{"id":308,"date":"2013-08-10T15:17:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T12:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studio.theremintimes.ru\/keyboard-1992\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T06:22:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T03:22:27","slug":"keyboard-1992","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theremin.today\/?p=308&lang=en","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW WITH LEON THEREMIN ( Keyboard Magazine)"},"content":{"rendered":"

PULLING MUSIC OUT OF THIN AIR: AN INTERVIEW WITH LEON THEREMIN<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This article first appeared in the February 1992 issue of\u00a0Keyboard Magazine.<\/span><\/p>\n

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PULLING MUSIC OUT OF THIN AIR: AN INTERVIEW WITH LEON THEREMIN<\/span><\/p>\n

This article first appeared in the February 1992 issue of\u00a0Keyboard Magazine.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Leon Theremin, the 95-year-old Russian titan of electroacoustic music technology, spent three weeks in the United States early last fall.\u00a0\u00a0The visit was an extraordinary event; Theremin has long been the subject of myths and musical lore, yet he has been a virtual prisoner in the Soviet Union untilglasnost and perestroika made possible his travel abroad.\u00a0\u00a0Theremin had lived in New York from 1927 to 1938, at which time soviet authorities summoned him back to Russia.\u00a0\u00a0He was then immediately arrested and imprisoned, for reasons that even today are not clear.\u00a0\u00a0There were rumors that he was shot as a German\u00a0spy during World War II, and his name disappeared from the Soviet musical press for decades.\u00a0\u00a0Leon Theremin\u2019s very existence was top secret because, as he admitted at a press conference at Stanford University, he was on the development team that devised the Soviet surveillance device \u2013 the bug. \u201dWe tested it out on an American building,» he said, «but all we heard was everyday chatter — no government secrets.»<\/span><\/p>\n

Theremin returned to the United States on September 23, 1991, for the first time in 53 years. He came, with daughter Natasha and granddaughter Olga, at the invitation of John Chowning and Steve Martin. Chowning is director of Stanford\u2019s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), and Steve Martin is not the actor, but a filmmaker who is making a full-length documentary on Theremin with the working title Good Vibrations. A historic outdoor concert at Stanford’s Frost Amphitheater on September 27, which was planned around Theremin\u2019s visit, inaugurated Stanford\u2019s Centennial Celebration. Chowning began the tribute by talking briefly about electroacoustic music and introducing some well-known instrument designers who were in the audience of 1,500: Don Buchla, Roger Linn, Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim, and Dave Smith. When Chowning introduced Theremin to the audience and the Dean of Humanities and Sciences presented him with the Stanford Centennial Medal, the audience responded with a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the other six pieces on the program were composed in 1991, the highlight of this concert was the performance of a 1917 work: Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, played by Natasha Theremin on her father\u2019s instrument, and accompanied by Max Mathews playing the new Radio Drum, a computer-age controller that Mathews designed and built. Picture this: Natasha Theremin is playing a flowing melodic line by moving her hands gracefully around an instrument that has vacuum tubes at its heart. To one side of her Max Mathews is conducting the sampled sounds of a string ensemble with gestures that a timpanist might use when playing softly. To the other side of her, Lev Sergeyevich Termen (Leon Theremin\u2019s correct Russian name) — a man who was born 95 years ago, received his musical and technical education in Czarist Russia, and built his first analog electronic musical instruments just after the Bolsheviks came to power — is listening approvingly.\u00a0\u00a0The stage bristles with monitor screens, synthesizer modules, MIDI cables, and Don Buchla’s Thunder and Lightning controllers, while Meyer speaker arrays flank the stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the audience, the thread of continuity and tradition linking Theremins early instruments with the world of synthesizers and MIDI is clear and strong. If you looked hard, you could almost see the spirits of Maurice Martenot, Friedrich Trautwein (inventor of the Trautonium), and Laurens Hammond joining the audience in frenzied applause.<\/span><\/p>\n