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In any case, Theremin did not return to the United States until 1991. In his 2000 biography of the inventor, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, Albert Glinsky suggested he had fled to escape crushing personal debts, and was then caught up in Stalin's political purges. Many accounts claim he was taken from his New York City apartment by NKVD agents (preceding the KGB), taken back to the Soviet Union and made to work in a sharashka laboratory prison camp at Magadan, Siberia. In 1938, Theremin left the United States, though the circumstances related to his departure are in dispute. Clara Rockmore, a well-known thereminist, toured to wide acclaim, performing a classical repertoire in concert halls around the United States, often sharing the bill with Paul Robeson.ĭuring the 1930s, Lucie Bigelow Rosen was also taken with the theremin and together with her husband Walter Bigelow Rosen provided both financial and artistic support to the development and popularisation of the instrument.

Subsequently, Theremin granted commercial production rights to RCA.Īlthough the RCA Thereminvox (released immediately following the Stock Market Crash of 1929) was not a commercial success, it fascinated audiences in America and abroad. After a lengthy tour of Europe, during which time he demonstrated his invention to packed houses, Theremin moved to the United States, where he patented his invention in 1928. The instrument was invented in October 1919 by the Russian physicist Lev Sergeyevich Termen, known in the West as Leon Theremin. The theremin was the product of Soviet government-sponsored research into proximity sensors. The theremin is also used in concert music (especially avant-garde and 20th- and 21st-century new music) and in popular music genres such as rock.Īlexandra Stepanoff playing the theremin on NBC Radio, 1930 History

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The theremin has been used in movie soundtracks such as Miklós Rózsa's Spellbound and The Lost Weekend, Bernard Herrmann's The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Justin Hurwitz's First Man as well as in theme songs for television shows such as the ITV drama Midsomer Murders and the Disney+ series Loki, the latter composed by Natalie Holt. The sound of the instrument is often associated with eerie situations. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. These antennas capacitively sense the relative position of the hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude ( volume) with the other.

Each antennae forms one half of a capacitor with each of the thereminist's hands as the other half of the capacitor. The instrument's controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas which function not as radio antennas but rather as position sensors. It is named after its inventor, Leon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928. The theremin ( / ˈ θ ɛr əm ɪ n/ originally known as the ætherphone/ etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/ thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). Problems playing this file? See media help.