Women of the Ether: ’30s Theremin Virtuosos Worth Revisiting

These days, it’d be rare to witness a crowd causing an uproar over classical music. But that’s what happened in the 1920s when Leon Theremin debuted a groundbreaking, space-controlled instrument that introduced the world to electronically produced sound.

USSR citizen Theremin was born in Saint Petersburg. He began his career as a radio technician but soon developed a keen inventor’s mind worthy of a place in any history book alongside names like Nikola Tesla or Alexander Graham Bell. Whether it was music or radio gadgets, Theremin embodied the 20th century’s prolific, innovative — and sometimes downright weird — spirit.

But this isn’t Theremin, the man’s, story. This is the story of the women who brought Theremin’s famous instrument to life in the public eye. These women were early adopters and collaborators who helped showcase and fine-tune his groundbreaking invention. They excited crowds with fresh takes on pop and classical music seemingly conjured from an ethereal source. In doing so, they not only introduced the theremin to the world but also legitimized electronic music in the eyes and ears of the world for the first time, thus paving the way for the theremin sound to grace Alfred Hitchcock films, Beach Boys hits, and Moog’s product lines.

Note: Distinguishing between the man Leon Theremin and the instrument that shares his name can be confusing. In this article, we’ll refer to the instrument as a “theremin” (lowercase) and the man as “Theremin” (uppercase).

Clara Rockmore: Immigrant, Virtuoso & Thereminist ExtraordinaireAlexandra Stepanoff & Zenaide Hanenfeldt: RCA’s Trade-show DuoAirwaves & Oscars: From The Green Hornet to SpellboundTheremin’s ExitLucie Rosen: Heiress, Performer & Patron of the Arts

Clara Rockmore: Immigrant, Virtuoso & Thereminist Extraordinaire

By all accounts, Clara Rockmore was a distinguished talent years before playing the theremin. But her uncompromising technique would set the gold standard for theremin performance that still endures today.

Born in 1911 in Lithuania, young Rockmore entered the spotlight almost immediately by displaying extraordinary piano talent at the age of three. At four, she studied with Hungarian master violinist Leopold von Auer and became the youngest student ever to enter Russia’s prestigious St. Petersburg Conservatory. There, she spent a few years immersed in violin.

By 1919, two wars abruptly brought Rockmore’s studies to an end. The Soviet Union, chaired by Vladimir Lenin, had seized power but not full territorial control yet. Saint Petersburg’s affluence and European ties made Rockmore’s childhood home a hotbed for White Russian activity and civil war. Her family soon grew weary of the conflict and relocated back to Lithuania.

From this relatively safe location, she and older sister Nadia embarked on multiple foreign tours, performing in Poland, Germany, and France. Unfortunately, the world west of Saint Petersburg was not faring well in those days either. World War I had recently brought staggering death tolls to families and nations, along with lasting disruption to food supplies and more. And so, Rockmore’s family relocated to New York City in 1921, where they found stability, comfort, and even familiar faces among the East Coast’s sizable Russian communities. In addition to relatives, Rockmore was reunited with her violin teacher Auer, and the two continued lessons.

Rockmore’s talent and performance history made it easy for her to connect with notable immigrants of the art world. In 1928, another former St. Petersburg Conservatory student introduced Rockmore to Leon Theremin. At the time, Theremin was something of a technological debutante on the NYC social scene. His early theremin demonstrations enjoyed rave international press and earned him private receptions and social engagements with prominent society members.

Theremin was fond of the United States but also held great pride in his Russian heritage. He and Rockmore instantly connected through their shared Russian language and Saint Petersburg origins. But what was perhaps more significant was Rockmore’s connection with the theremin itself; she recounted an immediate chemistry with the instrument. Her violinist hands “could do things immediately that probably [other] people couldn’t.” For now, there were sparks but no flame; she was still committed to violin studies and performances with her sister.

Then, in 1928, her violin career suffered an abrupt, unexpected setback. At not even 20 years of age, Rockmore’s right hand ominously grew weak amid preparations for performances of a challenging, 40-minute Beethoven concerto. This newfound weakness grew, and her lauded precision vanished into the ironclad seals of memories past — every virtuoso’s worst nightmare. Soon, Theremin presented Rockmore with her first theremin, a thoughtful consolation gift that, unlike the violin, could be played without exerting physical contact. The piece was one of 500 consumer models made in 1929 by radio giant RCA.

She wrestled with conflicting interests in the two instruments as the decade closed. In private, she slowly chiseled theremin foundations while refusing to let her violin career extinguish in hopes that she would heal. She recalled making “two or three valiant and brave attempts” to adapt her violin technique, but by 1932, the choice was obvious: she would set aside violin permanently and revisit musical ambition once she’d developed virtuosic theremin expertise.

With an immediately empty performance schedule, Rockmore entered her twenties with a new independence that must’ve felt liberating to the former child prodigy. Perhaps spurred by Theremin and her own nostalgia for the stage, she turned to dancing as her go-to creative outlet. Performances were not an option until her theremin skills matured, but dancing with Leon Theremin in public? Well, that’s just another Tonic Tuesday at the Ritz! The pair became regular dance partners and were frequently seen haunting the clubs and hotels with the best bands.

Clara Rockmore and Leon Theremin pose together at a birthday celebration, 1929

Rockmore recounted Theremin as “a marvelous dancer,” but she was no second fiddle. Her dance moves and musical sensitivity were strong enough to control Theremin’s untamable “terpsitone” — another Theremin invention. Half theremin, half wooden Dance Dance Revolution pad, this now-lost instrument let a dancer conjure music with bodily movements atop a stage-like surface. Head, shoulders, feet, and toes — the terpsitone registered movement with astounding sensitivity. Too much, in fact! Rockmore recalled countless professional dancers testing the terpsitone only to create cacophony. But her legendary musical intuition and developing theremin expertise gave her a winning edge where others failed. Theremin asked Rockmore to demonstrate the terpsitone in an upcoming recital/instrument expo set for Carnegie Hall, and she agreed. Dressed in black and accompanied by a harp, Rockmore gave her debut electronic music performance at Carnegie Hall with a terpsitone rendition of “Ave Maria.”

Other noteworthy oddities at the event included modified theremins tuned to various orchestral instrument ranges, a “rhythmicon” polyrhythmic device much like a primitive drum machine, and the “whirling watcher,” a neon-powered light that emitted lighting synchronized to changing theremin pitch. A wise quip from a New York Times reporter neatly summed up the expo’s scope: “The one thing that perhaps was lacking on the stage was an electrical page turner.”

Rockmore appears throughout the rest of our story, but her lasting contribution can be summarized as one of technique: “aerial fingering,” as she called it. This was a precise method of note articulation that hit a note’s “center” rather than jabbing at an approximate location with the hand and adjusting pitch after the fact. The focus and skill required for this technique on an instrument with no fretboard, keys, or tangible playing surface cannot be understated. In doing so, Rockmore significantly increased her theremin’s tonal range and bolstered the theremin’s reputation among the arts.

Alexandra Stepanoff & Zenaide Hanenfeldt: RCA’s Trade-show Duo

Several women did early work boosting public familiarity with the theremin. Two Russian émigrés — Alexandra Stepanoff and Zenaide Hanenfeldt — played what was likely the first theremin broadcast coast to coast. Stepanoff took lessons with Theremin and performed alongside him as early as 1928, and RCA hired both Stepanoff and Hanenfeldt as theremin demonstrators to work their 1929 product launch.

Stepanoff and Hanenfeldt extolled the theremin at radio expos and shopping centers, including demonstrations at Manhattan’s once-towering Wanamaker’s department store. Private press demonstrations often preceded appearances to generate attention.

Alexandra Stepanoff performs for an NBC radio broadcast

As early adopters of above-average skills, both women made exceptional spokespeople. What’s more, Stepanoff had practically no musical experience beyond singing. Her inexperience neatly aligned with RCA’s marketing materials, which touted the theremin’s accessibility to those with musical interest but no musical training. It would unleash their potential! — an almost fatal assertion given the theremin’s notoriously difficult reputation: the fretless bass of synths?

Marketing efforts aren’t always noteworthy, but Stepanoff and Hanenfeldt’s work distributed electronic music via national radio as early as 1929. The NBC network broadcasted the pair’s daily demonstrations at the eighth annual Chicago Radio Show. In October of 1929, the women entertained the Boston Radio Exposition for a week, followed by a broadcast performance on Boston’s WBZ station. The theremin, broadcast over radio, introduced thousands if not millions of listeners to electronic music for the first time. For the record, Hanenfeldt contributed to an untitled RCA promo disc in 1930. Hear her perform below in “I’m a Dreamer. Aren’t We All?” and “Love. Your Spell Is Everywhere.”

Airwaves & Oscars: From The Green Hornet to Spellbound

Different theremin camps grew distinct during the ’30s and ’40s. The Stepanoff-Hanenfeldt duo’s familiar pop tune performances sometimes felt divorced from Rockmore’s classical repertoire. Virtuosos like Rockmore interpreted sheet music, while others had a more flexible approach detached from usual definitions of performance; such players, often working professionals, found themselves using the theremin to enhance songs, films, and radio. Little evidence suggests this divide resulted in hostilities beyond standard musician shoptalk, but it’s fruitful to consider, nonetheless.

In 1938, the radio drama The Green Hornet debuted on Detroit’s airwaves. The city was an early hotspot for radio drama. Green Hornet‘s creators recently had big success with their syndicated Lone Ranger book series, which spawned 2,956 episodes with listener stats in the millions. The new Green Hornet would equally impress with a run from 1938 to 1952. The series followed a journalist leading a double life as a vigilante crime-fighter chasing Prohibition-era outlaws. The show distinguished itself with theremin sprinkled across its orchestral soundtrack — not always as melodies but often as a low tonal buzzing sound that sharpened the show’s hornet motif. Michigan-based Vera Richardson Simpson performed parts for the show’s entire run. Hear a sample below:

Some, including Rockmore, felt that sound effects cheapened the theremin into “a harbinger of the strange and the weird” used to “evoke dark, spooky, or futuristic realms” — essentially, sound effects denied the theremin’s all-purpose utility. This idea was clearly expressed when Rockmore declined the opportunity of a lifetime in 1945: the chance to do a Hitchcock soundtrack. Hitchcock was hard at work on the romantic psychological thriller Spellbound, and he needed a synergistic soundtrack to match. Hitchcock composer Miklós Rózsa suggested they try the theremin, which had appeared on film soundtracks at least a decade prior. Rózsa, however, would channel Hitchcock’s auteur touch with a challenging score involving complex doubling of theremin and violin, and Rockmore was the natural pick.

[They] weren’t sure whether you ate it or took it for headaches” — Miklós Rózsa describing Hitchcock’s first theremin impression

Unfortunately, Rockmore declined under the impression that Spellbound would use the theremin menacingly “for effects of scaring people.” She recalled thinking, “[scaring] wasn’t my approach. I thought, let anybody else do that.” Later, she would view this as an unfortunate misunderstanding, partially because she couldn’t preview the score beforehand. Spellbound‘s Oscar-winning part ultimately went to a name plucked from the local musicians’ union registry. The film’s score arguably reconciled the virtuoso and sound-effects camps with a melodic appeal that leveraged the theremin’s inherent flaws for cinema gold. Rockmore said as much in a later interview as she stated that “Spellbound happened to be a very charming melody... [I] wouldn’t hesitate to play it today.”

Check out a modern performance of selections from the Spellbound soundtrack, performed on the same theremin used to track the score:

Theremin’s Exit

The rest of our story requires a brief look at Theremin’s departure from the United States. In December of 1938, the inventor boarded a Soviet cargo steamer in secret, forever leaving New York for the USSR. Because of the secrecy, past speculators (including some of Theremin’s associates) asserted that Joseph Stalin engineered a kidnapping. But with 20/20 hindsight, recent research presents the real story.

Theremin went on the lam for extremely classic reasons. His financial affairs, as well as his standing with the US government, were in shambles. In 1934, an FBI memo flagged Theremin as a person of interest. The alert came from the Bureau of Immigration. A growing paper trail alerted original FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s G-men that Theremin had severely overstayed a work trip that began 10 years prior as a mere musical tour. Statistically speaking, Theremin’s move was hardly uncommon for the day. From 1936 to 1938, twice as many Russians left the United States as they entered, and that’s just the official count. 

Beyond legal scrutiny, Theremin was broke. RCA declined to renew contracts in 1930 after a test run of 500 theremins. Sales were respectable yet unprofitable. Other twists of nasty luck? The 1929 “Black Tuesday” stock market crash launched the Great Depression within weeks of the RCA theremin’s release. And in 1931, electronics inventor Lee de Forest successfully sued RCA and Theremin using a 1915 patent on music-making devices powered by vacuum tubes. And then there was Theremin’s housing, which brings us to Lucie Rosen.

Lucie Rosen: Heiress, Performer & Patron of the Arts

Between financial woes and the Great Depression, Lucie Bigelow Rosen kept Theremin afloat in the 1930s. Born in 1890, Rosen’s well-connected family of ambassadors and import/export tycoons taught her to aim high. She’d married Walter Bigelow Rosen, a Harvard-educated banker and attorney with whom she shared deep artistic sympathies and deep pockets. Together, they enjoyed a Renaissance lifestyle packed with music, world travel, and fine art.

An early photograph of a young Lucie Rosen circa 1915

Rosen “discovered” the theremin in the 1920s while she was vacationing abroad. Press surrounding Theremin’s early public demonstrations impressed her, and she wanted to be involved. Upon Theremin’s New York arrival, she wasted no time joining his inner circle. After a mere six months of lessons, she was performing alongside him in an ensemble at Carnegie Hall.

Ensemble preparations often took place at Theremin’s Plaza Hotel residence, and Rosen marveled at seeing the scope of his creations. Primitive TVs, oscilloscopes, and motion-activated mechanisms — perhaps she’d discovered the next great American inventor? But these were hardly living quarters for such work! Rosen soon felt that Theremin’s financial stress and cluttered quarters were robbing the world of a unique talent, which is evident in a letter she wrote to John D. Rockefeller Jr. on the matter:

“We saw him giving up one thing after another without explanation and felt this was a waste... many interesting things are not immediately profitable, and the depression came when no commercial interests felt speculative.”

Fortunately, as pals of the Rockefellers, Rosen and her husband owned five Manhattan townhouses, one of which they offered to Theremin at below-market rent during difficult times. Here, Theremin would work and live for nearly a decade with five stories of room (the terpsitone even got its own floor!). The arrangement wasn’t stringless, however, as Theremin’s townhouse sat right beside the Rosen primary residence, giving Rosen herself unfettered access to Theremin and his collectible cast of NYC associates.

Against this backdrop, she built reputable theremin technique and would take the instrument international by the mid-1930s. She spent the early ’30s giving theremin performances at high-society events, including regular contributions to the evening prayer of Vespers at St. George’s on Sundays. Her “official” debut came in 1935 and was followed by a three-month-long 1936 European tour where reception was warm in cities like Rome, Munich, Stockholm, and Paris. Encore requests were frequent, and fans in Budapest even rushed the stage demanding more.

During this period, Rosen commissioned numerous original theremin pieces from prominent composers and thus made lasting contributions for future players. But she also had a ruthless side and tended to see herself as the most qualified executor of Theremin’s musical vision. With this attitude occasionally came harmful, elitist tones and strict definitions of who was indeed a theremin player. Specifically, Rosen expressed frustration at people who called themselves theremin players but turned out to be “vaudeville or specialty artists” only capable of playing “simple tunes.” She would likely count some of the previously mentioned women in these ranks.

Stateside, the patronage of Theremin from the Rosens was rosy for a time but soured when his rent went unpaid for several years. Beyond rent, Rosen’s husband grew increasingly concerned with Theremin’s “honor” regarding citizenship and unpaid taxes, fearing that Theremin’s troubles would soon reflect poorly on himself, his wife, and rule-abiding immigrants.

Perhaps more tension came from Theremin’s patching things over with Rockmore after several silent years. He’d developed an unrequited crush during their dancing years that escalated into a rejected marriage proposal and Rockmore’s marriage to a successful entertainment lawyer in 1933. A hurt Theremin retreated and only re-established contact years after hearing Rockmore perform a piece on the radio. Their reunion came as Rockmore’s abilities gained immense public recognition, with one 1937 critic calling her “the greatest virtuoso” and noting her crowning achievement as “nearly total elimination of the glissando” effect bemoaned by countless critics on record. Did the timing of Theremin and Rockmore’s reunion stir resentment in the Rosen camp? Were Rockmore’s rivals benefitting from Rosen patronage for free?

Possible clues lie in Theremin’s final days in America, which were often spent building fresh custom instruments for both women. They had each owned and performed on RCA models for years but had fresh ideas for tailoring features to their evolving skills. The theremin’s syrupy articulation was a constant point of contention with players and the press; therefore, crafting more potential for staccatos was of critical interest. Rosen’s custom “September Theremin” remedied the theremin’s “molasses” with adjustable voltage control, yielding more precise attacks. It also featured an extended five-octave range, six selectable timbral voicings, and adjustable high-frequency harmonics. The “September Theremin” was a tone chaser’s dream; it was built after Rosen previously rejected a custom build earlier that year. The problem? Rockmore was performing on a custom theremin that was virtually identical. Theremin wearied from Rosen’s increasing demands for maintenance instructions and lists of replacement parts.

Rosen returned to Europe once more after World War II’s end, but this would be her last tour abroad. Her only son perished in the war, bringing significant grief that taxed her stamina and playing precision. This decline was noticed by the press. Sadly, her work never received a proper studio treatment, but you can hear one surviving recording below. Today, her and her husband’s contributions live on through their founding of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, an arts-minded destination in upstate New York.

As for Rockmore, her work was eventually given a proper treatment on the 1977 studio album The Art of the Theremin. Its producer was none other than Bob Moog, the founder of Moog Music, and Rockmore’s sister accompanied on piano. This must have been quite a vindication for Moog, as he’d visited Rockmore in the early ’60s to show her one of his early (yet very refined) theremin models: the Vanguard. Unimpressed, she tried to be encouraging but ultimately called Moog’s theremin “a toy,” which must’ve stung quite a bit.

Takeaways from the Ether

Several months ago, I found myself captivated by theremin lore after picking up a copy of Albert Glinsky’s book, Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage. This definitive English-language account of the inventor and his associates was my primary source for dates, quotations, and accounts.

Though our critical conclusions occasionally differ, Glinsky’s book is a must-read piece of electronics history.

As for our protagonists’ ultimate significance, that is of great social relevance. Women like Clara, Lucie, Alexandra, Zenaide, and the rest facilitated countless initial encounters with a watershed invention — a distinct rarity from an era when women had barely begun securing the right to vote in the United States. Should you feel called to explore the ether for yourself, Sweetwater offers a host of theremins — not finicky antiquated tube models but innovative, transistor-based designs for consistent tone and lasting longevity. Send us an ether wave, or, better yet, give a Sweetwater Sales Engineer a call at (800) 222-4700!
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