Electronic and Experimental Music: Pioneers in ... - Aaaaarg

56 ELECTRONIC AND EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC
Upon the world premiere of Ecuatorial in New York in 1934, favorable
reviews in both the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune remarked on
the power and expressiveness of the music. They also described the sound of the
fingerboard Theremin variously as “mere caterwauling” and “piercingly
shrieking.” 12 Although the original score called for the specially designed
Theremins, Varèse substituted two Ondes Martenot for the fingerboard
Theremins when he revised it in 1961, 13 possibly because fingerboard Theremins
were no longer available and the inventor, having disappeared into Russia, was
not around to resurrect them.
Interest in Theremin’s work quieted as the ‘30s unfolded and the depression
took hold. Despite his fortunate association with the Rosens, Theremin was
constantly in a state of debt and trying to find additional work to remain solvent.
Complicating matters even more was a secret that even his beloved Rosens did
not know. Theremin was a Russian spy and had been passing American
technological secrets to the Soviet Union since his arrival in America in 1927. 14
As 1938 arrived, he had been living in the States for ten years on a long-sinceexpired
visa. Time was running out on him. As the intoxicating excitement of
living and working in New York City was gradually supplanted by fewer and
fewer projects and less and less income, he must have felt increasingly like a
man in self-exile. When he became unable to pay his rent, Lucie Rosen’s
husband was finally forced to threaten the inventor with eviction. Before that
could happen, Theremin suddenly left the country—some say under Soviet arrest
—and was not heard from again for almost thirty years. 15 His parting gesture
before disappearing was to finish the second of two custom-made Theremins that
he had agreed to make for Lucie. One of his assignments back in the mother
country was to create a new type of electronic surveillance device: the wireless
bug.
The last instrument that Theremin constructed for Rosen was befitting of his
wealthy patron. It was a somewhat smaller “traveling” model with a lustrous
finish of lacquered ebony in the style of Chinese cabinetry. The speaker cabinet
matched the instrument and they both had black velvet dust covers. The top of
the instrument was less severely angled than the RCA model and had a music
stand built in. There was also a means of visually previewing the pitch in the
form of a neon tube, which could be viewed through a small hole in the top of
the cabinet. A well-trained performer such as Rosen could associate the glowing
color of this tube with a pitch range, presumably silencing the instrument with
the left hand until the right hand found its mark.
Although its inventor was nowhere to be found, his famous instrument lived
on.
After twenty-five years of concert-hall appearances, the Theremin next made a
sidelong leap into the public consciousness through its use in motion picture
soundtracks. Composer Miklós Rózsa (1907–1995) wanted to use a Theremin in
his soundtrack for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, released in 1945. He first
offered the job to Clara Rockmore, but the Theremin virtuoso declined the offer,