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Theremin:
A Public Radio Commentary
by Bill Hammack
Listen using RealAudio
My father was the best gift giver in the world because he dealt
in surprises.
One Christmas many years ago, after my siblings and I had
finished opening our gifts my father looked at us and said "I
have one last gift."
He handed us each a tiny keyboard, a miniature synthesizer. What
fun for the whole day - the house filled with sounds of pianos,
banjos, and marimbas! {keyboard sounds in background} This gift,
this keyboard, is also the greatest gift from engineers to the
arts.
You're probably familiar with Robert Moog's synthesizer, the
father of the keyboard I'm holding in my hand. But, how did Moog
get the idea for electronic music? It began in the 1920s with
Professor Leon Theremin, an engineering-physicist, working in a
Leningrad research lab.
He was playing around with the latest technology: radio. This
revolutionary medium fascinated Theremin because it showed
electricity could be changed to sound. He noticed that when he
brought two parts of the radio close together they made a sound.
A bit like putting a microphone too near a speaker and creating
the squeal of feedback. Theremin had the idea - to quote him -
"to give [these sounds] a musical soul." He built an instrument
where instead of physically bringing two parts together to make
sound the performer's body would create the squeal - now a
musical sound. He would just wave his hands in front of the
instrument plucking music from the air.
You've probably heard the Theremin, as the instrument became
known, in the 1950s Sci-Fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.
{Play: Prelude/Outer Space/Radar} But well before that Theremin
toured with his new instrument creating a sensation in Europe and
America. {Play Background: Rockmore, Rachmaninoff: Vocalise} Its
odd nature - electronic sound and being played without touching
anything - captured headlines. The New York Times called it
"Ether Music." The Chicago Tribune said that Theremin
"Mysteriously Reproduces Music." Einstein called it "as
significant as ... when primitive man ... produced sound from a
bowstring." The instrument made quite a splash until 1938 when
Theremin disappeared abruptly. {stop music} Kidnapped by Soviet
agents, he was sent to a labor camp until he agreed to work for
the KGB.
But Leon Theremin had planted a seed. In the late 1950s a 14 year
old boy built a Theremin from plans he found in a magazine. By
age 20 he began making them commercially, selling enough to pay
for his engineering education. The student, Robert Moog, used
what he'd learned about electronic music from the Theremin and
built in 1964 the world's first synthesizer. With Moog's
synthesizer, the child of Leon Theremin's wonderful instrument,
electronic music became world famous with one of the best selling
classic albums of all time: Switched on Bach. {end with Switched
on Bach.}
Copyright 2000 William S. Hammack Enterprises
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