Léon Theremin

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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 - renamed Leningrad from 1924 until 1991 - and his family had French ancestry.^[1]

[edit] Electronic inventions

He invented the theremin (also called the thereminvox) in 1919, when his country was in the midst of the Russian Civil War. Theremin invented the first motion detector for use as a "radio watchman",^[2] and in 1925 he went to Germany to sell both the radio watchman and Termenvox patents to the German firm Goldberg and Sons. According to Glinsky this was the Soviet's "decoy for capitalists" to obtain both Western profits from sales and technical knowledge.

During this time Lev was also working on a wireless television with 16 scan lines in 1925, improving to 32 scan lines and then 64 using interlacing in 1926 and he demonstrated moving, if blurry, images on June 7,1927.^[3]

After being sent on a lengthy tour of Europe starting 1927 - including London, Paris and towns in Germany^[4][5] - during which he demonstrated his invention to full audiences, Theremin found his way to the United States, arriving December 30, 1927 with his first wife, Katia Constantinova^[6]. He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in the United States in 1928^[7][8] 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. After the Soviet consulate had apparently demanded he divorce Katia and while working with the American Negro Ballet, the inventor fell in love with and married the young prima ballerina Lavinia Williams.^[6] His marriage to the African-American dancer caused shock and disapproval in his social circles, but the ostracized couple remained together.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 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.^[9]

Many years later, it became known that Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States^[10], however Theremin told Bulat Galeyev that he decided to leave himself because he was anxious about the approaching war.^[1] Shortly after he returned, on Joseph Stalin's order, he was imprisoned at Butyrka and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[6] The Soviet Union "rehabilitated" him in 1956.^[11]

[edit] Espionage

During his work at the sharashka, where he was put in charge of other workers, Theremin created the "Buran" eavesdropping system which recorded conversations in French and American embassies by measuring the window glass vibrations using a low power infrared beam from a distance.^[1][12] Lavrentiy Beria, head of the KGB then used Buran to spy on US, British and French embassies.^[13] For this he was awarded the Stalin prize in 1947. According to Galeyev, Beria also spied on Stalin and Theremin kept some of the tapes in his flat.

In 1945 Theremin had also 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.^[14][15]

[edit] Later life

After his "release" from the sharashka in 1947, Theremin volunteered to remain working with the KGB until 1966.^[1] By 1947 Theremin had remarried, to Maria, and they had two children: Lena and Natalia.^[6]

After working for the KGB, Theremin worked at the Moscow Conservatory of Music^[16] for 10 years where he taught and built Theremins, electronic cellos and some Terpsitones.^[9] 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",^[6] fired Theremin^[17], closed his laboratory^[6] and had his instruments destroyed.^[9]

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.

After 51 years in the Soviet Union Léon Theremin started travelling, first visiting France in June 1989^[1] and then the United States in 1991, each time accompanied by his daughter Natalia,^[18][6] where he was reunited with Clara Rockmore who performed a number of concerts at this time. He also made a demonstration concert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in early 1993^[1] before dying in Moscow in 1993 at the age of 97^[19].

[edit] Documentary film

Léon Theremin is the subject of the documentary film, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, 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.^[9][20][21]

[edit] Some of Theremin's inventions

• Theremin - the classic Theremin (1919-1920)
• Burglar alarm, or "Signalling Apparatus" which used the Theremin effect (1920s)
• Electromechanical television - Nipkow disk with mirrors instead of slots (ca. 1925)
• Terpsitone - platform that converts dance movements into tones (1932)
• Theremin cello - an electric Cello with no strings and no bow, using a plastic fingerboard, a handle for volume and two knobs for sound shaping (ca. 1930)^[22]
• Theremin keyboard - a piano-like device (ca. 1930)
• Rhythmicon - world's first drum machine (1931)
• The Buran eavesdropping device (1947 or earlier)
• The Great Seal bug (1946 or earlier)

[edit] Notes

[edit] 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. 
• Galeyev, Bulat M. (1996). "Special Section: Leon Theremin, Pioneer of Electronic Art". Leonardo Music Journal (LMJ) 6. Retrieved on 2007-11-22. linked from LMJ6
• Olivia Mattis; Translated by Nina Boguslawsky and Alejandro Tkaczevski (1989-06-16). An Interview with Leon Theremin / Olivia Mattis and Leon Theremin in Bourges, France. Retrieved on 2007-11-21. copied here

[edit] See also

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

[edit] External links

• Theremin Centre, Moscow, holds Lev Sergeivitch Termen archives (Russian only)
• Lev Sergeivitch Termen: The Inventor of the 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
• Theremin – An Electronic Odyssey at the Internet Movie Database from The History Channel
• Moog re LT's work on television, bugging
• ARTMargins by Natascha Drubek-Meyer, "Between “Bad Things” and Good Vibrations: Leon Theremin and his T-Vox" - long article with citations
• Lew Termen, German Website by IMA :: Institute of Media Archeology, Austriacv:Термен Лев Сергеевич

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