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Whether we know it or not, we’ve probably all heard the theremin. ‘Good Vibrations’ (The Beach Boys), ‘Race for the Prize’ (The Flaming Lips), ‘Please Go Home’ (The Rolling Stones), ‘Lovely Head’ (Goldfrapp) and ‘Cup of Coffee’ (Garbage) are just a handful of popular tracks to utilise the instrument’s eerie, futuristic sound.

Brian Wilson found the theremin ideal for the quirky ‘outsider’ music of the Beach Boys’ later projects, while 90s acts like Portishead and Garbage used it to enhance their darker, electronic-tinged work (the former’s ‘Mysterons’ being a prime example).

Outside the pop spectrum, French composer and ambient pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre was a big fan, combining the theremin’s sound with early synthesizers for his 1970s album Oxygène. Film score composer Danny Elfman used it to go full on sci-fi on the Mars Attacks! soundtrack. Whilst renowned Russian composer Shostakovich – one of the first to write for the instrument – used the theremin to create a ghostly resonance in the 1931 Soviet film Odna, reflecting its strange snowscape.

Originally called an etherphone, the theremin was created in 1919 by Leon Theremin, a Russian inventor and professor of acoustics. Comprised of a vertical antenna, a horizontal antenna, and a capacitor, it was one of the world’s first electronic instruments. Though over a century old, it retains a somewhat futuristic quality in that you don’t need to touch any part of the instrument to produce a sound. Simply move your hand closer to the vertical antenna and the pitch goes up. Closer to the horizontal antenna and the volume goes down. Players have full control over melody and volume, just by waving their hands.

This phenomenon is all down to electricity. The theremin essentially forms part of a capacitor, with its vertical antenna acting as one plate and your own hand acting as the other. In between these two plates is the air. And together these elements make up a full capacitor. By moving his hand closer or further away from the vertical antenna, Theremin was able to change the oscillation of the current, which in turn effected the frequency and therefore the pitch (the closer the plates were, the more charge there was, meaning the current oscillated at a lower frequency).

This would’ve made sense to me (just about) when I was back in GCSE Science class. However, being the geek he was, Leon Theremin knew that the current’s 250kHz frequency would be too high for humans to hear. Instead, he combined the current produced by the hand/antenna with a second, lower pre-set current inside the theremin itself, resulting in a more ear-friendly final frequency. A byproduct of this process was that the order of the frequencies switched around; so, the closer the hand gets to the theremin’s vertical antenna, the higher the pitch.

Whilst the science behind Theremin’s unique invention is certainly interesting, it’s nowhere near as fascinating as the life lived by its creator – which was colourful, to say the least – or the eventual cultural influence the instrument would have on popular music.

Born in Saint Petersburg in 1896, Leon Theremin quickly emerged as a child prodigy, wowing his fellow high school students and their parents by using electricity to demonstrate a series of optical effects. Reportedly, at the age of 15 he discovered a new star using a home-built astrology kit. Upon leaving school, the fledgling inventor enrolled on courses in physics and astrology at Saint Petersburg University, whilst also studying cello and music theory at the conservatory. Years later, these joint interests in science and music would converge to influence his best-known creation, as well as other inventions such as the electro-cello.

But first, World War I came calling.

His supervisor at the university sent him to military school to study radio and electricity, promising Theremin that the war wouldn’t last long. Wanted for his exceptional scientific talents, he never saw the frontline. And when Russia’s war splintered into the Russian Revolution, Theremin sided with the Bolsheviks and eventually moved to a laboratory where he studied the properties of gasses.

It was while designing an electronic device to measure the density of gas that Theremin discovered the phenomenon with his hand and the antenna. The etherphone – that is to say, the theremin – was born.
A year later, he was demonstrating his invention to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin – eventually a player in his own right. Lenin loved it so much that he sent Theremin – by then a Russian spy – touring across Russia and Western Europe, winning over new players as he went. Later, in 1930, he arranged for 10 theremin players to perform on stage for a fascinated audience at the Carnegie Hall in New York, where he also conducted an electronic orchestra featuring the theremin, rhythmicon and theremin cello.
Theremin patented his design in 1928 and by 1929, with RCA handling the production, sales began to take off. The theremin was touted as the future of music, something anybody could try, just by waving their hands. It should’ve become synonymous with the 1930s, much like the electric guitar became synonymous with the 60s.

But then the recession hit. Production plummeted. And it wasn't until a teenaged Robert Moog picked up the design in the 1950s that the theremin went on sale again. Only this time it had the synthesizer and, later, the mellotron to compete with. Alas, serious musicians had moved on and it never quite reached widespread popularity. And as it turned out, large proportions of the money Theremin did make ended up in the hands of the Soviet Union.

In the States, Theremin had been seemingly free of Russian influence, mixing with American society’s top scientists, composers and musicians, including a classically trained violinist by the name of Albert Einstein. In the mid-1930s, he married the black ballerina and dance teacher Lavinia Williams – a highly controversial move in a still-segregated America – who found success as a lead dancer for the American Negro Ballet. He also tutored Clara Rockmore, a Lithuanian classical musician who became a virtuoso theremin player and one of the instrument’s biggest advocates.

Theremin returned to Russia in 1938, with rumours surrounding his homecoming. Kidnapped by the state. Fed up with America. Simply homesick. As it turned out, he was in financial difficulty back in the US, so returned home without his wife and without much to his name. But others insisted he'd left due to anxiety about the oncoming war, fearing the US would uncover his activities as a Soviet spy.

There was no fanfare to his return to Russia; a stint in Moscow’s Butyrka prison followed by work in the Kolyma gold mines in Siberia. Many believed he'd been executed, or at least that's what was published by the media. In reality he was working alongside other top Soviet scientists in a secret laboratory related to the Gulag camps.

In 1956, following the death of Stalin, Theremin was “rehabilitated” – a term used by the Soviet Union to refer to the acquittal of people who had been wrongly repressed, imprisoned or prosecuted by Stalin’s government.
Theremin’s career really took a strange turn when he ended up working on espionage technology for the KGB. Perhaps his greatest success, at least from the Russians’ point of view, was his invention of the world’s first covert listening device, eventually known – rather ominously – as The Thing.

Hidden inside a huge replica of the Great Seal of the United States, Theremin’s tiny microphone invention enabled the Soviet Union to spy on US Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, after they gifted him the replica to hang on his wall. The two holes in the eagle’s beak allowed sound into the hidden receiver, capturing secret conversations over the course of seven years. The clever part was that Theremin’s device didn’t have any live electronics. With no power supply or active components, the device – a passive cavity resonator – only worked when a nearby transmitter beamed a high-frequency radio signal to the antenna inside, helping the device avoid detection by the Americans and making it a near-perfect invention that changed the future of espionage.
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 112, Pages 32-36.
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