“The theremin specif­i­cal­ly, and Leon Therem­in’s work in gen­er­al is the biggest, fat­test, most impor­tant cor­ner­stone of the whole elec­tron­ic music medi­um. That’s were it all began.” — Robert Moog

In the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the theremin — patent­ed by its name­sake inven­tor Leon Theremin (Lev Sergeye­vich Ter­men) in 1928 — became some­thing of a nov­el­ty, its sound asso­ci­at­ed with sci-fi and hor­ror movies. This is unfor­tu­nate giv­en its pedi­gree as the first elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ment, and the only musi­cal instru­ment one plays with­out touch­ing. Such facts alone were not enough to sell the theremin to its first poten­tial play­ers and lis­ten­ers. The inven­tor and his pro­tege Clara Rock­more real­ized they had proved the theremin was not only suit­able for seri­ous music but for the most beloved and well-known of com­po­si­tions, a strat­e­gy not unlike the Moog synthesizer’s pop­u­lar­iza­tion on Wendy Car­los’ Switched on Bach.

Pho­to by Sci­ence Muse­um Group
© The Board of Trustees of the Sci­ence Muse­um, shared under Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion Non­Com­mer­cial-Share­Alike 4.0 License

For Theremin and Rock­more, demon­strat­ing the new instru­ment meant more than mak­ing records. When he arrived in the Unit­ed States in 1928, the inven­tor had just wrapped a long Euro­pean tour. He showed off his new musi­cal device in the U.S. at the New York Phil­har­mon­ic. “At first, Therem­in’s instru­ments were lim­it­ed to just a few that the inven­tor him­self per­son­al­ly made,” notes RCATheremin.

He then “trained a small group of musi­cians in the art of play­ing them.” The sound began to catch on with such pop­u­lar musi­cians as croon­er Rudy Val­lée, “who devel­oped such a fond­ness for the theremin,” writes Theremin play­er Char­lie Drap­er, “that he com­mis­sioned his own cus­tom instru­ment from Leon Theremin, and fea­tured it in per­for­mances of his orches­tra, The Con­necti­cut Yan­kees.”

Pho­to by Sci­ence Muse­um Group
© The Board of Trustees of the Sci­ence Muse­um, shared under Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion Non­Com­mer­cial-Share­Alike 4.0 License

In the same year that Val­lée and Charles Hen­der­son released their pop­u­lar song “Deep Night,” Theremin grant­ed pro­duc­tion rights to the instru­ment to RCA, and the com­pa­ny pro­duced a lim­it­ed test run of 500 machines. As RCATheremin points out, these were hard­ly acces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son:

Fac­to­ry-made RCA Theremins were first demon­strat­ed in music stores in sev­er­al major U.S. cities on Octo­ber 14, 1929 and were mar­ket­ed pri­mar­i­ly in 1929 and 1930. Theremins were lux­u­ry items, priced at $175.00, not includ­ing vac­u­um tubes and RCA’s rec­om­mend­ed Mod­el 106 Elec­tro­dy­nam­ic Loud­speak­er, which brought the total cost of buy­ing a com­plete theremin out­fit up to about $232.00. This trans­lates to about $3,217 in today’s cur­ren­cy.

The pro­hib­i­tive price of the RCA Theremin would doom the design when the stock mar­ket crashed lat­er that year. Oth­er fac­tors con­tributed to its demise, such as a “sig­nif­i­cant mis­cal­cu­la­tion on the part of RCA,” who encour­aged “the per­cep­tion that the theremin was easy to play.” Adver­tis­ing copy claimed it involved “noth­ing more com­pli­cat­ed than wav­ing one’s hands in the air!”

As mas­ter­ful play­ers, Theremin and Rock­more might have made it look easy, but as with any musi­cal instru­ment, true skill on the there­in requires tal­ent and prac­tice. To adver­tise the new com­mer­cial design by RCA, Theremin him­self appeared in “the rel­a­tive­ly new medi­um of sound film” in 1930, play­ing Hen­der­son and Val­lée’s “Deep Night” (top). Drap­er and pianist Paul Jack­son recre­ate the moment just above, on a ful­ly restored RCA theremin nick­named “Elec­tra.”

Only around 136 of the RCA theremins sur­vive, some of them made by Theremin him­self and oth­ers by dif­fer­ent engi­neers. They are now among the rarest elec­tric devices of any kind. See one of them, ser­i­al num­ber 100023, fur­ther up, a res­i­dent of the Nation­al Sci­ence and Media Muse­um in Brad­ford, UK, and learn much more about the rare RCA Theremins here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

Wendy Car­los Demon­strates the Moog Syn­the­siz­er on the BBC (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

“Sub­tle and bril­liant at the same time, they are a micro­cosm of Baroque music, with an aston­ish­ing­ly vast sam­ple of that era’s emo­tion­al uni­verse.” — Ted Libbey 

The port­fo­lio, the demo, the head shot, the resume…. These are not mate­ri­als made for gen­er­al con­sump­tion, much less the praise and admi­ra­tion of pos­ter­i­ty. But not every appli­cant is Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, who wrote his six Bran­den­burg con­cer­tos, in essence, “because, like pret­ty much every­one through­out his­to­ry, Bach need­ed a job,” notes String Ova­tion. In 1721, he applied for a posi­tion with the Mar­grave of Bran­den­burg, younger broth­er of King Fred­er­ick Wil­helm I of Prus­sia, by send­ing the music: “It’s one of the few man­u­scripts that Bach wrote out him­self, rather than give to a copy­ist…. At the time, Bach was the Kapellmeis­ter in the small town of Cöthen. Work­ing for His Roy­al High­ness would have been a seri­ous­ly upward move.”

He didn’t get the job. Indeed, it seems his appli­ca­tion was ignored, and near­ly lost sev­er­al times through­out his­to­ry. Now, Bach’s call­ing cards are some of the most vir­tu­oso com­po­si­tions of Baroque music we know. “Each con­cer­to is a con­cer­to grosso, a con­cer­to that’s a con­tin­u­ous inter­play of small groups of soloists and full orches­tra…. The range of instru­ments with solos through­out the six con­cer­tos was designed to give oppor­tu­ni­ties to show the poten­tial of near­ly every instru­ment in the orches­tra. Even the recorder got a solo.” The six togeth­er present them­selves as an anthol­o­gy of sorts, “a Baroque musi­cal trav­el­ogue mov­ing through ‘the court­ly ele­gance of the French suite, the exu­ber­ance of the Ital­ian solo con­cer­to and the grav­i­ty of Ger­man coun­ter­point.’”

These pieces do not only demon­strate Bach’s com­po­si­tion­al mas­tery; they also rep­re­sent his “ulti­mate view,” as the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety points out, “of the most impor­tant large-scale instru­men­tal genre of his day: the con­cer­to.” In the third of these works, for exam­ple, he makes the “sur­pris­ing” choice to com­pose for “three vio­lins, three vio­las, three cel­los and bas­so con­tin­uo. In oth­er words, 3x3, which is a ratio­nal choice you would expect from a mod­ernist like Pierre Boulez, rather than a Baroque com­pos­er like Bach.” In order to play these pieces the way Bach intend­ed them to be heard, Ted Libbey writes at NPR, they must be played on the orig­i­nal instru­ments for which he com­posed, some­thing a grow­ing num­ber of ensem­bles have been doing.

Voic­es of Music, one of the most promi­nent ensem­bles recov­er­ing the orig­i­nal sounds of Bach’s time, per­forms Con­cer­to Num­ber Three in G Major at the top and Con­cer­to Num­ber Six in B Flat just above, anoth­er sur­pris­ing arrange­ment for the time. The final Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to also upsets the musi­cal order of things again: “Vio­lins — usu­al­ly the gold­en boys of the orches­tra,” writes the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety, “are con­spic­u­ous by their absence! Instead, two vio­las play the lead­ing role. As the high­est parts, they ‘play first fid­dle’ as soloists, sup­port­ed by two vio­la da gam­bas, a cel­lo, dou­ble bass and harp­si­chord.” The Mar­grave of Bran­den­burg, it seems had lit­tle time or inter­est, and nev­er had these pieces per­formed by his ensem­ble, which may have lacked the skill and instru­men­ta­tion. After hear­ing this music in its orig­i­nal glo­ry, we can be grate­ful Bach’s hand­writ­ten resume sur­vived the neglect.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear 10 of Bach’s Pieces Played on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

The Authen­tic Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on Orig­i­nal Man­u­scripts & Played with 18th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Watch J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” Played on the Actu­al Instru­ments from His Time

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness