Theremin Blind
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instruments for Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra,
whose orchestra then performed several concerts using the Theremin (Mattis 4).
He said that Stokowski was not specifically interested in electronics, “but in
what new sounds, what new timbres, what new characters of sounds could be
obtained” (Mattis 6).
He clearly remembered one other notable figure, however, Albert
Einstein. Einstein’s wife, he said, “played piano very well.” Einstein, a violinist,
also played the Theremin, but Einstein’s great interest, Theremin said, was “in
the color of music, the connection between light and music.. . .” Einstein, he
said, was exploring “the connection between music and geometrical figures: not
only color, but mostly triangles, hexagons, heptagons, different kinds of
geometrical figures. He wanted to combine these into drawings.” Theremin
therefore arranged a studio within his house for the physicist’s use, and secured
the services of a painter to help him draw sketches. “He was there for a long
time. All the walls were covered with these paintings, with these drawings,”
Theremin said (Mattis 4).
Although Theremin seemed to be having legal and financial
difficulties, he seemed to be happily—^albeit secretly—remarried, to Lavinia
Williams, a beautiful black dancer from the American Negro Ballet—a company
that he had performed his musical scores for (Glinsky 177). Since interracial
marriage was practically unheard of in the U.S. in 1938, no papers were
registered with the New York marriage license bureau. However the Soviets
officially okayed it. Their relationship alienated certain members of Theremin’s
social community (Glinsky 177). According to Theremin himself, he and
Lavinia were never divorced. He told Mattis that he had been “on assignment”
all the years he was in New York, but considered everything he did unimportant
for military purposes, and asked to be brought back “to the Soviet Union to
make myself useful.” He said he asked many times to return, and after “a whole
year,” the authorities finally agreed, “but they did not take my wife” (Mattis 9).
The marriage, thougli—valid or not—prevented neither party from marrying
again, and having twin girls, Helena (called Lena) and Natasha (called Natalia)
(Mattis 9, 11).
The 1930s were a turbulent time for both America and the Soviets. The
US was reeling from the Great Depression, and the Soviet Union was suffering
under Joseph Stalin’s bloody purges. In 1930, the US had hoped to establish a
healthy trade relationship with the USSR, hoping they would be our ally against
aggressors such as Japan and Germany. But by the late ’30s J. Edgar Hoover and
the Justice Department were actively investigating “un-American activities,”
and there was a growing suspicion of the Soviets and Russian espionage.
Amtorg was being investigated as a possible hot-bed of spies, and even
Theremin’s future in America might have been compromised.
On September 15, 1938, Theremin disappeared, hustled out of his own
New York flat by Soviet agents who took him aboard a ship called the Sta/y
Bolshevik. This was the last time that he and his wife Lavinia would see each