"... they stand on the gleaming floor, calling music out of the air. A Theremin band, a woman with many voices, an avantgardist and an old man fashion the story of the Theremin instrument and its Russian inventor.
Polyphonic sound images and electroacoustic sounds add color to the black & white scenes of the narrative. Music, art, technology."

‘I began studying electricity at seven, and when I was nine I played the cello. But I noticed a vast difference between the actual music and the mechanical way in which it was produced. In some way or another I wanted to link my beloved electricity with music.
As a young man I was interested in high frequencies and in magnetic forces via transformers. I became a physicist and the head of a radiological laboratory in St. Petersburg. Here I developed electric systems that reacted to a human being that approached within 4-5 metres of a wire.

Based on the same principles of interference between high-frequency waves I developed a musical instrument with a range of sound that varied from three to four octaves, depending on the distance of the hands from the electrode. In such a way, sound is produced on an invisible string by varying the distance of the hand from 10 to 50 centimetres for each octave, or by moving wrist and fingers. A movement reminiscent of that of the conductor when conducting an orchestra.’
This was in 1920. One of the first electro-acoustic instruments had been dis-covered. It has since become known as Theremin.

The Theremin performance is the tale of the Russian physicist and inventor Leon Theremin (1896-1993). He was a pioneer within the physical sciences and the first electronic music apparatus in the early Soviet Union, which still believed in Utopia. He achieved fame in a Europe where world expositions were casting representatives for the new age. He traveled to USA and settled in New York in order to proliferate and develop his inventions – there where all the great artists and scientists of the world met.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he went back to the Soviet Union, where he disappeared into thin air. Caught in the political system, he had to endure a period in a prison camp in Gulag, after which he was forced to work for the state, developing eavesdropping equipment for espionage purposes and working on the Sputnik space programme, etc.

He never returned to his musical instruments even when working as a technical employee at the Moscow Academy of Music. ‘Electricity is not good for music – electricity should be used to execute people in the electric chair,’ was the official attitude, and all his instruments at the academy were destroyed.

Until his death, he continued to work with electronics that was unrelated to music – whilst the musical instruments he had invented were developed into new electronic tools by others.
The Theremin itself was initially used for producing classical music, then for terrifying sounds in the B films of the 1940s and 1950s and for breakthrough sounds in the pop and rock music of the 1970s.
Now it is being used as an experimental instrument in films, plays and present-day noise-bands.

A Theremin band features in the performance. They stand like silhouettes on a gleaming floor and pluck live music out of the air. The Theremin is played solo or along with a violin and a cello – seeking a common tonality. Three children as musicians concentrate on finding the right note.
A woman speaks with many voices and tells the story of the inventor’s life. A young man visualizes the force-field through motion and position. An old man listens and imagines it all to himself: I will live forever.

Voices and music combined in a wide range of electronic modulations, shaped by a skillful listening. A journey through the musical landmarks of the 20th century has begun.

Compositions of polyphonic sound-images fill the room, continue the narrative and transform the monophonic sound of the Theremin into a musical journey, inspired by the curiosity that led to the discovery of the instrument.

You are listening to the sound of a century..