Theremin: ETHER MUSIC AND ESPIONAGE (Music in American Life)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 480 pages
• Published by: University of Illinois Press February 2, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0252072758
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0252072758
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Weighs: 1.6 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
For this biography, Glinsky admirably resurrects the name of Leon Theremin, the Soviet inventor of an electronic musical instrument played by moving one's hands in the space between two antennae, but his use of Theremin's life as a metaphor for the Cold War leads him astray. An Engineering prodigy, Theremin (1896-1993) invented his instrument early in the 20th century. The synthesizer's forerunner, the theremin was most often used in soundtracks for Science Fiction films; an advanced version was also used in the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." According to Glinsky, Theremin was also a ladies' manAmarried several times, he was rumored to be looking for female companionship when he was in his 90s. The inventor lived in the U.S. during the 1930s, where for a short time he was the toast of the town, but he quickly fell into debt. After he returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, he was arrested and spent time in a labor camp before he was freedAonly to be forced to remain in service to the state. Glinsky, a composer and professor at Mercy Hurst College in Pennsylvania, is unable to resist the temptation to use Theremin as a metaphor for the political clash between communism and capitalism. Not only does this allegory lack nuanceAGlinsky himself notes that U.S. leftists were persecuted, albeit on a much lesser scale, during the McCarthy eraAbut the political focus clouds the author's portrait of Theremin's personality and prevents him from using his talents to evaluate Theremin's musical legacy. photographs not seen by PW. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
Lev Sergeyevich Termen (1896-1993) grew up in St. Petersburg, the son of a lawyer and a mother who dabbled in the arts. Naturally inclined toward music and physics, Lev understood electromagnetic fields and applied these principles to design a "space controlled" instrument employing recently developed vacuum tube oscillators and amplifiers. Dubbing the device with his French ancestral name, Theremin, he toured Europe and America, training several to play it. Returning, perhaps abducted, to Russia as Stalin rose to power, he was imprisoned in Siberia for months, then put in a special unit to develop listening devices to spy on the U.S. Embassy. Glinsky tells the tale of Termen's two lives with spirit and empathy, describing the horrors of the Soviet state and Termen's tenacity in continuing to create electronic instruments. Meanwhile, the original theremin inspired Robert Moog to develop his influential electronic synthesizers in the 1960s. Glinsky delves into the physics of Termen's creations, but principally this is the inspiring story of an inventive genius who launched a revolution in music making. Alan Hirsch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Theremin: ETHER MUSIC AND ESPIONAGE (Music in American Life) (Hardcover) You have heard the music of the theremin, but you may not have known it at the time. It is an exceedingly pure tone, electronically generated, which has been used in various ways since the instrument was invented. It was used with distinction in the Hitchcock psychoanalysis thriller _Spellbound_ and in Billy Wilder's _Lost Weekend_, but it is best known for being used for an eerie, futuristic sound in science fiction movies like _The Day the Earth Stood Still_. It was in the background of _The Ten Commandments_ and also was that warbling tone in the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." The theremin was not invented in Hollywood, however; it was invented in Russia in 1920, and had its real heyday in the succeeding decade. The inventor, Leon Theremin, had a life that was too bizarre for a novelist to make up, and finally in _Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage_ (University of Illinois Press) by Albert Glinsky, Theremin has a big, comprehensive biography that does him justice. And he deserves it, for Leon Theremin was the father of electronic music. The book describes his cozy life in tsarist Russia, his introduction of electronic music to Lenin himself, his being sent out on propaganda tours with his instrument, his decade of performing and inventing in the US, his return to Russia not to acclaim but to imprisonment and disappearance in the Gulag, his gadgetry for Soviet espionage, and his return to acclaim as the grand old man of electronic music. Readable and full of color, _Theremin_ not only brings into focus the astonishing events in the life of its subject, presenting him as an inventive genius, persecuted innovator, and citizen of the world. Its fascinating story is a capsule history of a complicated century. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)