Theremin

Overview

The theremin is an electronic instrument that the player operates without touching it. Wikidata files it as an electronic music instrument and a continuous-pitch instrument, and DBpedia gives the Hornbostel-Sachs reading 531.1, the small subcategory for electronic instruments controlled by capacitance fields. It was invented in 1920 by the Russian engineer Lev Sergeyevich Termen — who became internationally known under the French spelling Léon Thérémin — and is the world’s first widely-distributed electronic musical instrument.

The instrument is a wooden cabinet about the size of a small suitcase, with a vertical pitch antenna at the right end and a horizontal volume antenna at the left end. The player stands in front of the cabinet, moving the right hand toward and away from the pitch antenna to select pitch, and the left hand above the volume antenna to control loudness.

Origin & History

Léon Thérémin developed the instrument at the Physical-Technical Institute in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) in 1920, while working under the Soviet government on proximity-sensor research for security applications. He noticed that his prototype proximity sensors produced audible heterodyne tones that varied with the position of his hand, and he engineered the discovery into a deliberate musical instrument.

Vladimir Lenin was reportedly demonstrated the instrument in 1922 and so impressed that he authorised Thérémin to tour the Soviet Union showcasing it. By 1927 Thérémin had reached Western Europe and the United States, demonstrating the instrument at concerts in Berlin, Paris, London, and finally New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He licensed manufacture to RCA in the United States, which produced the RCA Theremin in 1929-1930 — the first commercially-available electronic musical instrument in history.

Thérémin lived in New York through the 1930s, married the African-American dancer Lavinia Williams (a marriage that drew vicious press attention in the segregation-era US), and trained the violinist Clara Rockmore as the instrument’s first concert virtuoso. In 1938 Thérémin returned (or, in some accounts, was forcibly returned) to the Soviet Union, where he was imprisoned in the Gulag for several years and then assigned to develop covert listening devices — most famously the “Thing”, a passive resonant cavity used to bug the US ambassador’s residence in Moscow from 1945 to 1952.

After Thérémin’s death in 1993, the modern theremin world coalesced around two builders: Robert Moog (who had built theremins as a teenager in 1950s New York and later founded the Moog synthesizer company) and Lydia Kavina (Thérémin’s grand-niece and a leading concert thereminist). The Moog Music Etherwave theremin, in production since 1996, is the standard contemporary instrument.

Construction & Materials

The theremin’s circuit uses two radio-frequency oscillators. One oscillates at a fixed frequency (typically around 200 kHz); the other’s frequency varies with the capacitance of the player’s right hand near the pitch antenna. The two oscillators are mixed in a heterodyne circuit, and the audible difference frequency — anywhere from 0 Hz (silence) to about 4 kHz — is the played pitch. A second similar circuit, controlled by the left-hand position near the volume antenna, modulates loudness.

The instrument has no keys, no strings, no fingerholes, no fretting marks, and no fixed reference points. The player’s hand position in three-dimensional space is the entire control system. Modern theremins (Moog Etherwave, Burns B3, Theremin World custom builds) have improved linearity (the relationship between hand distance and pitch is more even than on the original 1920s instruments) but retain the basic two-antenna design.

How It’s Played

The performer stands about 60 to 90 cm away from the cabinet, with the right side of the torso oriented toward the pitch antenna. The right hand is held with the fingers loosely curled; small movements of the wrist, fingers, and arm change the hand-antenna distance and therefore the pitch. The left hand hovers over the horizontal volume antenna; lowering the hand reduces volume, raising it allows the note to sound.

There are no physical reference points for pitch. The player tunes the instrument using only kinaesthetic memory — the same internal sense that allows a violinist to find a note on an unfretted fingerboard, but without the physical anchor of a string under the finger. This is the central technical difficulty of the instrument and the reason it has so few accomplished players despite its mechanical accessibility.

Standard playing range is about three to five octaves, depending on the specific instrument. Vibrato, glissando, and continuous portamento are inherent to the instrument; cleanly articulated notes require careful left-hand volume control to silence the antenna between pitches.

Cultural Significance

The theremin’s sonic identity — eerie, vocal, sliding, otherworldly — made it the standard sci-fi-and-horror film soundtrack instrument of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. Miklós Rózsa’s score for Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945) and Bernard Herrmann’s 1951 Robert Wise film score are the two canonical examples; both used Samuel Hoffman as the soloist. The instrument’s association with science fiction was so strong that it became a parody trope in 1990s cinema (Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood).

In serious concert music the theremin has a small but distinguished repertoire. Clara Rockmore’s recital arrangements of standard violin and cello literature defined the early concert practice. Bohuslav Martinů, Edgard Varèse (originally to be in Ecuatorial, 1934), Joseph Schillinger, and Anis Fuleihan composed concertos and chamber works specifically for the instrument. The contemporary thereminists Lydia Kavina, Pamelia Kurstin, Carolina Eyck, and Dorit Chrysler each lead modern repertoire and performance projects.

In popular music: the theremin solo on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” (1966) is technically an Electro-Theremin (a different instrument with similar sound), but it brought the broader theremin family to mass-audience attention. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page used a theremin for stage effects on Whole Lotta Love; Jean-Michel Jarre, Portishead, and Animal Collective have all used theremins in their studio work.

Notable Examples & Recordings

• Clara Rockmore, The Art of the Theremin (Delos, 1987) — the foundational concert-theremin recording.
• Carolina Eyck, Improvisations for Theremin and Piano — modern reference solo.
• Lydia Kavina, Music from the Ether — modern concert reference.
• Pamelia Kurstin’s 2007 TED Talk performance — the instrument’s most-viewed introduction to a new audience.
• Bernard Herrmann, the 1951 Earth Stood Still science-fiction film score — film-score reference.
• Beach Boys, “Good Vibrations” (1966) — Electro-Theremin reference.

Related Instruments

• Synthesizer — the wider electronic-instrument family Moog also developed.
• Ondes Martenot — the contemporary 1928 French electronic instrument.
• Trautonium — the 1929 German electronic instrument with similar continuous-pitch character.
• Continuum Fingerboard — Lippold Haken’s modern continuous-pitch electronic instrument.
• Sampler — the related but distinct electronic instrument family.
• Vocoder — another mid-20th-century electronic processing instrument.

Where to Hear It

Live: the annual Hands Off! Theremin Festival (Berlin), the Ethermusic Festival (various locations), and the regular concert series at the Moog Sound Lab (Asheville, North Carolina). Major thereminists tour internationally; Carolina Eyck and Pamelia Kurstin both perform regularly across Europe and North America. Recording labels with theremin catalogues include Bridge Records, Delos, ECM (Pamelia Kurstin), and Moog Music’s own releases.

• Wikipedia: Theremin
• Wikidata: Theremin (Q207691)
• DBpedia: Theremin
• Wikimedia Commons: Theremins

Learning Resources

A new Moog Etherwave (the entry-level standard) costs about 700 USD; the Moog Theremini, a digital simplification with auto-tune assistance, costs about 350 USD; high-end custom theremins from builders like Burns or Tvox can run 2,500 USD or more. Pedagogy: Carolina Eyck’s 2006 instructional book The Art of Playing Theremin (the 2006 method book and accompanying online course) is the standard modern text; Lydia Kavina’s masterclass video series fills the historical-Russian-school side. Theremin World (the online community) maintains lesson directories and forums.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the theremin work?
Two radio-frequency oscillators are detuned by the capacitance of the player’s hands near two antennas. The audible difference between their frequencies becomes the played pitch; a second circuit controls volume.

Who invented the theremin?
Lev Sergeyevich Termen (Léon Thérémin) in Petrograd in 1920. The instrument was a by-product of his Soviet government proximity-sensor research.

Is the theremin difficult to play?
The hardest part of any musical instrument is intonation, and the theremin has no physical reference points for pitch — the player relies entirely on kinaesthetic memory. Anyone can produce a sound on the instrument in seconds; producing a recognisable melody in tune typically takes years.

Was the theremin used on “Good Vibrations”?
Not strictly — the Beach Boys used a different instrument called the Electro-Theremin (a slide-controlled keyboard-like device with a similar sonic profile), played by Paul Tanner. The instruments share a sound family.

Is the theremin still being made?
Yes. Moog Music in Asheville, North Carolina, has produced the Etherwave continuously since 1996, with the digital Theremini added in 2014. Several smaller specialist builders also produce custom instruments.