.

In 1991, Léon Theremin returned to the United States, where he was reunited with Clara Rockmore who performed a number of concerts at this time. He returned to Russia and died in Moscow in 1993 at the age of 97.

Léon Theremin is the subject of the documentary film, , written, directed, and produced by Steven M. Martin. The documentary was a winner at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994. The film features legendary thereminists Clara Rockmore and Lydia Kavina as well as electronic instrument pioneer Robert Moog, Nicolas Slonimsky, The Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson, and Theremin himself. In the documentary Lydia Kavina reported that Stalin, when he saw that Theremin was to be given the Second Level Stalin Awards, changed it to the First Level.^[1]

Notes

References

• Glinsky, Albert (2000). Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02582-2. 
• Wright, Peter (1987). Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-670-82055-5. 

See also

• Raymond Scott
• Robert Moog
• Bruce Haack
• Brian Wilson

External links

• Theremin Centre, Moscow, holds Lev Sergeivitch Termen archives (Russian only)
• Lev Sergeivitch Termen: The Inventor of the theremin
• An Interview with Léon Theremin
• An Introduction to Leon Theremin
• Online bibliography about both the man and the instrument
• An encounter with Léon Theremin
• Inventor of the Week Archive - LEON THEREMIN (1896-1993)
• Lev Sergeyevich Termen (1896-1993)
• History of the theremin from Moog Music
• from The History Channel
• Moog re LT's work on television, bugging

Clara Rockmore Concerto per Theremin. Live in Italy Croix Sonore D-Beam Edgard Varèse Electronic music Electronic musical instrument

Eric Ross Live Printemps de Bourges 2002 Lydia Kavina Petr Zelenka Rosalyn Tureck Terpsitone