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WIKEPEDIA
LEON THEREMIN Edited from http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Léon_Theremin —
FRAGMENTO/ PIECE #17
Léon Theremin
Known for Theremin
Occupation Inventor
Moscow, Russia
Died 3 November 1993 (aged 97)
Petersburg, Russian Empire
Born 27 August 1896 Saint
c. 1924
A young Léon Theremin playing a theremin,
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After 51 years in the Soviet Union Theremin started travelling, first visiting France in June 1989[2] and then the United States in 1991, each time accompanied by his daughter Natalia. Theremin was brought to New York by filmmaker Steven M. Martin where he was reunited with Clara Rockmore. He also made a demonstration concert at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in early 1993[2] before dying in Moscow in 1993 at the age of 97.
In the 1970s, Léon Theremin began training his nine-year-old grand-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 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 (another invention of Theremin). There he was discovered by Harold Schonberg, the chief music critic of The New York Times, who was visiting the Conservatory. But when an article by his hand appeared, the Conservatory’s Managing Director declared that “electricity is not good for music; electricity is to be used for electrocution” and had his instruments removed from the Conservatory. Further electronic music projects were banned, and Theremin was summarily dismissed.
After his “release” from the sharashka in 1947, Theremin volunteered to remain working with the KGB until 1966. By 1947 Theremin had remarried, to Maria Guschina, his third wife, and they had two children: Lena and Natalia.
Later Life
Theremin invented another listening device called The Thing. Disguised in a replica of the Great Seal of the United States carved in wood, in 1945 Soviet school children presented the concealed bug to U.S. Ambassador as a “gesture of friendship” to the USSR’s World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador’s residential office in Moscow, and intercepted confidential conversations there during the first seven years of the Cold War, until it was accidentally discovered in 1952.
During his work at the sharashka, where he was put in charge of other workers, Theremin created the Buran eavesdropping system. A precursor to the modern laser microphone, it worked by using a low power infrared beam from a distance to detect the sound vibrations in the glass windows. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the secret police organization NKVD (the predecessor of the KGB), used the Buran device to spy on the U.S., British, and French embassies in Moscow. According to Galeyev, Beria also spied on Stalin; Theremin kept some of the tapes in his flat. In 1947, Theremin was awarded the Stalin prize for inventing this advance in Soviet espionage technology.
Espionage
Many years later, it was revealed that Theremin had returned to his native land due to tax and financial difficulties in the United States. However, Theremin himself told Bulat Galeyev that he decided to leave himself because he was anxious about the approaching war. Shortly after he returned he was imprisoned in the Butyrka prison and later sent to work in the Kolyma gold mines. Although rumors of his execution were widely circulated and published, Theremin was, in fact, put to work in a sharashka (a secret laboratory in the Gulag camp system), together with Andrei Tupolev, Sergei Korolev, and other well-known scientists and engineers. The Soviet Union rehabilitated him in 1956.
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.
Return to the Soviet Union
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. His marriage to the African-American dancer caused shock and disapproval in his social circles, but the ostracized couple remained together.
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.
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 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.
After being sent on a lengthy tour of Europe starting 1927 — including London, Paris and towns in Germany — 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. He performed the theremin with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He patented his invention in the United States in 1928 and subsequently granted commercial production rights to RCA.
United States
Léon Theremin (born Lev Sergeyevich Termen, Russian: (27 August 1896, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire — 3 November 1993, Moscow, Russia) was a Russian and Soviet inventor. He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments. He is also the inventor of interlace, a technique of improving the picture quality of a video signal, widely used in video and television technology. His invention of “The Thing”, an espionage tool, is considered a predecessor of RFID technology.
Léon Theremin
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