Theremin Ether Music Espionage American
Albert Glinsky’s “Theremin” mixes the whimsical and the treacherous into a chronicle that takes in everything from the KGB to Macy’s store windows, Alcatraz to the Beach Boys, Hollywood thrillers to the United Nations, Joseph Stalin to Shirley Temple. “Theremin”‘s world of espionage and invention is an awful drama of concealed loyalties, mixed motivations, and an irrepressibly originative spirit. Albert Glinsky is an award-winning composer whose music has been performed allround the U.S., Europe, and the Far East.He holds degrees from The Juilliard School and a Ph.D. from New York University, and his work has been esteemed by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music at Mercyhurst College in Pennsylvania. Robert Moog developed the original classic Moog electronic music synthesizer and has been designing and building theremins since 1954. Currently, he is the president of Moog Music Inc., the world’s leading manufacturer of theremins. This is a volume in the series “Music in American Life”.
From Publishers WeeklyFor 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 amid 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) formulated his instrument early in the 20th century. The synthesizer’s forerunner, the theremin was most ofttimes applied in soundtracks for science fiction films; an innovative version was also employed in the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” According to Glinsky, Theremin was likewise a ladies’ manAmarried assorted times, he was rumored to be looking for female companionship when he was in his 90s. The inventor lived in the U.S. for the duration of 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 expended time in a labor camp before he was freedAonly to be forced to stay in service to the state. Glinsky, a composer and professor at Mercy Hurst College in Pennsylvania, is unable to protest the temptation to use Theremin as a metaphor for the political clash amid communism and capitalism. Not only does this allegory lack nuanceAGlinsky himself notes that U.S. leftists were persecuted, even though on a much lesser scale, for the duration of the McCarthy eraAbut the political focus clouds the author’s portrait of Theremin’s personality and prevents him from using his endowments to evaluate Theremin’s musical legacy. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From BooklistLev 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 used these principles to design a “space controlled” instrument employing lately produced vacuum tube oscillators and amplifiers. Dubbing the device with his French ancestral name, Theremin, he toured Europe and America, training various to play it. Returning, perchance abducted, to Russia as Stalin rose to power, he was imprisoned in Siberia for months, then put in a particular unit to manufacture listening gimmicks 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 persistent determination in continuing to give rise to electronic instruments. Meanwhile, the initial theremin inspired Robert Moog to construct 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 talent who launched a revolution in music making. Alan Hirsch
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Review”Glinsky has traced the arousing and attention holding story of Lev Termen, Russian scientist, radio engineer and inventor of the introductory electronic musical instrument. The haunting wail of the ‘theremin’ is perchance best known from the Beach Boys’ 1966 hit ‘Good Vibrations’, but Glinsky demonstrates that it is inventor deserves to be more than a footnote in the history of progressed music… A arousing and attention holding rediscovery of a forgotten man, and a worthful contribution to the history of the future.” Times Literary Supplement “Albert Glinsky’s magnificent and authorized biography of Leon Theremin is the basi finish recounting of an aweinspiring life that spanned–and changed–the twentieth century.” Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist “Glinsky unfolds an impossibly rich narrative with clarity, breadth, and a contagious sense of excitement… A hardly imaginable life, lived, to the last, by a true enigma.” Bookforum “With Theremin, Albert Glinsky has invented an awful new adventure story biography. As a guide book through the twentieth century, Theremin is an unbelievable story of invention, music, history, science, and espionage–a celebration of pure creativity.” David Harrington, Kronos Quartet
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Most helpful client reviews
11 of 11 humans found the following review helpful.
 Definitive biography of the “Soviet Edison” Leon Theremin
By Scott Marshall
Author Albert Glinsky has molded his meticulous exploration into a spectacularly detailed, involving, and readable biography of one of the most mysterious figures of the jazz age. But, the book is also a glimpse in rare detail of the dark nightmare of Communist Russia. The supernatural inventor of Steven Martin’s agreeably diverting but inaccurate movie biography (“Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey”) is exhaustively demystified here.
Theremin is best know for his musical instrument that bears his name and makes spooky sounds in scary movies of the 50s, but he likewise produced television in the 20s, color television in the 30s, and the notorious a technically dazzling “great seal bug” the Russians used for years to eavesdrop on the American Embassy. He’d even hoped to perfective antigravity bridges and a device to resurrect the dead. Glinsky’s book is much more than the biography of a arousing and attention holding man, but also offers a cutting edge view of the horrors of Soviet life under Stalin. Theremin was imprisoned underneath Stalin’s draconian, paranoid system for having unpatriotic thoughts, tortured to confession, and sent to Siberia in forced labor to mine gold. He pulled through miraculously where most prisoners perished, and was given more forced labor as a technician inventing the illfamed technologies of Soviet warfare and espionage.
Glinsky uncovers all the facts left uncovered in the movie, in the routine overturning the most inaccurate assertion of the film. Soviet agents did NOT kidnap Theremin at gunpoint. He was running from creditors and the IRS, and left the U.S. on his own initiative. His fate upon returning to Russia is one of the strangest to have befallen any person so in a faithful manner patriotic to his homeland.
For fans of electronic music and scholars of the history of Communist Russia, this book, in my opinion, is a must-read.
7 of 8 humans found the following review helpful.
 Fabulous, gripping narrative!
By Martin McBride
_Theremin_ is a beautifully written, engrossing, exclusively arousing and attention holding portrait of an iconic 20th century life. I can’t praise too highly Glinsky’s magisterial project. He is as completely adept at explaining the electronics and aesthetics of his subject’s astounding inventions, as he is at following the tangled trail of Theremin’s involvements with Soviet espionage. And he also has a real feel for the campy weirdness of the theremin’s reception in American ordinary culture. Neither a work of hagiography nor denunciation, Glinsky’s portrait of Theremin is a subtle, nuanced, and very sensible look at the moral ambiguities of an inventor of genius. Buy this book!!
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
If you liked the Martin film, you MUST read the book
By Solene_player
After seeing “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey” for the second time last year I was motivated to seek a more indepth biography of this arousing and attention holding life. Luckily Glinsky’s book was hot off the press. This book is amazing.
Theremin’s life is so interesting, and the narrative is so engrossing, that it reads like a thriller. Only one that covers a closely hundred year life. The setting covers revolutionary Russia, roaring twenties NY, depression era NY, Stalinist Russia, the Gulag, the cold war, the sixties, and on and on.
The exploration Glinsky put in is astounding. You get the sentiment that there exists no document of this life that he didn’t catalog. Yet he writes beautifully and does a terrifi occupation of bringing the subject to brilliant life. There are so a lot of details I’d love to mention but I wouldn’t want to spoil a thing. Anyone who was intrigued by the documentary (which scarcely scratches the surface) ought to buy this book and read it. For me, the book has awakened an entire fascination with twentieth century Russia and I’m already reading other non-fiction on the topic.
Mr. Glinsky is to be congratulated on a stunning piece of work.
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