Spock’s Theremin

Posted by jns on 1 December 2008

This beard belongs to Mr. Spock, the venerable half-Vulcan who served as the science officer aboard the Enterprise in “Star Trek”, the original television series. It is thought that he has another name that is unpronounceable by humans. In grade school I identified quite a bit with Mr. Spock. Personally I hoped to develop the cool, rational demeanor and analytical outlook he displayed; outwardly, it was because my ears were too big for my head and looked vaguely pointy.

It seems that this episode in which Spock had this beard (“Mirror, Mirror“), is the only time Spock was ever portrayed with a beard (and, in fact, the bearded version is a mean, anti-Spock in a parallel universe–his beard kept viewers clued in about which universe events were happening). I think that’s too bad because he looks quite dashing in a beard, but apparently NBC already found the Spock character too “sinister” looking to begin with, and everyone knows beards make men look more sinister.

“Spock’s Beard” is also the name of a progressive rock band I’d never heard of until this morning. Isn’t it splendid to learn new things?

Surely, in addition to the main characters, one of the most recognizable things from the “Star Trek” series was the theme song. Last night, for reasons we may or may not get to, the conversation happened to turn on the question whether the familiar and unusual timbre of the melody was 1) a woman singing; or 2) a theremin, which sounded like a woman singing?

Happily, Wikipedia was there with the answer:

Coloratura soprano Loulie Jean Norman imitated the sound and feel of the theremin for the theme for Alexander Courage’s theme for the original Star Trek TV series. Soprano Elin Carlson sang Norman’s part when CBS-Paramount TV remastered the program’s title sequence in 2006.

I was relieved. I had always thought it was a woman singing, but it did sound remarkably like a theremin. And now we’ve arrived at my real object for this piece: Theremin and his theremin. (He never had a beard, it seems, but I would not be thwarted!)

Léon Theremin (1896–1993), born in Russia, started out as Lev Sergeyevich Termen. His name is familiar to many people these days because he invented the “theremin” (here’s an interesting short piece about the theremin; or course there’s Wikipedia on the theremin, not to mention Theremin World). Theremin invented the instrument in 1919 when he was doing research on developing a proximity sensor in Russia. Lenin loved it. Some ten years later Theremin ended up in New York, patented his instrument, and licensed RCA to build them.

The theremin (played by a “thereminist”) is generally deemed to have been the first ever electronic instrument. It also claims the distinction that it is played by the thereminist without being touched. Instead, the thereminist moves her hands near the two antennae of the instrument, one of which controls pitch and the other of which controls volume; capacitive changes between the antennae and the body of the thereminist affect the frequency of oscillators that alter the pitch and volume of the generated tone.

It is a very simple device and the musical sound is not very sophisticated, and yet there’s something beguiling in watching a good thereminist perform, and something haunting about the sound.

Most people have heard a theremin and typically haven’t recognized it. Most popularly, perhaps, is its appearance in the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”, by Brian Wilson (YouTube performance), although this appears to be a modified theremin played by actually touching it!

My favorite theremin parts are in the score Miklós Rózsa wrote for the Hitchcock film “Spellbound“–fabulous film, fabulous music, for which Rózsa won an Academy Award. (In a bit, a link where you can hear the “Spellbound” music, with theremin). This movie was the theremin’s first outing in such a popular venue–”Spellbound” was the mega-hit, big-budget, highly marketed blockbuster of its day. Later on, of course, the theremin was widely used in science-fiction movies, famously The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet. (On the use of the theremin in film scores, here’s a fascinating article by James Wierzbicki: “Weird Vibrations: How the Theremin Gave Musical Voice to Hollywood’s Extraterrestrial ‘Others’ “).

There seems to have been a resurgence of interest in the theremin in the past few years, or else I’ve just noticed other people’s interest more–the internet can make such things much more visible and seemingly more prevalent. One recent development: a solar-powered theremin that fits in an Altoids box. (Heard, by the way, in the radio program mentioned below.)

Some claim that the new interest began following the release of Steven M. Martin’s 1995 documentary, “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey“. I don’t know about that, but we did watch this film a few weeks ago (we got a copy for rather few dollars–we couldn’t pass it up because of the rather lurid cover art more suitable for something like “Plan Leon from Outer Space” perhaps), and it is an outstanding documentary. It’s about Theremin and the theremin, and the story is very, very engaging. There’s a lot of weird stuff that went on in Theremin’s very long life, like the time in the 1930s (I think) when he was snatched from his office in New York City by Russian agents and spirited away to the Soviet Union. Friends thought he was dead, but he reappeared years later. He’d been forced to work for the KGB developing small listening devices.

A few people of interest also show up in the film: Brian Wilson (enjoy watching him try to finish one thought or get to the end of a sentence), Nicolas Slonimsky, Todd Rundergren, Clara Rockmore, and Robert Moog (of the Moog Synthesize–he started out making theremin kits). Of particular interest, I thought, was Clara Rockmore (1911–1998), thought of as probably the greatest thereminist of all time. Listening to her talk in the film is interesting, but more interesting is watching and listening to her play the theremin. Check out her technique! It’s great stuff.

Now for one last treat. Here is a link to a 90-minute radio program (and information about it), called “Into the Ether“, presented by a British thereminist who performs under the name “Hypnotique”. The program is nicely done and filled with audio samples of theremin performances in a wide variety of genres. If you don’t have the time for the entire thing, I’ll point out that the “Spellbound Concerto”, by Miklós Rózsa, from his music for the film, is excerpted at the very beginning of the program and that’s a must-hear for thereminophiles, whether new or seasoned.