Futile Horn

09.09.2003 - 12:06 am (the mad scientist)

Today I watched a documentary on Leon Theremin, who seems to be the father of electronic music. He was a Russian émigré who built an electronic instrument in the 1919 (I had to look it up; the documentary was heinously bad about things like dates, names, and places) that required no physical contact to play. The early models (for there seem to have developed ones with somewhat different shapes) appear something like a wooden cash register with a large antenna on the right and a metal loop on the left. The electronics inside box create a magnetic field (I think; the documentary wasn’t very interested in technology either) which, when entered by some sort of electric conductor, such metal or a part of the human body, creates a pitch. Moving the hand closer or farther away from the antenna changes the pitch, whereas bringing the hand closer to or farther away from the metal loop changes the volume.

The instrument sounds sort of what you’d expect a space violin to sound like (due mostly to all the vibrato the players tend to use), and seems to have the distinction of being in every black and white scary movie, and was in used in the Star Trek theme (the documentary didn’t mention Star Trek). The Beach Boys also used it in the song “Good Vibrations”. Brian Wilson (who you’d have to recognize, because he name was never mentioned) talks at length about the decision to include it. He rants about God’s children (a.k.a. children), adult instruments (a.k.a. the cello), how he was afraid of the theremin at the age of eight and… and it was completely impossible to know what his point might have been. I laughed and laughed. I have a twisted sense of humor and laugh at things you aren’t supposed to laugh at, but you would have laughed too. I hope anyway.

The interesting twist in Theremin’s life is that he was kidnapped by the KGB and brought to the Soviet Union where he was imprisoned and then used to make listening devices for Stalin. He returned to the United States eventually (I sort of missed when but I guess after the fall of the Communists), and they showed this 90 year old man walking around Manhattan. For a moment I actually thought to myself, Wow, I wonder what it would have been like to be in Manhattan in the early 90s (FYI, I went to high school in Manhattan in the early 90s)

The old man was completely unintelligible but at the opening of the film you hear voice saying some whackjob thing that I totally loved. Something about how he remembers being in the womb where there was no life, and then being brought toward the light, and how the light completely ruined his voice. Fade in: the theremin.

Or he could have been talking about Corn Pops. Dude, the dude was Russian and 95.

The next best part of the movie was the woman who was the virtuoso theremin player back in the 20s. They showed modern footage of her playing, and she was still dressed like a flapper. Then they showed the two of them being reunited, which was hilarious because she was bubbling over telling him about the theremin she never sold. And you’re busying thinking about how this crazy broad has been trapped in time for fifty years, and the old man is busy thinking about where he might be and how he got there.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn