The first electronic musical instrument was played without touching it
In 1920, Russian physicist Léon Theremin was researching proximity sensors for the Soviet government when he noticed an audio oscillator changed pitch as his hand moved nearby. Realizing its musical potential, he invented the theremin. Played entirely without physical contact, the instrument relies on two metal antennas that sense the electrical capacitance of the performer's hands—one controlling pitch and the other controlling volume.
An Accidental Song in a Petrograd Laboratory
In 1920, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, a young physicist and trained cellist named Lev Sergeyevich Termen was working at the Physico-Technical Institute in Petrograd. Under the direction of Abram Ioffe, Termen was tasked with measuring the dielectric constants of gases under varying pressures and temperatures. To make these measurements with extreme sensitivity, he designed an apparatus relying on high-frequency vacuum tube oscillators. The equipment produced a high-pitched audio signal whose frequency changed depending on the physical conditions inside a test chamber.
During his experiments, Termen noticed something peculiar. The tone emitted by the oscillator was not only sensitive to the gas inside the apparatus; it also responded to the presence of his own body. As he moved his hands toward or away from the vacuum tube circuit, the pitch of the whine shifted cleanly up and down. Because he had spent years studying classical cello, Termen did not dismiss this interference as noise or experimental error. Instead, he realized he could deliberately position his hand to trace out musical scales and play familiar classical pieces entirely out of the air.
Termen dubbed his invention the etherphone, though it soon became known across Europe and Russia as the thereminvox, and later simply the theremin. In 1922, Termen demonstrated the device to Vladimir Lenin in the Kremlin. Impressed by the combination of cutting-edge radio science and musical performance, Lenin even attempted to play Mikhail Glinka's 'The Skylark' under Termen's physical guidance. The Soviet leadership recognized the instrument as an emblem of modern scientific ingenuity and dispatched Termen on an international tour to showcase Soviet technology.