Product Description

Leon Theremin led a life of flamboyant musical invention laced with daring electronic stealth. A creative genius and prolific inventor, Theremin launched the field of electronic music virtually singlehandedly in 1920 with the musical instrument that bears his name. The theremin - the only instrument that is played without being touched - created a sensation worldwide and paved the way for the modern synthesizer. Its otherworldly sound became familiar in sci-fi films and even in rock music. This magical instrument that charmed millions, however, is only the beginning of the story. As a Soviet scientist, Theremin surrendered his life and work to the service of State espionage. On assignment in Depression-era America, he became the toast of New York society and worked the engines of capitalist commerce while passing data on U.S. industrial technology to the Soviet apparat.Following his sudden disappearance from New York in 1938, Theremin was exiled to a Siberian labor camp and subsequently vanished into the top-secret Soviet intelligence machine, presumed dead for nearly thirty years. Using the same technology that lay behind the theremin, he designed bugging devices that eavesdropped on U.S. diplomatic offices and stood at the center of a pivotal cold war confrontation. Throughout his life, Theremin developed many other electronic wonders, including one of the earliest televisions and multimedia devices that anticipated performance art and virtual reality by decades.In this first full biography of Leon Theremin, Albert Glinsky depicts the inventor's nearly one hundred-year life span as a microcosm of the twentieth century. Theremin is seen at the epicenter of most of the major events of the century: the Russian Revolution, two world wars, America's Great Depression, Stalin's purges, the cold war, and perestroika. His life emerges as no less than a metaphor for the divergence of communism and capitalism. Theremin blends 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 amazing drama of hidden loyalties, mixed motivations, and an irrepressibly creative spirit.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #843988 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

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. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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

Review
"Glinsky has traced the fascinating story of Lev Sergeivitich Termen, Russian scientist, radio engineer and inventor of the first electronic musical instrument. The haunting wail of the 'theremin' is perhaps best known from the Beach Boys' 1966 hit 'Good Vibrations', but Glinsky demonstrates that its inventor deserves to be more than a footnote in the history of modern music... A fascinating rediscovery of a forgotten man, and a valuable contribution to the history of the future." -- Times Literary Supplement "Glinsky unfolds an impossibly rich narrative with clarity, breadth, and a contagious sense of excitement... A barely imaginable life, lived, to the last, by a true enigma." -- David Toop, Bookforum "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... The inspiring story of an inventive genius who launched a revolution in music making." -- Booklist "[The] first full biography on Theremin. The fascinating crosscurrents in his life -- and in that of the theremin -- are engagingly told in rich detail. Glinsky's greatest accomplishment, besides his lucid descriptions of the technical aspects of the theremin, is his ability to paint a contextual scene both vividly and compellingly... Highly recommended." -- Library Journal "Accurate, factual, imaginative, and current; its organization is logical and coherent... Highly recommended." -- Choice "Glinsky has told this tale extremely well -- the tale of a hollow man... It's the fascinating account of a life thwarted and generations of people subjected to incalculable suffering. Someone might say it was the saddest story he had ever heard." -- The Bloomsbury Review "[Glinsky] unveils the elusive Termen while detailing the evolution of electronic instruments... Captures the impossibly convoluted, constrained and threatened lives of Soviet scientists." -- Washington Post Book World "Well-researched and well-written biography." -- Hans-Joachim Braun, Technology and Culture "What makes Glinsky's Thermin a first-rate biography is his elevating our knowledge of a previously hidden unique figure." -- The Weekly Standard "Through indefatigable research, Glinsky has ... managed to provide a nuanced, comprehensive portrait... His biography is a triumph. The tale is so bizarrely dramatic that the book is nearly impossible to put down." -- Wilson Quarterly "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. Theremin's life story tells the tale of tsarist Russia, the Revolution, Stalinism, the Cold War, perestroika, and the end of communism... A grand biography of a fascinating man as well as a capsule history of a complicated century." -- Rob Hardy, The Times of Acadiana

Customer Reviews

Definitive biography of the "Soviet Edison" Leon Theremin
Author Albert Glinsky has molded his meticulous research 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 entertaining but inaccurate movie biography ("Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey") is thoroughly 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 also invented 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 perfect antigravity bridges and a device to resurrect the dead. Glinsky's book is much more than the biography of a fascinating man, but also offers a cutting edge view of the horrors of Soviet life under Stalin. Theremin was imprisoned under Stalin's draconian, paranoid system for having unpatriotic thoughts, tortured to confession, and sent to Siberia in forced labor to mine gold. He survived miraculously where most prisoners perished, and was given more forced labor as a technician inventing the notorious technologies of Soviet warfare and espionage.

Glinsky uncovers all the facts left uncovered in the movie, in the process 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 anyone so faithfully 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.

Fabulous, gripping narrative!
_Theremin_ is a beautifully written, engrossing, completely fascinating portrait of an iconic 20th century life. I can't praise too highly Glinsky's magisterial project. He is as fully adept at explaining the electronics and aesthetics of his subject's amazing 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 popular culture. Neither a work of hagiography nor denunciation, Glinsky's portrait of Theremin is a subtle, nuanced, and very sensitive look at the moral ambiguities of an inventor of genius. Buy this book!!

If you liked the Martin film, you MUST read the book
After seeing "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey" for the second time last year I was motivated to seek a more thorough biography of this fascinating 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 nearly 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 research Glinsky put in is astounding. You get the feeling that there exists no document of this life that he didn't catalog. Yet he writes beautifully and does a wonderful job of bringing the subject to brilliant life. There are so many details I'd love to mention but I wouldn't want to spoil a thing. Anyone who was intrigued by the documentary (which barely scratches the surface) should 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.