“Ninety years ago this month a young Russian scientist and inventor, Leon Theremin, was summoned to the Kremlin to meet Lenin,” writes Martin Vennard in BBC News Magazine this week (3/12). “Theremin had come to the Bolshevik leader’s attention after inventing a revolutionary electronic musical instrument that was played without being touched…. Lenin was so impressed he sent Theremin across Russia to show off his instrument and promote the electrification of the country…. He was then sent to Europe and the US to showcase Soviet technology…. His instrument also attracted the attention of the Radio Corporation of America, RCA, who offered him what was then the huge sum of $100,000 to manufacture it…. ‘Theremin saw little of the $100,000 he was paid,’ says Albert Glinsky, author of Theremin biography Ether Music and Espionage…. In the US, the Theremin had been revived by Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Its eerie sound was used in films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound and sci-fi classics, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still. A young Robert Moog, who went on to become a synthesizer pioneer, began making and selling Theremins. He later wrote that it was a ‘vital cornerstone of our contemporary music technology.’ ”
Posted March 16, 2012
