Lev theremin theremin. Soviet scientist and inventor Lev Termen

"Echoes of the future, sounding from the past"

V.P. Borisov,
Candidate of Technical Sciences
Institute of History of Natural Science and Technology
named after S.I. Vavilov RAS, Moscow

Many Muscovites first heard the name of Lev Sergeevich Termen in the summer of 1997 during the celebration of the 850th anniversary of Moscow. Guest sorcerer Jean Michel Jarre, who created a phantasmagoria of music and light near Moscow University, announced that he was performing his works on an electronic musical instrument invented by Theremin. Thanks to the visiting maestro. Maybe now domestic amateurs modern music will be able to recognize “Theremin’s voice” in the soundtrack to the Disney film “Alice in Wonderland,” Led Zeppelin’s disc “Lotta’s Love,” and the Beach Boys’ composition “Good Vibrations.”

An invention made by a Russian engineer ninety years ago is finding new incarnations in the world of modern electronic music. This is exactly what the American journalist meant when he spoke of the Theremin instrument as “an echo of the future, sounding from the past.” "The Father of the Musical Synthesizer" Robert Moog called Theremin a genius. But, apparently, such is the peculiarity of the life of Russian geniuses that there is especially a lot of villainy going on around them.

Lev Sergeevich was born on August 15 (August 27, new style) 1896 in St. Petersburg, in a wealthy noble family. He showed versatile abilities already in childhood. With equal enthusiasm he mastered playing the cello and carried out experiments in physics. After graduating from high school, he was admitted to the St. Petersburg Conservatory in the cello class. However, this was not enough for Theremin; a year later he also entered the faculties of physics and astronomy at St. Petersburg University.

Getting a second higher education prevented World War. He is drafted into the army. The cellist-physicist is studying at the Military Electrical Engineering School. After the October Revolution, Termen was recruited again: as a military radio specialist, he was supposed to join the ranks of the Red Army. The service took place at the Detskoselskaya radio station near Petrograd and at the military radio laboratory in Moscow.

At the beginning of 1920, the civil war came to an end, Termen had the opportunity to change his military clothes to civilian clothes and return to Petrograd.

The place of work of the demobilized radio specialist was the physical and technical department of “daddy” A.F. Ioffe at the Radiological Institute. Soon after Theremin arrived, this department was transformed into an independent institute (the famous Phystech).

The young specialist’s first engineering development was the creation of a capacitive-type security alarm device. The device was simple and effective: an attacker approaching a protected object found himself in the electric field created by the capacitor plate. The change in capacitance caused a deviation in the frequency of the oscillatory circuit, as a result of which a sound generator was triggered on the central console, emitting a signal similar to a whistle.

Meanwhile, the idea developed further. In the same 1920, Theremin made his first electronic musical instrument, which he called an etherophone. The main part The instrument consisted of two high-frequency oscillatory circuits tuned to a common frequency. The capacitor plate of one of the circuits had an external output in the form of an antenna. The movement of the hand near the antenna created a heterodyne effect, which was converted into sound by the amplifier. The pitch of the sound changed as the hand approached or moved away from the antenna. In an unprecedented way - as if out of thin air ("ether") - a melody arose. The musician did not need strings or keys: Theremin’s hand floated in space. By moving his other hand, Theremin increased or decreased the volume of the sound.

In February 1921, he demonstrated his instrument at a meeting of the Petrograd branch Russian society radio engineers. In October of the same year, he spoke before the participants of the VIII All-Russian Electrotechnical Congress. The Institute of Physics and Technology patented the Theremin musical instrument in Germany, Great Britain, France, and the USA (the first application was dated June 23, 1921). In 1922, Theremin presented his instrument, along with security alarm devices, to the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, V.I. Lenin. After receiving a special mandate to travel throughout the country, the inventor gave about 180 lectures and concerts in different cities Russia.

Beginning in 1922, Theremin also conducted research in the field of television. During this period, he completed his technical education by attending lectures at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. As thesis In 1926, he presented a prototype of a working television installation using a 64-line mechanical scanning system. The television image was reproduced on a screen with sides of about 0.5x0.5 m.

The Red Army command was the first to show interest in Theremin’s TV. By order of the military department, an improved optical-mechanical “far-sighting” installation was manufactured. A receiving television camera was installed above the entrance to the Red Army Administration on Arbat Square. People's Commissar K.E. Voroshilov demonstrated to the Red commanders in the reception area next to his office the amazing ability to see people approaching the building without looking out the window.

Although the work on the television system is only an episode in Theremin’s biography, the installation he created became a milestone in the history of the development of domestic television.

And yet, in the mid-twenties, the “theremin” (theremin’s voice), as the musical instrument began to be called, received greater public resonance. A country undergoing electrification and industrialization needed to expand its ties with industrialized countries. Termen began to be included in delegations traveling abroad to demonstrate the cultural and scientific achievements of the Bolshevik country.

In 1927, Theremin was sent by the People's Commissariat for Education to Germany, England and France. The performances of the thin, aristocratic-looking Russian and his performance of musical works on the theremin were a great success. The concerts at the Grand Opera aroused such interest that the theater, due to the full house, for the first time in its history organized the sale of standing tickets in boxes.

At the end of the year, Lev Sergeevich leaves for the USA. In January 1928, his first concert took place in New York, which was attended by composer Sergei Rachmaninov, conductor Arturo Toscanini, and violinist Jozsef Szigeti. The performance took place in the hall of the Plaza Hotel, Termen performed works by Offenbach, Scriabin, and Schubert arranged for his instrument. The musician performed a similar program a few days later in the large hall of the Metropolitan Opera. The Russian envoy received loud publicity - this was discussed at an elite reception held that same evening in the house of K. Vanderbilt, and subsequent publications in newspapers and magazines testified to the same. This success needed to be consolidated. Theremin receives permission from the Soviet authorities to found the Teletouch studio company in New York. The company's task was the further development of musical instruments and their commercial production in the USA.

Theremin works with great creative enthusiasm. By 1930, he had created three types of theremin for solo and ensemble performance, covering different sound registers. Develops a four-octave monophonic keyboard instrument, then an electronic cello with high sound power. The customer for the cello was Leopold Stokowski, who noted that only with this instrument was he able to harmoniously perform Claude Debussy’s “Prelude No. 10” with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Theremin combined his inventive work with musical and performing work. His concerts in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston and other American cities were a success. His studio in New York was visited by M. Ravel, J. Gershwin, C. Chaplin, A. Einstein, A. Ziloti, L. Stokowski and other celebrities.

In 1929, RCA (Radio Corporation of America) bought a license from the inventor for the right to produce “theremins” (the American name for instruments) in the USA. Success in business is evidenced by the fact that the trade union of "thereminist" musicians in the United States numbered about 700 people in 1936.

Clara Reisenberg, the server, becomes an outstanding master of playing the Theremin instrument. big hopes violinist who immigrated to the United States from Russia at a young age. The hungry years in post-revolutionary Petrograd affected Clara’s musical career - her right hand became not strong enough to be a professional violinist. The transition from the violin to the theremin made it possible to get rid of this problem, and soon Clara Rockmore (that became her last name after her marriage) received recognition as an unsurpassed virtuoso of playing the electronic instrument. Clara's marriage seems to have been to some extent connected with thoughts about her future career. Her husband Robert Rockmore was famous in the world of music show business. Our reader will be interested to know that R. Rockmore became, in particular, the impresario of the singer Paul Robeson, who repeatedly visited the USSR.

Clara's marriage noticeably upset Theremin, who had been in an ardent state for a long time. romantic relationships with her. However, this did not weaken his inventive talent. In 1931, Theremin, in collaboration with composer G. Cowell, created the rhythmikon - an instrument that reproduces sounds of different frequencies when rotating wheels interact with light rays. At the same time, Lev Sergeevich was developing terpsiton - a “musical platform”, the sounds of which were generated by the movements of the dancers on it. This idea of ​​Theremin - for dance to give birth to music, and not vice versa - was the most fantastic. To implement it, the inventor begins to work with a group of dancers from the African-American Ballet Company. However, Termen failed to achieve the necessary musical precision from them. The synthesis of dance and music with the help of terpsiton remains in plans for the future.

At the same time, working with the dancers of the African-American ballet group brought changes to Theremin’s personal life. The charming mulatto ballerina Lavinia Williams became his wife.

Attitude American society to mixed marriages throughout the history of this country has been different. After his marriage to Lavinia, Theremin very quickly realized that the doors of many houses of the New York elite were closed to him.

His return to the USSR in 1938 put an end to the American period of his life. The departure, organized in best traditions detective genre, came as a complete surprise to Theremin. To explain the incident, it is necessary to lift one more curtain. The fact is that, while in America, he was constantly in contact with NKVD agents.

For this department, he had to obtain the necessary information and talk about his contacts with famous people. Therefore, it seems quite likely that after the reduction in the circle of acquaintances, Theremin as a source of information lost a significant amount of value for the NKVD. According to his American biographer S. Martin, the Russian musician had the imprudence to apply for financial assistance to the German mission in New York, and this is what caused an angry reaction from Moscow.

“Our people” came to Theremin’s house on 54th Street in New York and escorted the musician to soviet ship, standing at the mouth of the Hudson. As Lev Sergeevich later recalled, he was told that he was urgently needed “to clarify some formal issues.” This may seem incredible to some, but it was not difficult for the security officers to take a famous person out of the center of New York without his consent and without compliance necessary rules passport and customs control.

Already on the ship, Termen was explained that he was returning to the USSR. First of all, Lev Sergeevich asked whether his young wife could join him. He was assured that she would be sent to the USSR on the next flight. Fortunately for Lavinia, no one was going to keep this promise. The disappearance of her Russian husband remained a big mystery for the dark-skinned ballerina.

In the USSR, Theremin was awaiting a pre-trial detention center. The investigator advised the musician to voluntarily admit that he participated in a conspiracy to kill Kirov. Theremin's arguments that he could not do this while in America were not convincing enough. By court decision, Termen was sentenced to eight years. In fact, the imprisonment lasted for twenty years. The most difficult year was the first year of imprisonment, which had to be served in the notorious Kolyma. He survived, although the musician’s hands did not immediately adapt to dragging heavy wheelbarrows with frozen soil. Then the Gulag leadership remembered the technical education of the “conspirator.” He was transferred to work in the "sharags" of Omsk, then Moscow, where he worked on equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft, as well as radio beacons for use in naval operations.

The ways of prisoners are inscrutable. At the end of the war, Theremin received the task of developing devices for external listening to conversations taking place in buildings. The inventor solved the problem using the latest advances in radio technology. Employees of foreign embassies in Moscow at that time did not realize that in order to eavesdrop on conversations indoors, specialists only needed to receive scattered radio radiation reflected from the window glass. For the development of equipment for code name"Buran" Theremin was awarded the 1st degree Stalin Prize in 1947.

The “bugs” created during that period for eavesdropping were distinguished by their high technical perfection. In the early 50s, employees of the American embassy in Moscow discovered a miniature metal cylinder inside a wooden carved US coat of arms hanging in the ambassador's office. The “bug” puzzled Western experts because it had neither batteries nor electrical circuits. The principle of operation was revealed only by the British M-15 service, which appreciated the ingenuity of the unknown Russian.

Termen had to practice this specific technique for almost 10 years. He will not be judged by anyone who has been in a situation where choice is a matter of survival.

Termen received complete rehabilitation in 1958. The almighty department thanked him at parting with an apartment in a house on Kaluzhskaya Zastava (now Gagarin Square) in Moscow. Twin daughters grew up from a marriage with an employee of the same department. Life returned to normal.

But for Theremin, life was in creativity. How many years has he dreamed of amazing world lamps, circuits, wires, which gave birth to sounds obedient to the maestro’s hand! He waited to return to the forgotten world, but this world was no longer waiting for him. Performances on the Paris and New York stages faded into oblivion; personnel officers saw just a person in front of them retirement age with a suspicious profile.

Finally, in 1964, Theremin received the opportunity to temporarily work in the acoustics and sound recording laboratory of the Moscow Conservatory. The inventor was assigned a corner for experiments, he was not supposed to have assistants, Lev Sergeevich also had to take care of obtaining materials and components himself. Despite this, he managed to restore many of the electronic musical instruments that were once developed. There was no hope for help in manufacturing a standard chassis or body. When assembling the “Rhythmikon” type instrument, he bolted all the blocks and boards to a planed board.

But soon the dramatic ending came. Representatives of Western information publications should have learned sooner or later that the once famous Theremin was alive. The first one happened to be a correspondent for the New York Times. In one of the issues for 1967, his note appeared, announcing that the inventor of electronic music, who mysteriously disappeared in 1938, had not died, but after many misadventures lived and worked in Moscow.

The reaction to this message was not long in coming. The “opinion” about the employee’s excessive talkativeness was conveyed to the leadership and party organization of the Moscow Conservatory. Theremin was fired, his tools were thrown away, some were even smashed with an ax for good measure.

Thanks to Academician Rem Viktorovich Khokhlov, after all this he helped me get a job in the workshop of the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University. In order to preserve Theremin’s opportunity to receive a pension, he was assigned to the position of a worker. Essentially most At the time, he was doing what a worker of sufficient qualifications could do, since, as at the Moscow Conservatory, he had to work without assistants.

Times, however, were changing. Electronic instruments increasingly invaded the world of music. The aging maestro began to pass on the art of playing the theremin to his students. Turned out to be the most capable great-niece Lida Kavina, whom Termen began teaching at the age of nine. By the age of twenty, Lydia Kavina had become a virtuoso of playing an electronic instrument. Her art now delights viewers in concert halls Europe and America, just as the performances of Lev Theremin and Clara Rockmore once delighted.

In his declining years, the inventor of electronic music himself again had the opportunity to appear before a foreign public. In 1989 he attended the Bourges Music Festival in France. Two years later, 95-year-old Theremin made a nostalgic trip to the USA - a country where he had to experience triumphant recognition, romantic infatuation and the collapse of many illusions.

The film, shot by Stephen Martin during this trip, features memorable images of the elderly maestro walking a little confused through Manhattan, barely recognizing the places where ten years of his life passed. Central location The film features a meeting between Lev Theremin and Clara Rockmore. Women are women: 80-year-old Clara did not agree to this meeting for a long time, not wanting to appear before the adored maestro in a guise unfamiliar to him.

The trip to America was not Termen’s last trip abroad. In 1993, he visited the Netherlands at the Schoenberg-Kandinsky festival. “The reason I am so tenacious,” Lev Sergeevich liked to say, “is that my last name reads, on the contrary, “does not die.”

Theremin died on November 4, 1993 at the age of 97 and was buried at the Novo-Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow.

Coincidentally, the death of the inventor occurred one day after the screening of the film “The Electronic Odyssey of Lev Theremin” directed by S. Martin on British television. The late maestro did not have to see either this film or the program dedicated to it on Russian television.

Theremin lived a long life, but did not live long enough to see real recognition. What can you do, this seems to be the fate of many great people.

Lev Theremin are considered one of the Soviet avant-garde artists and pioneers of electronics, they say that he either worked as a spy or died in exile, and his instrument is called such a strange invention that allegedly even he Theremin I couldn't play on it. These are just rumors - but the reality is no less interesting. The creator of the theremin was a witness to all eras of the 20th century, was familiar with celebrities from the most different countries, and at the same time he lived as if he did not notice the political storms of his century.
Lev Theremin born on August 15 (28), 1896 in St. Petersburg in the nobility Orthodox family with French Huguenot roots (in French the family surname was written as Theremin). Father - famous lawyer Sergei Emilievich Termen, mother - Evgenia Antonovna. Leo was the first-born in the family. His parents contributed to the development of Lev’s abilities: he took cello lessons, a physics laboratory was equipped in the apartment, and then a home observatory. Lev was sent to study at the St. Petersburg First Men's Gymnasium. Already in the third grade, Lev became interested in physics, and in the fourth grade he demonstrated “Tesla-type resonance.” Lev graduated from high school with a silver medal in 1914.
In 1920 Lev Theremin starts working for the professor A. F. Ioffe at the newly created Physico-Technical Institute in Petrograd. Once a young scientist noticed that the movement of his hands near the capacitor plates (the gap between them was filled with gas) produced strange, wonderful sounds.

Theremin I tried to put together a melody - classes at the conservatory helped - and the device began to sing. Theremin I fitted my headphones and enjoyed the music emerging from the air and the movement of my hands. At the institute they joked: “Theremin plays the voltmeter.” This is how the world's first non-contact musical instrument was created.

Ioffe seems to give him fantastic theme for the thesis: “electrical foresight”. But Ioffe believes that his brilliant graduate student will cope with any task. AND Theremin did not disappoint the teacher: he created and demonstrated working prototypes of a device for “wireless” image transmission over a distance. To put it simply, in 1926 Theremin invented television!
Several years before the first experiments Zvorykina in America he built a real electronic TV.

The TV had a screen no less than 150x150 centimeters (this was at a time when they experimented with matchbox screens), and a resolution of 100 lines. And it worked! In 1927, representatives of the military elite of the Soviets - Voroshilov, Tukhachevsky, Budyonny- watched with delight Stalin walking through the Kremlin courtyard. You could even make out a mustache and a pipe. This demonstration, as it turned out, was fatal for the invention: it was classified in the hope of using it to protect borders. Needless to say, it was never implemented, and the primacy Theremin in this case it has been proven only in our time.
In 1927 Lev Sergeevich sent to Frankfurt am Main, to International exhibition- glorify with theremin Soviet science and culture. After the exhibition Theremin triumphantly traveled all over Germany, performing at the famous London Albert Hall and at the Paris Grand Opera. The press of all countries was filled with rave reviews. Albert Einstein wrote: “Sound freely extracted from space is a completely new phenomenon.”

Theremin's cello. The inventor plays

Theremin lived in New York for a decade. He buys a Cadillac and is accepted into the elite US Millionaires Club, although he never became a millionaire. The company he created to produce contactless security alarm systems is thriving. General Electric and RCA have acquired a license to manufacture theremin and they produced about a thousand of them. In 1930 Theremin invents the electronic cello and his first drum kit - "rhythmicon". He leases a six-story house for 99 years, where he opens music studio, instrumental workshops and laboratories, teaches musicians to play his miracle instrument.

Rhythmikon - the first rhythm machine, that is, a device for creating periodic drum fragments

Lev Theremin organized the companies Teletouch and Theremin Studio and rented a six-story building for a music and dance studio in New York for 99 years. This made it possible to create trade missions of the USSR in the United States, under whose “roof” Soviet intelligence officers could work.

In 1931-1938 Theremin was a director of Teletouch Inc. At the same time, he developed alarm systems for the Sing Sing and Alcatraz prisons.

Soon Lev Theremin became a very popular person in New York. Been to his studio George Gershwin, Maurice Ravel, Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein. His circle of acquaintances included financial tycoon John Rockefeller, future US President Dwight Eisenhower

In 1938 Theremin recalled to Moscow. He secretly left the USA, registering in the name of the owner of the Teletouch company Bob Zinman power of attorney to dispose of his property and manage patent and financial affairs. Theremin I wanted to take my wife with me to the USSR Lavinia, but he was told that she would arrive later. When they came for him, Lavinia She happened to be at home, and she got the impression that her husband was taken away by force.
In Leningrad Theremin unsuccessfully tried to get a job, then moved to Moscow, but did not find a job there either.
In March 1939 he was arrested. There are two versions of what charge was brought against him. According to one of them, he was accused of involvement in a fascist organization, according to another - of preparing a murder Kirov. He was forced to incriminate himself that a group of astronomers from the Pulkovo Observatory was preparing to place a landmine in a Foucault pendulum, and Theremin was supposed to send a radio signal from the USA and detonate a landmine as soon as it approached the pendulum Kirov. A special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR sentenced Theremin to eight years in the camps, and he was sent to a camp for Kolyma.
First time Theremin served time in Magadan, working as a foreman of a construction team. But he was recalled to the Central Design Bureau, where he was destined to work with Sergei Korolev, who on April 21, 1939 ended up in Kolyma, where from August 3 he was at the Maldyak gold mine of the Western Mining Directorate and was employed in the so-called general works.
Aircraft designer Andrei Tupolev, who was imprisoned in those years and worked for the benefit of the country in the closed NKVD design bureau - TsKB-29 ("Tupolev's sharaga"), saw Lev Sergeevich cutting out a model of an aircraft from plywood, and gave him an assistant - the same Korolev. It was a very interesting meeting between the two outstanding personalities.
Numerous innovation proposals Theremin attracted the attention of the camp administration to him, and already in 1940 he was transferred to the Tupolev design bureau TsKB-29 (to the so-called “Tupolev sharaga”), where he worked for about eight years. Here his assistant was Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, later a famous designer of space technology. One of the activities Theremin And Queen was the development of unmanned aircraft radio-controlled prototypes of modern cruise missiles.

One of the developments Theremin- listening system "Buran", which uses a reflected infrared beam to read the vibrations of glass in the windows of the listening room. This is the invention Theremin It was observed Stalin Prize first degree in 1947. But due to the fact that the laureate was a prisoner at the time of presentation for the prize and the secretive nature of his work, the award was not publicly announced anywhere.

Soviet endovibrator inside a replica of the Great Seal of the United States, National Museum of Cryptography at the US National Security Agency

Another development - endovibrator "Zlatoust", a listening device without batteries and electronics based on high-frequency resonance, which worked in the office of American ambassadors undetected for eight years. The listening device was mounted in a wooden panel made of valuable wood, depicting the Great Seal of the United States.

The panel was presented in 1945 to the US ambassador invited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Artek pioneer camp. Averell Harriman, who hung it in his office. The design of the listening device turned out to be so successful that when examining the gift, the American intelligence services did not notice anything. The “bug” was discovered in 1952, and was later presented to the UN as evidence of the intelligence activities of the USSR, but the principle of its operation remained unsolved for several years.
To “press on a tear,” the pioneers sang the American anthem at the gala concert. The touched ambassador, looking at the gift handed to him, only managed to mutter: “Where should I keep it?” Immediately behind him, Valentin Mikhailovich Berezhkov, Stalin’s personal translator, stood up and casually said: “Hang it in your office. The British will burst with envy.” He said and nodded towards the British Ambassador to the USSR, Sir Archibald Kerr, who was also present at the ceremony, but did not receive SUCH a gift.

Before hanging the wooden eagle at the embassy, ​​American technicians, of course, “probed” it for bugs. But they were not found, because Lev Theremin’s device was passive and did not emit anything in itself. And then the souvenir was actually hung in the ambassador’s office. Operation Confession, the goal of which was to smuggle a bug into the US Embassy building, ended in success.
In 1947 Theremin was rehabilitated, but continued to work in closed design bureaus in the NKVD system of the USSR, where he was engaged, in particular, in the development of eavesdropping systems.

In 1948, he and his wife Maria Gushchina two daughters are born - Natalia Termen And Elena Termen.

In 1991, together with his daughter, Natalia Termen, and granddaughter, Olga Termen, he visited the USA at the invitation of Stanford University and there, among other things, met with Clara Rockmore.

In March 1991, at the age of 95, he joined the CPSU. When asked why he was joining a collapsing party, Theremin answered: “I promised Lenin.”
In 1992, unknown persons destroyed a laboratory room on Lomonosovsky Prospekt (the room was allocated by the Moscow authorities at the request of V. S. Grizodubova), all his instruments were broken, part of the archives were stolen. The police did not solve the crime.
In 1992, the Theremin Center was created in Moscow, with its main goal being to support musicians and sound artists working in the field of experimental electroacoustic music. Upon request Lev Theremin remove the name, the leaders of the center did not react. Lev Theremin had nothing to do with the creation of the center named after him.

Died November 3, 1993. As the newspapers later wrote: “At ninety-seven years old Lev Theremin went to those who made up the face of the era - but behind the coffin, except for daughters with their families and several men carrying the coffin, there was no one ... "

He invented:
1. Group of electric musical instruments:
-– theremin
-– rhythmikon
-– terpsiton
2. Security alarm
3. Unique eavesdropping system “Buran”
4. The world's first television installation - far-sightedness
worked on:
-– speech recognition system
- human freezing technology
-– voice identification in forensics
- military sonar.

September 17th, 2013

In the spring of 1926, engineer Lev Termen demonstrated at the People's Commissariat of Defense the world's first television installation - far vision. He installed the camera lens on the street, placed the screen in his office, and the Red commanders Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Budyonny and Tukhachevsky cried out in delight: on the screen Stalin was walking across the yard!

It took Termen only a year to solve a fantastic problem - the creation of electrical foresight. However, for him, it seemed, there were no difficulties in life at all. From a young age, he amazed those around him with his talents: he was fond of mathematics, physics, and something was always exploding in his room. At the university, Theremin studied simultaneously in the physics and astronomy faculties, while simultaneously studying cello at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Before the revolution, he managed to graduate from a military engineering school and even fought for the Tsar Father with the rank of second lieutenant in a radio engineering battalion. But the Bolsheviks did not shoot him, but, on the contrary, took him into service in the electrical battalion. And a year later he was appointed head of the most powerful radio station in the country, the Tsarskoye Selo radio station.

After demobilization in 1920, he was invited to work at the Physico-Technical Institute by Professor Ioffe. Theremin receives the task of doing radio measurements of the dielectric constant of gases at variable temperatures and pressures. During testing, it turned out that the device produced a sound, the height and strength of which depended on the position of the hand between the plates of the capacitor. Perhaps a simple physicist would not have attached any importance to this, but a physicist who graduated from the conservatory tried to compose a melody from these sounds. And it worked!

He first called it "Aerophone", but with light hand a lively correspondent for the Izvestia newspaper, the instrument was named “Theremin”, which actually remains to this day.

Thus was born the musical instrument theremin - the voice of Theremin. And a simplified version of the theremin - a security alarm - built on the same principle: as soon as the attacker found himself in the electric field, a sound signal was heard. By the way, in our time, expensive cars are still equipped with an alarm system, which is based on Theremin’s invention.

And in the life of Lev Sergeevich it became the first step on the path to fame. Although his colleagues chuckled: “Theremin plays Gluck on a voltmeter,” this did not bother the scientist at all. In 1921, he demonstrates his invention at the VIII All-Russian Electrotechnical Congress. The surprise of the audience knew no bounds - no strings or keys, a timbre unlike anything else. The Pravda newspaper published an enthusiastic review, and radio concerts were held for a wide audience. In addition, during the congress the GOELRO plan was adopted, and Theremin, with his unique power tools, could become an excellent propagandist for the plan for electrification of the entire country.

A few months after the congress, Termen was invited to the Kremlin.

Stop, whoever is coming!

In addition to Lenin, there were about ten other people in the office. First, Theremin showed the high commission a security alarm. He connected the device to a large vase with a flower, and as soon as one of those present approached it, a loud bell rang. Lev Sergeevich recalled: “One of the military says that this is wrong. Lenin asked: “Why is it wrong?” And the military man took a warm hat, put it on his head, wrapped his arm and leg in a fur coat and began to slowly crawl on his haunches towards my alarm system. We got the signal again."

And yet the main “hero” of the audience was the theremin. Lenin liked the instrument so much that he gave the go-ahead for Theremin to tour and ordered that he be given a free train ticket “to popularize the new instrument” throughout the country.

By the way, another impressive feature of Theremin’s life is connected with Lenin.

Lev Sergeevich was passionate about the idea of ​​fighting death. He studied studies of animal cells frozen in permafrost, and wondered what would happen to people if they were frozen and then thawed. When news of the leader’s death became known, Theremin sent his assistant to Gorki with a proposal to freeze Lenin’s body so that years later, when the technology had been worked out, he could be resurrected from the dead. But the assistant returned with sad news: internal organs have already been removed, the body is prepared for embalming. With that, Theremin abandoned research on human revitalization. And decades later, his idea was embodied in America, and now dozens of frozen lucky people are waiting for resurrection.

An episode that could have been a milestone

If, by chance, passing by the building of the Ministry of Defense Russian Federation, that in Moscow, you will see a video surveillance camera on its wall, know: this modest device can rightfully celebrate its eightieth anniversary. In the spring of 1926, the ubiquitous Theremin installed a camera lens above the entrance to the People's Commissariat of Defense, and a screen in the reception room of People's Commissar of Military Affairs Voroshilov. Voroshilov demonstrated his new favorite toy to the guests - Ordzhonikidze, Budyonny, Tukhachevsky - and they rejoiced like children when the well-recognized Stalin appeared on the screen: pipe, mustache and all that... Termenov’s installation provided interlaced scanning of one hundred lines (six times less than in modern televisions) and had a screen of 1.5x1.5 m (that is, its diagonal was more than two meters).

Termen also took up television (more precisely, “far-sighting,” as it was called then) at the suggestion of his mentor and patron A.F. Ioffe in the second half of 1924. Having decided to complete his education at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, Lev Sergeevich took up the then fashionable problem of far vision, and in 1925 he produced a prototype of a television installation.

For Theremin himself, the idea of ​​far vision was not new: already in 1921 he gave a review of work on far vision at a seminar at the Physico-Technical Institute, and a year later - at the Petrograd branch of the Russian Society of Radio Engineers.

To solve the problem, Theremin chose, as always, his own, original approach, collecting already known instruments and devices in a new, unexpected way.

Theremin developed and manufactured four versions of a television system, including transmitting and receiving devices. The first version, a demonstration one, created at the end of 1925, was designed for 16-line image decomposition. With this installation, it was possible to “see” elements, for example, a person’s face, but it was impossible to know who exactly was being shown. In the second, also demo version 32-line interlaced scanning was already used.

In the spring of 1926, a third version was made, which served as the basis for Theremin’s thesis. It used interlaced scanning of 32 and 64 lines, the image was reproduced on a screen measuring 1.5x1.5 m.

Already the first experiments showed that it was possible to obtain an image sufficiently High Quality: it was possible to recognize a person - true, if he did not sudden movements. The first successful public demonstration of the “thereminvisor” took place on June 7, 1926 in the assembly hall of the Physico-Technical Institute, during the defense of Lev Theremin’s graduation project “Installation for transmitting images over a distance.” On December 16, 1926, another and perhaps the last public demonstration of this far-sighting installation took place on V All-Union Congress physicists in Moscow.

The invention caused a sensation, Ogonyok and Izvestia wrote with delight: “Theremin’s name is included in the history of world science along with Popov and Edison!” It seemed that it was a stone's throw from experiment to serial production...

Almost immediately after this, Termen was summoned to the Council of Labor and Defense, where they proposed creating a television system specifically for border military units. All work in this area was immediately strictly classified.

The technical requirements for the installation were very strict: it had to work on outdoors in normal daylight and be designed for 100-line image decomposition. This fourth version of the installation stood for several months in Voroshilov’s reception room in the Kremlin, allowing both the Kremlin courtyard and individual people passing through this courtyard to be viewed on a large screen.

Practice has shown that developed by L.S. Termen's design of the far-vision installation turned out to be quite workable, and moreover, its latest version was intended for work in the army, where traditionally very stringent requirements are imposed on the equipment.

In 1926, even before the work was classified, the Ogonyok magazine and the Izvestia newspaper managed to inform about these experiments, but from 1927 to 1984 there were no more open publications about Theremin’s work in the field of television, and these works themselves were no longer influenced the development of television in our country and in the world.

Theremin was offered to create a television system for border military units. But it did not reach the army: the country’s technical base was too poor. Therefore, the developments were kept secret, and the title of pioneer in the field of television a few years later went to an emigrant from Russia, Vladimir Zvorykin.

Knocked out "Grand Opera" and others

In the summer of 1927, an international conference on physics and electronics was held in Frankfurt am Main. The young Country of Soviets needed to present itself with dignity. And Theremin with his instrument became the trump card of the Russian delegation. He amazed the Europeans with his report on the theremin and with classical music concerts for the general public: “heavenly music”, “voices of angels” - the newspapers were choked with delight.

Invitations from Berlin, London, and Paris followed one after another. Theremin's most enchanting concert took place in Paris: the conservative Grand Opera theater for the first time in its history gave the hall to some unknown Russian for the whole evening. Such an influx of spectators (even standing tickets for boxes were sold) and such success in the theater have not been seen for 35 years...

Meanwhile, Joffe, who was in the USA at that time, received orders from several companies to produce 2000 theremins with the condition that Theremin would come to America to supervise the work. But instead of one business trip, Lev Sergeevich received two: from the People’s Commissar of Education Lunacharsky and from the Military Department.

Trump on the table!

And now the handsome young Lev Theremin sails on the ocean liner Majestic to America. World celebrity violinist Jozsef Sighetti, who was sailing on the same ship, became envious of the fees that America's largest businessmen offered Theremin for the honor of being the first to hear the theremin. But the inventor gave the first concert for the press, scientists and famous musicians. The success was impressive, and with the permission of the Soviet authorities, Theremin founded the Teletouch studio company in New York for the production of theremins.

Things went brilliantly. Theremin concerts took place in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Boston. Thousands of Americans enthusiastically began to learn to play the theremin, and General Electric Corporation and RCA (Radio Corporation of America) bought licenses to produce it.

The “great crisis” that broke out at the turn of the 1930s ruined many rich people. But he didn’t knock Theremin down. Of course, the people had no time for music, but the inventive Russian had one more trump card - a security alarm. Teletouch Corporation quickly refocused on its production, and Theremin volume sensors were torn off with their hands. They were even installed in the terrible US prison Sing Sing and in Fort Knox, where the American gold reserves were kept. So everything was fine with business, but there was a crisis in the music field.

Cake for a violinist with a theremin

In the enthusiastic chorus of Theremin's fans, voices of dissatisfaction began to be heard: at concerts he was shamelessly out of tune. The fact is that playing the theremin purely is incredibly difficult: the performer has no reference points (like, for example, the keys of a piano or the strings of a violin) and has to rely solely on hearing and muscle memory.

Theremin clearly lacked performing skills. A virtuoso was needed here. And then fate brought him together with a young emigrant from Russia, Clara Reisenberg. As a child, she was known as a miracle child, a violinist with a great future. But either she overplayed her hands, or because of a hungry childhood, she had to part with the violin: her muscles could not withstand the load. But the theremin was within reach, and Clara quickly learned to play it. Not without whirlwind romance, especially since Theremin was free by that time.

For the first time, Theremin married the lovely Katya Konstantinova in 1921, and before coming to America, their family life was smooth and stable. But in New York, Katya was able to find work only in the suburbs and came home once a week. After six months of such “family” life, a young man came to Theremin and said that he and Katya loved each other. And then it became known that the visitor was a member of a fascist organization. And the Soviet embassy demanded that Termen divorce his wife. Which is what he did. Therefore, by the time of his meeting with Clara, Lev Sergeevich was open to new love.

He is 38 years old, she is 18. They were a luxurious couple, they loved to go to cafes and restaurants. Lev Sergeevich courted her very beautifully and loved to surprise his girlfriend with various miracles. For example, for her birthday, he gave her a cake that rotated around its axis and was decorated with a candle that lit up when approaching it.

The beautiful romance was not destined to end with a wedding. Clara chose someone else - Robert Rockmore, a lawyer and successful impresario, so she music career was provided.

Why do walls float?

And Theremin plunged headlong into his work. Upon his arrival in America, he rented a six-story mansion on 54th Avenue for 99 years. In addition to personal apartments, it housed a workshop and a studio. Here Lev Sergeevich often played music with Albert Einstein: the physicist on the violin, the inventor on the theremin. Einstein was fascinated by the idea of ​​combining music and spatial images. And Theremin figured out how to do this: he invented the rhythmicon, a light-musical instrument. Huge transparent wheels with geometric pattern rotated in front of a stroboscopic lamp. As soon as the musician changed the pitch of the sound, the frequency of the strobe flashes and the patterns changed - the spectacle was impressive. Well, the fantasy began when the walls of the studio rose and fell. Of course, not for real, but with the help of a trick of light. The spellbound visitors gasped in surprise!

Rumors about these experiments attracted many to the studio. famous people. Among Theremin's guests were millionaires DuPont, Ford and Rockefeller. However, Termen himself by the mid-30s was included in the list of twenty-five celebrities of the world. And he was even a member of the millionaires' club.

Was he really a millionaire? It is not known for certain. Some say that Teletouch Corporation brought huge amounts of money to Theremin personally and to Soviet Russia. And others claim that Theremin was financed by military intelligence. Because the true purpose of his business trip to America was espionage activity.

Famous spy

Every two weeks Lev Sergeevich came to a small country cafe, where two young men were waiting for him. They listened to his reports and gave him new tasks. However, these tasks were not burdensome and did not particularly distract Theremin from his work. And he was already completely carried away by the most fantastic of his ideas - an instrument that gave birth to music from dance. In fact, this is a type of theremin: the sound is created not only by the hands, but also by the movements of the whole body, and the name was given to it accordingly - terpsiton - after the goddess of dance Terpsichore. In this case, each sound corresponded to a lamp of a certain color. Can you imagine what an extraordinary spectacle it was, because any movement of the dancer was echoed by sounds and the flickering of multi-colored lights!

For creating concert program Theremin invited a group of dancers from the African American Ballet Company. Unfortunately, it was not possible to achieve harmony and accuracy from them, and the project had to be postponed. But in this troupe danced the beautiful mulatto Lavinia Williams, who captivated Lev Sergeevich not only as a ballerina, but also as a woman. Theremin decided to get married.

It never occurred to him that marriage to a black woman would radically change his life. But as soon as the lovers registered their marriage, the doors of many houses in New York were closed to Theremin: America did not yet know political correctness. He lost informants, which caused serious dissatisfaction with Soviet intelligence. And in 1938, Theremin was ordered to immediately leave for Russia. Lavinia was told that she would come to her husband on the next ship.

The spouses did not see each other again. And Termen kept the marriage certificate issued by the Russian embassy in America until the end of his days.

Kirov's killer

Ten years after leaving Russia, Theremin arrived in Leningrad. And it turned out that no one needed him: there were almost no old workers left at the Physico-Technical Institute. Theremin went to look for work in Moscow, but on March 15, they came for him to a hotel near the Kievsky railway station with an arrest warrant.

In his own words, it happened extremely casually: “a man with a thick briefcase” came to his hotel and told Theremin not to worry - there would be work. “And right now we need to go and find out all this. We drove somewhere by car and arrived at Butyrka prison.”

Theremin spent a week in the cell. He didn't have a bad impression. IN free time he read Lydia Charskaya. When he was not free, he went for interrogations. In the absence of more serious (and more deadly) incriminating evidence, Theremin and a group of previously arrested astronomers from the Pulkovo Observatory were “linked” to a conspiracy to kill Kirov (who, by the way, was killed while Theremin was in the States). The version was this: Kirov was going to visit the Pulkovo Observatory, the astronomers planted a landmine in the Foucault pendulum (well, yes, the Foucault pendulum was not in the Pulkovo Observatory, but in the Kazan Cathedral - but who cares about such trifles?), and Theremin personally was supposed to receive a radio signal from the USA blow it up as soon as Kirov approaches the pendulum. For this phantasmagoria, in the creation of the implausible details of which the accused himself took an active part, Lev Sergeevich was given eight years and sent to work on road construction in Siberia.

The camp period lasted about a year. As an engineer, Theremin led a brigade of twenty criminals (“the political ones didn’t want to do anything”). Having invented the “wooden monorail” (that is, by proposing to roll wheelbarrows not on the ground, but along wooden guide channels), Termen established himself with the best side in the eyes of the camp authorities: the brigade’s rations were increased threefold, and Theremin himself was soon transferred to another place - to the Tupolev aviation “sharashka” in Moscow, which after the start of the war moved to Omsk. There Termen developed equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft, radar systems, and radio beacons for naval operations.

In the winter of 1940, he was transferred to Omsk, to the Tupolev aviation sharashka, where throughout the war he developed equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft and radio beacons for naval operations. But the crowning achievement of his time in the sharashka was the invention of the Buran listening system.

Trojan horse from the pioneers

...On Independence Day, July 4, 1945, the American Ambassador to Russia Averell Harriman received a wooden panel depicting an eagle as a gift from Soviet pioneers. The panel was hung in the ambassador's office. And then the American intelligence services lost peace: a mysterious information leak began. Only 7 years later, a mysterious cylinder with a membrane inside was discovered inside the gift. For a year and a half, engineers struggled to solve this trick. The secret turned out to be simple: an invisible ray was directed from the house opposite to the office window, and the membrane, oscillating in time with the speech, reflected it back, and it was recorded on a special device.

Then Theremin improved his Buran so much that the membrane was no longer needed - its role was played by window glass. Rumor has it that Buran is still in service with our secret services.

The Soviet government highly appreciated the merits of the inventor - in 1947, the prisoner (!) was awarded Stalin Prize I degree. And after his release, Termen was given a two-room apartment on Leninsky Prospekt.

By the way, it is worth telling about a relatively funny incident. Taking advantage of the evacuation of foreign diplomats from Moscow to Kuibyshev during the war, the NKVD did not fail to stuff the Moscow embassies with microphones - with all the achievements of miniaturization, at that time such devices were, at best, the size of a hockey puck.

A surprise awaited the security officers where they least could have foreseen it - at the New Zealand embassy. Nobody was ever particularly interested in the diplomats of this country, and, as it turned out, the counterintelligence officers did not even have a scheme for “divorcing” the employees of this embassy. They began to improvise something on the fly, but no matter how hard they tried, at least one of the diplomats continued to hang around vigilantly in the embassy. Time passes, American specialists examined their embassy, ​​moved on to the rest... Abakumov, the then Minister of State Security, was furious. He gathered everyone and yelled: “What are you talking about! Can’t you find beautiful women for them?! Are they not people?! Or don’t they like to drink?” They all loved, but strictly in turn. For some time after the return of the embassies from Kuibyshev, general microphoneization brought good results, but all good things come to an end sooner or later: it became known that specialists were coming from America, and in order to avoid a diplomatic scandal, the embassies began to be “cleansed” ": they lured diplomats out, took out microphones in bags...

We decided to consult with Theremin to see if we could come up with something to prevent the Americans from finding the microphones. He thought about it and recommended sending powerful radio radiation to the embassy: it would, they say, drown out the Americans’ instruments and prevent them from finding the “washers.” They brought him with equipment, selected points around the embassy, ​​installed transmitters and antennas. But the test run of this system ended in complete failure. Theremin was an inventor, not a scientist, and did everything by eye, without calculations.

And so... In the courtyard of the embassy, ​​the janitor was chopping ice with a crowbar. When everything was turned on, he threw down the crowbar, took off his hat, began to cross himself, yelling “Holy, holy, holy!”, and rushed into the embassy. His crowbar, you see, flew (according to a less dramatic, but no less impressive version - it simply tore out of his hands and stood upright). Theremin smiled slightly and said: “They probably went too far with the power.”

However, the scandal was hushed up. Firstly, it was just about New Zealand. Secondly, Theremin was also, as they say, no stranger, brave and in good standing. According to rumors, when Beria wanted to include Theremin among the participants in the atomic project and asked the inventor what he needed to create an atomic bomb, Theremin replied: “A personal car with a driver and one and a half tons of aluminum corner.” Beria laughed and left him alone.

It seemed that the stupid and evil misunderstanding was over and now the inventor would be showered with honors. But Theremin did not receive any official titles; all his patents were covered with the stamp “Owls.” secret." And Lev Sergeevich continued to work in secret KGB laboratories. Soon he found himself there new wife- a young typist Masha Gushchina, who bore him twin daughters.

For almost twenty years, Theremin was engaged in specific developments for the all-powerful department. At first, these were promising works - speech recognition systems, voice identification, military hydroacoustics. But over time, priorities have changed. As Theremin recalled, “supposedly in the West they came up with devices for determining where flying saucers were, and we also had to struggle with similar devices. I understood that this was a scam, and I couldn’t refuse, and one day I decided that it was better to retire.”

The employers did not object, considering that they could not take anything from the old man, and in 1964 Termen finally parted with the special services, under whose invisible eye he had been for almost 40 years.

Theremin never dies!

70 years old. It seemed like life was over. But Lev Sergeevich, true to his motto “Theremin never dies!” (this is how his last name is read backwards), gets a job in the acoustic laboratory of the Moscow State Conservatory. Nothing disturbed the old man’s measured life until, in 1968, a New York Times correspondent, preparing a report on the Moscow Conservatory, learned that the great Theremin was alive.

This sensational news in America was perceived as a resurrection from the dead: all American encyclopedias indicated that Theremin died in 1938. A flood of letters from his overseas friends poured into Lev Sergeevich’s name, and reporters from various newspapers and television companies tried to meet with him. The conservative authorities, frightened by such interest in the modest person of the mechanic, simply fired him. And all the equipment was thrown into the trash.

For the last twenty-five years, Theremin has worked in the acoustics laboratory of Moscow State University. Mechanic 6th category. He slowly worked on his theremins - he restored some, improved some, and even came up with one in which the sound through a system of photocells arose from just the musician’s glance.

Lev Sergeevich also frequented the Scriabin Museum, where he took part in the creation of a musical synthesizer. The long-awaited time has come - the era of electronic instruments. Theremin seemed to catch ideas out of thin air that sometimes seemed utopian. And later it turned out that the Japanese company Yamaha was working on these ideas independently of him.

Well, Lev Sergeevich taught his niece Lida Kavina to play the theremin. By the age of twenty, she had become a virtuoso performer and toured all over Europe with concerts. In 1989, Theremin was invited to the Experimental Music Festival in France. And he, 93 years old, went!

But most of all, at the end of his life, Termen surprised those around him with his entry into the CPSU: “I promised Lenin.” Lev Sergeevich tried before, but for “ terrible crimes“He was not accepted into the party. So Termen became a communist only in 1991, simultaneously with the fall of the USSR.

a swan song

...In 1951, the future American director Steve Martin saw the film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” But it was not the aliens that shocked him, but the unearthly sound of the theremin that accompanied the action. For several years he communicated with his brother using sounds similar to those produced by a theremin. And many years later, in 1980, Steve Martin was looking for music for his film. And his search led him to Clara Rockmore, who told the director about the legendary inventor. It was then that Martin had the idea to create a documentary film about Theremin. But 11 years passed before he was able to come to Moscow, meet Theremin and invite him to America. The elderly maestro walked confusedly through the streets of New York and had difficulty recognizing the places where ten years of his life had passed. The most exciting thing was the meeting with Clara Rockmore. Clara did not agree to her for a long time - years, they say, do not make a woman beautiful.

- Hey, Klarenok, what age are we! said 95-year-old Theremin.

After America, he went back to the Netherlands for the Schoenberg-Kandinsky festival, and, returning to Moscow, found his room in a communal apartment in complete destruction - broken furniture, broken equipment, trampled records. Apparently, one of the neighbors really needed his room. The daughter took Lev Sergeevich to her place. But his vitality dried up, and a few months later, on November 3, 1993, Theremin died.

Steve Martin's film "The Electronic Odyssey of Lev Theremin" was released after the death of the hero. But his theremins still live today. Among the many companies that make them is Moog Mugic, owned by the inventor of the first synthesizer, Robert Moog. He once said about Theremin: “He’s just a genius who is capable of anything!”

He failed in only one thing - to become the national pride of Russia...

Theremin sounds in:

1. album “Territory” by the group “Aquarium”

2. compositions “Good Vibrations”, pop group “Beach Boys”

3. Hitchcock's film Spellbound ("Charmed")

4. Bill Weider's film "The Lost Weekend"

5. Disney film "Alice in Wonderland"

6. on the disc Led Zeppelin “Lotta’s Love”

On the evening of November 3, my friends and I drank a glass to commemorate the soul of the inventor and musician Lev Sergeevich Termen. I have never seen this man in my life, but I have been fascinated by his magical talent since childhood, when I first heard the amazing musical instrument theremin, from which all modern electronic music originated.

Lev Sergeevich Termen (1896-1993

invented

1. Group of electric musical instruments:

Theremin

Rhythmikon

Terpsitone

2. Security alarm

3. Unique eavesdropping system "Buran"

4. The world's first television installation - far vision

worked on:

Speech recognition system

Human freezing technology

Military sonar

In the spring of 1926, engineer Lev Theremin demonstrated at the People's Commissariat of Defense the world's first television installation - far vision. He installed the camera lens on the street, placed the screen in his office, and the Red commanders Ordzhonikidze, Voroshilov, Budyonny and Tukhachevsky cried out in delight: on the screen Stalin was walking across the yard!

It took Termen only a year to solve a fantastic problem - the creation of electrical foresight. However, for him, it seemed, there were no difficulties in life at all. From a young age, he amazed those around him with his talents: he was fond of mathematics, physics, and something was always exploding in his room. At the university, Theremin studied simultaneously in the physics and astronomy faculties, while simultaneously studying cello at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Before the revolution, he managed to graduate from a military engineering school and even fought for the Tsar Father with the rank of second lieutenant in a radio engineering battalion. But the Bolsheviks did not shoot him, but, on the contrary, took him into service in the electrical battalion. And a year later he was appointed head of the most powerful radio station in the country, the Tsarskoye Selo radio station.

After demobilization in 1920, he was invited to work at the Physico-Technical Institute by Professor Ioffe. Theremin receives the task of doing radio measurements of the dielectric constant of gases at variable temperatures and pressures. During testing, it turned out that the device produced a sound, the height and strength of which depended on the position of the hand between the plates of the capacitor. Perhaps a simple physicist would not have attached any importance to this, but a physicist - a graduate of the conservatory - tried to compose a melody from these sounds. And it worked!

This is how the musical instrument theremin was born - the voice of Theremin. And a simplified version of the theremin - a security alarm - built on the same principle: as soon as the attacker found himself in the electric field, a sound signal was heard. By the way, in our time, expensive cars are still equipped with an alarm system, which is based on Theremin’s invention.

And in the life of Lev Sergeevich it became the first step on the path to fame. Although his colleagues chuckled: “Theremin plays Gluck on a voltmeter,” this did not bother the scientist at all. In 1921, he demonstrates his invention at the VIII All-Russian Electrotechnical Congress. The surprise of the audience knew no bounds - no strings or keys, a timbre unlike anything else. The Pravda newspaper published an enthusiastic review, and radio concerts were held for a wide audience. In addition, during the congress the GOELRO plan was adopted, and Theremin, with his unique power tools, could become an excellent propagandist for the plan for electrification of the entire country.

A few months after the congress, Termen was invited to the Kremlin.

Stop, whoever is coming!

In addition to Lenin, there were about ten other people in the office. First, Theremin showed the high commission a security alarm. He connected the device to a large vase with a flower, and as soon as one of those present approached it, a loud bell rang. Lev Sergeevich recalled: “One of the military men said that this was wrong. Lenin asked: “Why is it wrong?” And the military man took a warm hat, put it on his head, wrapped his arm and leg in a fur coat and began to slowly crawl on his haunches to my alarm system. The signal again it worked out."

And yet the main “hero” of the audience was the theremin. Lenin liked the instrument so much that he gave the go-ahead for Theremin to tour and ordered that he be given a free train ticket “to popularize the new instrument” throughout the country.

By the way, another impressive feature of Theremin’s life is connected with Lenin.

Lev Sergeevich was passionate about the idea of ​​fighting death. He studied studies of animal cells frozen in permafrost, and wondered what would happen to people if they were frozen and then thawed. When news of the leader’s death became known, Theremin sent his assistant to Gorki with a proposal to freeze Lenin’s body so that years later, when the technology had been worked out, he could be resurrected from the dead. But the assistant returned with sad news: the internal organs had already been removed and the body was prepared for embalming. With that, Theremin abandoned research on human revitalization. And decades later, his idea was embodied in America, and now dozens of frozen lucky people are waiting for resurrection.

An episode that could have been a milestone

After demonstrating the television installation at the People's Commissariat for Education, Theremin showed it at the V All-Union Congress of Physicists in Moscow. The invention caused a sensation, Ogonyok and Izvestia wrote with delight: “Theremin’s name is included in the history of world science along with Popov and Edison!” It seemed that it was a stone's throw from experiment to serial production...

Theremin was offered to create a television system for border military units. But it did not reach the army: the country’s technical base was too poor. Therefore, the developments were kept secret, and the title of pioneer in the field of television a few years later went to an emigrant from Russia, Vladimir Zvorykin.

Knocked out "Grand Opera" and others

In the summer of 1927, an international conference on physics and electronics was held in Frankfurt am Main. The young Country of Soviets needed to present itself with dignity. And Theremin with his instrument became the trump card of the Russian delegation. He amazed the Europeans with his report on the theremin and with classical music concerts for the general public: “heavenly music”, “voices of angels” - the newspapers were choked with delight.

Invitations from Berlin, London, and Paris followed one after another. Theremin's most enchanting concert took place in Paris: the conservative Grand Opera theater for the first time in its history gave the hall to some unknown Russian for the whole evening. Such an influx of spectators (even standing tickets for boxes were sold) and such success in the theater have not been seen for 35 years...

Meanwhile, Joffe, who was in the USA at that time, received orders from several companies to produce 2000 theremins with the condition that Theremin would come to America to supervise the work. But instead of one business trip, Lev Sergeevich received two: from the People’s Commissar of Education Lunacharsky and from the Military Department.

Trump on the table!

And so the handsome young Lev Theremin sails on the ocean liner Majestic to America. The world-famous violinist József Sighetti, who was sailing on the same ship, became envious of the fees that the largest businessmen in America offered Theremin for the honor of being the first to hear the theremin. But the inventor gave the first concert for the press, scientists and famous musicians. The success was impressive, and with the permission of the Soviet authorities, Theremin founded the Teletouch studio company in New York for the production of theremins.

Things went brilliantly. Theremin concerts took place in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Boston. Thousands of Americans enthusiastically began to learn to play the theremin, and General Electric Corporation and RCA (Radio Corporation of America) bought licenses to produce it.

The “great crisis” that broke out at the turn of the 1930s ruined many rich people. But he didn’t knock Theremin down. Of course, the people had no time for music, but the inventive Russian had one more trump card - a security alarm. Teletouch Corporation quickly refocused on its production, and Theremin volume sensors were torn off with their hands. They were even installed in the terrible US prison Sing Sing and in Fort Knox, where the American gold reserves were kept. So everything was fine with business, but there was a crisis in the music field.

Cake for a violinist with a theremin

In the enthusiastic chorus of Theremin's fans, voices of dissatisfaction began to be heard: at concerts he was shamelessly out of tune. The fact is that playing the theremin purely is incredibly difficult: the performer has no reference points (like, for example, the keys of a piano or the strings of a violin) and has to rely solely on hearing and muscle memory.

Theremin clearly lacked performing skills. A virtuoso was needed here. And then fate brought him together with a young emigrant from Russia, Clara Reisenberg. As a child, she was known as a miracle child, a violinist with a great future. But either she overplayed her hands, or because of a hungry childhood, she had to part with the violin: her muscles could not withstand the load. But the theremin was within reach, and Clara quickly learned to play it. There was also a whirlwind romance, especially since Theremin was free by that time.

For the first time, Theremin married the lovely Katya Konstantinova in 1921, and before coming to America, their family life was smooth and stable. But in New York, Katya was able to find work only in the suburbs and came home once a week. After six months of such “family” life, a young man came to Theremin and said that he and Katya loved each other. And then it became known that the visitor was a member of a fascist organization. And the Soviet embassy demanded that Termen divorce his wife. Which is what he did. Therefore, by the time of his meeting with Clara, Lev Sergeevich was open to new love.

He is 38 years old, she is 18. They were a luxurious couple, they loved to go to cafes and restaurants. Lev Sergeevich courted her very beautifully and loved to surprise his girlfriend with various miracles. For example, for her birthday, he gave her a cake that rotated around its axis and was decorated with a candle that lit up when approaching it.

The beautiful romance was not destined to end with a wedding. Clara chose someone else - Robert Rockmore, a lawyer and successful impresario, so her musical career was secured.

Why do walls float?

And Theremin plunged headlong into his work. Upon his arrival in America, he rented a six-story mansion on 54th Avenue for 99 years. In addition to personal apartments, it housed a workshop and a studio. Here Lev Sergeevich often played music with Albert Einstein: the physicist on the violin, the inventor on the theremin. Einstein was fascinated by the idea of ​​combining music and spatial images. And Theremin figured out how to do this: he invented the rhythmicon, a light-musical instrument. Huge transparent wheels with a geometric pattern printed on them rotated in front of a strobe light. As soon as the musician changed the pitch of the sound, the frequency of the strobe flashes and the patterns changed - the spectacle was impressive. Well, the fantasy began when the walls of the studio rose and fell. Of course, not for real, but with the help of a trick of light. The spellbound visitors gasped in surprise!

Rumors about these experiments attracted many famous people to the studio. Among Theremin's guests were millionaires DuPont, Ford and Rockefeller. However, Termen himself by the mid-30s was included in the list of twenty-five celebrities of the world. And he was even a member of the millionaires' club.

Was he really a millionaire? It is not known for certain. Some say that Teletouch Corporation brought huge amounts of money to Theremin personally and to Soviet Russia. And others claim that Theremin was financed by military intelligence. Because the true purpose of his business trip to America was espionage activity.

Famous spy

Every two weeks Lev Sergeevich came to a small country cafe, where two young men were waiting for him. They listened to his reports and gave him new tasks. However, these tasks were not burdensome and did not particularly distract Theremin from his work. And he was already completely carried away by the most fantastic of his ideas - an instrument that gave birth to music from dance. In fact, this is a type of theremin: the sound is created not only by the hands, but also by the movements of the whole body, and the name was given to it accordingly - terpsiton - after the goddess of dance Terpsichore. In this case, each sound corresponded to a lamp of a certain color. Can you imagine what an extraordinary spectacle it was, because any movement of the dancer was echoed by sounds and the flickering of multi-colored lights!

To create a concert program, Theremin invited a group of dancers from the African American Ballet Company. Unfortunately, it was not possible to achieve harmony and accuracy from them, and the project had to be postponed. But in this troupe danced the beautiful mulatto Lavinia Williams, who captivated Lev Sergeevich not only as a ballerina, but also as a woman. Theremin decided to get married.

It never occurred to him that marriage to a black woman would radically change his life. But as soon as the lovers registered their marriage, the doors of many houses in New York were closed to Theremin: America did not yet know political correctness. He lost informants, which caused serious dissatisfaction with Soviet intelligence. And in 1938, Theremin was ordered to immediately leave for Russia. Lavinia was told that she would come to her husband on the next ship.

The spouses did not see each other again. And Termen kept the marriage certificate issued by the Russian embassy in America until the end of his days.

Kirov's killer

Ten years after leaving Russia, Theremin arrived in Leningrad. And it turned out that no one needed him: there were almost no old workers left at the Physico-Technical Institute. Theremin went to look for work in Moscow, but on March 15, they came for him to a hotel near the Kievsky railway station with an arrest warrant.

In the Butyrka prison, the investigator told Theremin that he, as a defector, would, of course, be shot if he did not cooperate. A month later, Theremin “admitted” that, together with a group of astronomers, he planned the murder of Kirov. His version was this: Kirov (who was already dead by that time!) was going to visit the Pulkovo Observatory. Astronomers planted a landmine in a Foucault pendulum. And Theremin, using a radio signal from the USA, was supposed to blow it up as soon as Kirov approached the pendulum. The investigator was not even embarrassed by the fact that Foucault’s pendulum is not in Pulkovo, but in the Kazan Cathedral! Lev Sergeevich was given eight years and sent to Kolyma.

But Termen spent only a year in the camp. He was appointed senior over the criminals who carried stones from the mountain and paved the road with them. Theremin mechanized the process by building a wheelbarrow with a monorail. Work is in full swing! The brigade's rations were tripled, and the papers about the unusual prisoner were sent to Moscow.

In the winter of 1940, he was transferred to Omsk, to the Tupolev aviation sharashka, where throughout the war he developed equipment for radio control of unmanned aircraft and radio beacons for naval operations. But the crowning achievement of his stay in the sharashka was the invention of the Buran listening system.

Trojan horse from the pioneers

On Independence Day, July 4, 1945, the American Ambassador to Russia Averell Harriman received a wooden panel depicting an eagle as a gift from Soviet pioneers. The panel was hung in the ambassador's office. And then the American intelligence services lost peace: a mysterious information leak began. Only 7 years later, a mysterious cylinder with a membrane inside was discovered inside the gift. For a year and a half, engineers struggled to solve this trick. The secret turned out to be simple: an invisible ray was directed from the house opposite to the office window, and the membrane, oscillating in time with the speech, reflected it back, and it was recorded on a special device.

Then Theremin improved his Buran so much that the membrane was no longer needed - its role was played by window glass. Rumor has it that Buran is still in service with our secret services.

The Soviet government highly appreciated the merits of the inventor - in 1947, the prisoner (!) was awarded the Stalin Prize, 1st degree. And after his release, Termen was given a two-room apartment on Leninsky Prospekt.

It seemed that the stupid and evil misunderstanding was over and now the inventor would be showered with honors. But Theremin did not receive any official titles; all his patents were covered with the stamp “Soviet secret”. And Lev Sergeevich continued to work in secret KGB laboratories. Soon he found himself a new wife there - a young typist Masha Gushchina, who gave birth to twin daughters.

For almost twenty years, Theremin was engaged in specific developments for the all-powerful department. At first, these were promising works - speech recognition systems, voice identification, military hydroacoustics. But over time, priorities have changed. As Theremin recalled, “supposedly in the West they came up with devices for determining where flying saucers were, and we also had to fight over such devices. I understood that this was a scam, and I couldn’t refuse - and one day I decided that it was better to retire.” .

The employers did not object, considering that they could not take anything from the old man, and in 1964 Termen finally parted with the special services, under whose invisible eye he had been for almost 40 years.

Theremin doesn't die!

70 years old. It seemed like life was over. But Lev Sergeevich, true to his motto “Theremin never dies!” (this is how his last name is read backwards), gets a job in the acoustic laboratory of the Moscow State Conservatory. Nothing disturbed the old man’s measured life until, in 1968, a New York Times correspondent, preparing a report on the Moscow Conservatory, learned that the great Theremin was alive.

This sensational news in America was perceived as a resurrection from the dead: all American encyclopedias indicated that Theremin died in 1938. A flood of letters from his overseas friends poured into Lev Sergeevich’s name, and reporters from various newspapers and television companies tried to meet with him. The conservative authorities, frightened by such interest in the modest person of the mechanic, simply fired him. And all the equipment was thrown into the trash.

For the last twenty-five years, Theremin has worked in the acoustics laboratory of Moscow State University. Mechanic 6th category. He slowly worked on his theremins - he restored some, improved some, and even came up with one in which the sound through a system of photocells arose from just the musician’s glance.

Lev Sergeevich also frequented the Scriabin Museum, where he took part in the creation of a musical synthesizer. The long-awaited time has come - the era of electronic instruments. Theremin seemed to catch ideas out of thin air that sometimes seemed utopian. And later it turned out that the Japanese company Yamaha was working on these ideas independently of him.

Well, Lev Sergeevich taught his niece Lida Kavina to play the theremin. By the age of twenty, she had become a virtuoso performer and toured all over Europe with concerts. In 1989, Theremin was invited to the Experimental Music Festival in France. And he, 93 years old, went!

But most of all, at the end of his life, Termen surprised those around him with his entry into the CPSU: “I promised Lenin.” Lev Sergeevich tried before, but for “terrible crimes” he was not accepted into the party. So Termen became a communist only in 1991, simultaneously with the fall of the USSR.

a swan song

In 1951, future American director Steve Martin saw the film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” But it was not the aliens that shocked him, but the unearthly sound of the theremin that accompanied the action. For several years he communicated with his brother using sounds similar to those produced by a theremin. And many years later, in 1980, Steve Martin was looking for music for his film. And his search led him to Clara Rockmore, who told the director about the legendary inventor. It was then that Martin had the idea to create a documentary film about Theremin. But 11 years passed before he was able to come to Moscow, meet Theremin and invite him to America. The elderly maestro walked confusedly through the streets of New York and had difficulty recognizing the places where ten years of his life had passed. The most exciting thing was the meeting with Clara Rockmore. Clara did not agree to her for a long time - years, they say, do not make a woman beautiful.

Hey, Klarenok, how old are we! said 95-year-old Theremin.

After America, he went back to the Netherlands for the Schoenberg-Kandinsky festival, and, returning to Moscow, found his room in a communal apartment in complete destruction - broken furniture, broken equipment, trampled records. Apparently, one of the neighbors really needed his room. The daughter took Lev Sergeevich to her place. But his vitality dried up, and a few months later, on November 3, 1993, Theremin died.

Steve Martin's film "The Electronic Odyssey of Lev Theremin" was released after the death of the hero. But his theremins still live today. Among the many companies producing them is Moog Mugic, owned by the inventor of the first synthesizer, Robert Moog. He once said about Theremin: “He’s just a genius who is capable of anything!”

He failed in only one thing - to become the national pride of Russia...

Theremin sounds in:

1. album "Territory" by the group "Aquarium"

2. compositions "Good Vibrations" by the pop group "Beach Boys"

3. Hitchcock's film Spellbound ("Charmed")

4. Bill Weider's film "The Lost Weekend"

Termen Lev Sergeevich (Teremin Leon) (1896-1993). Physicist, inventor, musician. In 1920 he created the Theremin electromusical instrument with a completely unusual sound.

In 1926 he invented the electromechanical television. In 1923-1929. worked at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. In 1927, he showed Stalin a television of his own design. In 1931-1938. was the director of a joint-stock company for the production of various Theremin models in the USA. These instruments were used to score many motion pictures in America. Musical works Theremin was performed the best musicians New World (N. Slonimsky, L. Stokowski). D. Shostakovich knew him well.

In 1935, Termen was kidnapped by the OGPU (according to other sources, he collaborated with the OGPU) and taken to the USSR with all his equipment. In Moscow, he worked in a closed design bureau, where he developed equipment for an unmanned aircraft.

According to Theremin’s memoirs, published in 1989 in the newspaper “Top Secret”, on the instructions of L.P. For Beria, he created the “Buran” listening device and installed microphones to listen to Stalin’s apartment.1 Theremin was charged with not only listening to the recorded tapes, but also clearing them of interference and extraneous noise. The equipment designed by Theremin made it possible to record conversations taking place on any floor of the building. Window glass was used as a membrane; a light beam read the sound vibrations of the glass and converted them into electrical signals. The range of the device is one kilometer. Using Theremin's invention, Beria thus tracked Stalin's conversations at his nearby dacha.

The idea of ​​eavesdropping was probably borrowed from Stalin himself. Being the head of the NKVD, Beria could not help but know that the leader was listening telephone conversations even on the “turntable” (automatic telephone exchange with a limited number of numbers, designed to ensure the confidentiality of conversations between government and party leadership). Such telephones were installed in the offices of members of the Central Committee, people's commissars and their deputies; members of the Politburo - also in their apartments. B.G. Bazhanov writes: “In Stalin’s struggle for power, this secret is one of the most important: it gives Stalin the opportunity, by listening to the conversations of all the Trotskys, Zinovievs and Kamenevs among themselves, to always be aware of what they are up to, what they think, and this weapons of colossal importance. Stalin is the only sighted one among them, and they are all blind” (Bazhanov B.G. Memoirs of Stalin’s former secretary. M., 1990. P. 56-57).

In 1938, Theremin was arrested and spent seven years in the camps. For some time he worked in Tupolev’s sharashka on the Yauza. After his release, he worked on secret projects for the military-industrial complex. Since 1966 - researcher at the Department of Acoustics, Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University. Lomonosov. At the same time he worked at the Moscow Conservatory.

In 1974, Theremin was accidentally recognized on the street in Moscow by a correspondent for the New York Times newspaper and wrote an article about him (in the USA it was believed that he died in the Gulag). As a very old man, he came to America again, visited his former studio, met his students. He received a prize for his inventions.