![]() ![]() While he wowed crowds with his ghostly tunes, played on what was then called the Thereminvox, or “Theremin’s voice,” he kept his eye out for any information that might be useful to report back to his homeland. What audiences didn’t know was that Theremin was already working as a spy for the Soviet regime. “Theremin gathered huge crowds, because it was such a fascinating thing to see this man stand in front of what looked like a little wood writing desk with two metal antennas, and with nothing but his hands in mid-air, produce these melodies, sounding like a soprano singing,” Glinsky explains. Already, Theremin’s invention was serving a dual purpose – to entertain and to support his nation’s interests – an intertwining of intentions that would continue for almost his entire life.Īfter his successful tour of Russia, in the late 1920s Lenin sent Theremin to Western Europe, where the legend of his mysterious instrument quickly grew. “He was so taken with it,” Glinsky says, “that in 1922 he sent Theremin all around the Soviet Union to demonstrate the instrument as propaganda for electrification.” The idea was that villagers would be so impressed by Theremin’s instrument they’d be motivated to bring the magic of electricity into their homes. Lenin absolutely loved the new instrument. He placed one antenna vertically and one horizontally, meaning that a player could control pitch with their right hand and volume with their left, producing real melodies out of thin air.Īs word of Theremin’s new invention spread, he was invited to an audience with Vladimir Lenin, at the time the Chairman of Russia’s new Bolshevik government. ![]() After Theremin’s initial discovery of the sonic potential of his former gas meter, he altered the device into a working instrument. “It’s simply the electromagnetic fields in your own body, what we refer to as capacitance, affecting the circuitry through the electromagnetic field surrounding some device,” says Albert Glinsky, an American composer and the author of Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage. Theremin’s accidental discovery was that the electromagnetic field around an antenna could be affected by merely moving your body into that field. Now, using vacuum tubes, Theremin was able to make electronic sound with something small enough to put in a phonograph cabinet. Prior to then, the few electronic instruments that existed took up entire buildings. This set the stage for the invention of speakers, and electronic music. ![]() By directing a current through vacuum tubes, the strength of an electrical signal could be amplified. New technologies were constantly emerging, fueled predominantly by the refinement of the vacuum tube in 1915, which allowed radio and sound amplification to begin in earnest. The late 1910s were a revolutionary time for electronics. It was a stunning discovery, one that would set Termen, better known as Léon Theremin, on a path that would change the course of 20th century music and entangle him in the politics of the Cold War. As his fellow scientists gathered around this incredible, intangible noisemaker, Termen realized he had a new instrument in front of him. Waving his hand back and forth, an eerie noise emerged, like a quivering, disembodied voice. But he quickly noticed that the sound wasn’t just responding to the density of gasses it was supposed to be measuring – he could change the pitch merely by moving his hands in the air around the device. A brilliant and creative young Russian scientist, Termen had wondered what would happen if he added a sonic element to his new device, a whistling noise that indicated the machine’s reading. Petersburg, was originally meant to measure the density of gasses in a chamber. Termen’s machine, built at the Physical Technical Institute in St. In 1919, 23-year-old Lev Sergeyevich Termen’s new invention began to make a strange noise. ![]()
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