Notes

The following originally appeared in the GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS:

Its sound is unlike any other man-made object.  In one moment, it can soar through the stratospheric upper climes of the musical register, wafting on a sustained F above high C… then plunge in a breakneck glissando, sinking as many as eight octaves to plumb the abyssal bottom of the human range of hearing. 

It is built in garages and played in concert halls, and has enthralled both ostentatious opera house audiences and bemused B-movie buffs. 

It was given to the world of art by a man of science, whose reward was years of darkness and back-breaking toil in one of the world’s most cruel prisons.

It is the theremin, among the most unusual musical inventions conceived by the mind of man.  Invented in 1917 by Russian radio engineer Lev Sergeyevitch Termen (or “Leon Theremin,” as he was known here in the United States), the theremin is the only musical instrument that is played without being touched.  It’s a simple contraption, really, comprised of two radio oscillators, usually encased in a wood or plastic box,  that are modulated by the proximity of the player’s hands as they wave nearby.

When Termen invented his unique instrument, he was hailed as a genius by the rulers of the still nascent Soviet Union.  Its first chairman, Vladimir Illyich Lenin himself, regarded the theremin as a splendid example of Soviet innovation and a metaphor for state commodification of the arts.  In 1927, at the behest of Lenin’s tyrannical successor Josef Stalin, Termen was commissioned to visit Europe to demonstrate his device. 

Termen’s European tour was a bona fide box office bonanza.  First the Germans, then the French and British, were wowed by this remarkable invention.  Not only was the theremin the first major instrument to emerge from the still-arcane realm of electronics, but its musical breadth was astonishing.  To Europe’s concert audiences, the theremin seemed to marry the sentimental resonance of a string quartet with the harmonic acrobatics of a coloratura soprano.

Such was the success of Termen’s tour that he was next sent to the United States.  Termen ended up staying in New York for more than a decade, eventually marrying celebrated black ballerina Lavinia Williams.  But in 1938, Termen was forced to emigrate back to the U.S.S.R., either by the growing debt he had accrued in New York, or by Soviet agents, who may have persuaded the inventor to leave the U.S. unwillingly. 

Once a hero in his home country, Termen returned a pariah, and was thrown into the infamous gulag at Kolyma, Siberia, where he languished until World War II, when Stalin’s minions decided the talented engineer might better serve the state inventing spy gear — like the listening “bug” that the Soviets lost no time installing into ambassador Averell Harriman’s office at the U.S. Embassy.

We’ll further detail the tragic life of Lev Termen — and examine the great theremin players who have warbled in his wake — in the future.  Please check back in future weeks for a strange journey that will take us into a spirit-crushing Siberian gulag… the finest concert halls of Europe… the secret spy labs of the Soviet Union… and the outlandish world of 1950s sci-fi hokum.