[.ca] Theremin: ETHER MUSIC AND ESPIONAGE (ISBN 0252072758)

Heavy handing anticommunism mars otherwise good story:
Glinsky has done a great job of compiling the factual story of Leon Theremin and electronic music, particularly the Theremin instrument through the years. I have several reservations. First, the writing style is pedestrian and not terribly stylish or interesting. Second, it would have been nice to have a bit more detail on how the instrument actually works. And last but most serious, Glinsky is obsessed with the evils of communism and spends far too much time sneering at Americans fooled by Stalin and on wallowing in the grotesque history of communism in the USSR than is justified given that the book is about Leon Theremin, not Stalin, Lenin, Beria, Kruschev, etc. etc. He gives us several pages on Beria and his fate, for example, when Beria actually had only an indirect link to Theremin. The point seems to be to portray Beria as an evil man. Fine, but this book is about Leon Theremin, right? My last reservation is that in the end, I still did not feel we ever got to know Theremin. Why he did what he did, what he thought of events in his life, remains a mystery. It may well be that Theremin, a committed communist, was too alien to Glinsky's own imagination for him to be able to write about him with any insight or sympathy. We get, generally, a pretty clinical detachment. This is a fine book for the facts. I cherish it as a solid resource. But Leon Theremin himself remains unknown to us on a personal level, and so as a biography this book falls short.

If you liked the Martin film, you MUST read the book:
After seeing "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey" for the second time last year I was motivated to seek a more thorough biography of this fascinating life. Luckily Glinsky's book was hot off the press. This book is amazing. Theremin's life is so interesting, and the narrative is so engrossing, that it reads like a thriller. Only one that covers a nearly hundred year life. The setting covers revolutionary Russia, roaring twenties NY, depression era NY, Stalinist Russia, the Gulag, the cold war, the sixties, and on and on. The research Glinsky put in is astounding. You get the feeling that there exists no document of this life that he didn't catalog. Yet he writes beautifully and does a wonderful job of bringing the subject to brilliant life. There are so many details I'd love to mention but I wouldn't want to spoil a thing. Anyone who was intrigued by the documentary (which barely scratches the surface) should buy this book and read it. For me, the book has awakened an entire fascination with twentieth century Russia and I'm already reading other non-fiction on the topic. Mr. Glinsky is to be congratulated on a stunning piece of work.

Extraordinary biography of an extraordinary life!:
Mr. Glinsky has done superb research. He writes beautifully. This book is equally important for the cognoscenti as for those who know nothing about Theremin, electronic instruments and the Soviet Union. It is difficult to imagine such a life but it characterizes the 20th century and Glinsky brings it alive in every respect. Theremin was a genius and a private man. Those who knew him in later life (as did I) have no conception of his personality. But Glinsky found those in his early years who make his person come alive. Certainly the best music biography I have ever read......

Electronic Music Through the Century:
You have heard the music of the theremin, but you may not have known it at the time. It is an exceedingly pure tone, electronically generated, which has been used in various ways since the instrument was invented. It was used with distinction in the Hitchcock psychoanalysis thriller _Spellbound_ and in Billy Wilder's _Lost Weekend_, but it is best known for being used for an eerie, futuristic sound in science fiction movies like _The Day the Earth Stood Still_. It was in the background of _The Ten Commandments_ and also was that warbling tone in the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." The theremin was not invented in Hollywood, however; it was invented in Russia in 1920, and had its real heyday in the succeeding decade. The inventor, Leon Theremin, had a life that was too bizarre for a novelist to make up, and finally in _Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage_ (University of Illinois Press) by Albert Glinsky, Theremin has a big, comprehensive biography that does him justice. And he deserves it, for Leon Theremin was the father of electronic music. The book describes his cozy life in tsarist Russia, his introduction of electronic music to Lenin himself, his being sent out on propaganda tours with his instrument, his decade of performing and inventing in the US, his return to Russia not to acclaim but to imprisonment and disappearance in the Gulag, his gadgetry for Soviet espionage, and his return to acclaim as the grand old man of electronic music. Readable and full of color, _Theremin_ not only brings into focus the astonishing events in the life of its subject, presenting him as an inventive genius, persecuted innovator, and citizen of the world. Its fascinating story is a capsule history of a complicated century.

A Thrilling tale of Music History at it's finest:
Dr. Glinsky managed to write a complete factual book and yet have all the action and suspense that you would commonly find in an espionage novel!