Ferde Grofe, - March 27, 1892 - April 3, 1972
Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofe, an American composer, attended school in New York and California. His early musical career included playing viola with the Los Angeles Symphony, playing cafe and theater piano and work with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. He became famous as the orchestrator of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and is well known as the composer of such popular works as the "Grand Canyon Suite" and other programmatic works.
Grofe's interest for thereminists is his score for the film "Rocketship X-M" (1950). Appropriately eerie, it does not approach in quality Bernard Herrmann's score for "The Day the Earth Stood Still" or "It Came from Outer Space" (the work of several composers including Henry Mancini). To be fair, this Web site must admit to a certain basic prejudice. Since "Rocketship X-M" was without doubt one of the most trite, execrably bad movies ever made, the writers quit watching it after a short time in the interest of preserving their sanity.
Anis Fuleihan - April 2. 1900 - October 11, 1970.
Born in Kyrenia, Cyprus, Fuleihan moved to the U.S. in 1915 and became a citizen in 1925. A pianist, composer and conductor, he was principally a self-taught composer. He toured the Middle East and lived for awhile in Cairo. Returning to the U.S. in 1928, he was a radio conductor and began composing ballet music for various contemporary groups in New York. Attracting the attention of Eugene Goossens, who premiered his "Mediterranean" Suite, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Many commissions followed along with teaching positions in Beirut, Egypt and Tunis. Never a serialist, he was heavily influenced by Middle Eastern folk music. Fuleihan's "Theremin Concerto" was premiered by the formidable Clara Rockmore with Leopold Stokowski and the New York City Symphony in 1945. In his dissertation Tom Rhea refers to the work as "Concerto for Etherphone and Orchestra."
Wallingford Riegger - April 19, 1885 - April 2, 1961.
Riegger, born in Albany, GA, was born into a musical family. His mother played piano and his father the violin. The Rieggers moved to New York in 1900 and young Riegger began serious study with theorist Percy Goetschius and cellist Alwin Schroeder. In 1907 he went to Berlin for further study and did some conducting as well. In 1917 he returned to the U.S. where he became an instructor in theory and cello at Drake University. He became active in the modern music field and won several prizes and fellowships including an honorary doctorate from the Cincinnati Conservatory.
Riegger worked with Lev Termen in the development of electronic instruments and, after practicing for ten days on the instrument, played Termen's electronic cello in the groundbreaking electronic music concert in 1930. Although critic Olin Downes recognized Riegger's considerable effort in performing on such short notice, Downes' mindset was so opposed to electronic music that his review must be considered biased.
Anyone who wants to read the original review should consult "Theremin presents 'Ether-Wave' Recital," The New York Times, 26 April 1930, 11:3.
Clara Rockmore - March 9, 1911 - May 10, 1998
"I was immediately interested in the possibility of making real music, rather than just sound. The idea of playing a Bach Adagio with a limitless bow, with volume controlled by your musical taste, and, when needed, easily soaring above the full fortissimo of a symphony orchestra by a graceful lifting of the left hand, were the unique possibilties afforded by this wonderbox. Not having anything to touch was such a beautiful, poetic way to play." - Clara Rockmore. Interview with Robert Moog.
Clara Rockmore (nee Reisenberg), the world's best-known theremin virtuoso, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. At age 5 she was the youngest violin student ever admitted to the prestigious St. Petersburg Conservatory where she studied with Leopold Auer, also the teacher of Heifetz and Zimbalist. She and her pianist sister Nadia were touring Europe by the time Clara was 9.
The Russian Revolution disrupted her growing years, and in 1927 she wound up in New York, where Joseph Schillinger introduced her to Lev Termen. Since an inadequate diet during the revolutionary upheaval had caused developmental problems with Clara's bow arm, the theremin was the right solution at the right time for her musical career.
Her first theremin, a gift from Termen, was an RCA with a slow-acting volume circuit. The exasperating lack of flexibility and articulation possibilities caused her to tell Termen that the instrument needed improvements. He was happy to oblige with a theremin which had not only a fast-acting volume antenna but a greatly improved tone. As we know, the rest is history.
Both Lev Termen and Robert Rockmore, a prominent entertainment industry attorney, friend of Eugene O'Neill and Paul Robeson's lawyer and manager, competed for Clara's affections. In 1933 Clara married Robert Rockmore, and Termen subsequently married Lavinia Poole-Williams, an African American ballerina who died in 1988. Clara and Termen remained friends, and in 1934 Clara Rockmore gave her first theremin recital in New York's Town Hall. She continued concertizing until around 1954 and premiered a number of new theremin works.
After years of relative inactivity, moviemaker Steve Martin persuaded her to perform again for his film, Theremin. Ms. Rockmore's long-time engineer, Mike Jasen, and Robert Moog repaired her instrument so that she could play it again. In return, Martin promised her a reunion with Termen, and as moviegoers know, he kept his promise.
Fans of Clara Rockmore and the theremin will definitely enjoy Robert Moog's article and interview, "Theremin Virtuoso Clara Rockmore: Recollections of Genius," KEYBOARD, February 1994, 58 ... ; Robert L. Doerschuk's "Filmmaker Steve Martin Charts the Electronic Odyssey of Leon Theremin," KEYBOARD, February 1994, 51 ... ; "Theremin, Theremin," NEW YORKER, 17 September 1990, 34-36. They should definitely not miss two fine albums, The Art of the Theremin (Delos 1014) with program notes by Robert Moog, and the final three works on her sister Nadia Reisenberg's album, Nadia Reisenberg: An Album of Chamber Music (IPAM 1201). The latter includes the Pastorale from the rarely-heard Fuleihan Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra, which she originally premiered in 1945.
Miklos Rozsa - April 18, 1907-
"... Hitchcock and Selznick hadn't heard of the theremin and weren't quite sure whether you ate it or took it for headaches, but they agreed to try it out ... ." - Miklos Rozsa on his first use of the theremin in a film score.
Miklos Rozsa, born in Budapest, began studying violin at age five, and throughout his school years was active conducting and organizing concerts. Although his obvious talent won musical prizes and honors, he irritated Budapest's musical establishment by demanding respect for Bartok. Although Rozsa graduated from Leipzig Conservatory with honors in 1929, he made a poor living until Arthur Honegger gave him the idea of writing film music.
In 1943 Rozsa began writing film music for Paramount. He was initially not accepted by studio moguls until they realized how much Rozsa's scores enhanced films. Although fascinated by the theremin and ondes martenot for several years, his attempts at incorporating electronic music into scoring were squelched until 1945 when he got a chance to use theremin in SPELLBOUND after ignoring Selznick's incomprehensible instruction to use cymbals for a romantic motif. The original score for SPELLBOUND used a ondes martenot, but one was not availble in the US and Rosza fortuitously substituted a theremin.
The SPELLBOUND score, which won an Academy Award, launched the theremin as the "official Hollywood mouthpiece of mental disorders," in Rozsa's words. Both Rozsa and the theremin continued their mutual spine-tingling career through a number of films including THE RED HOUSE, DARK WATERS, and THE LOST WEEKEND, the scores of which all utilized the theremin sound to create extraordinary suspense and psychological tension. Bernard Herrmann considered the "Screams in the Night" sequence from THE RED HOUSE a notable high point in cinematic scoring. Less well known but also characteristic of Miklos Rozsa's superb musicianship is the meticulous musicological research which he did for his historical film scores such as EL CID and IVANHOE.
A major factor in Rozsa's continuing theremin use was his collaboration with the talented thereminist Dr. Samuel Hoffman , which the composer himself acknowledged in a personal letter to Hoffman. (See Samuel Hoffman's Birthday Cameo for the text of this.)
Want to read more by and about Miklos Rozsa? Check out his entertaining autobiography DOUBLE LIFE (New York: Midas/Hippocrene, 1982) and read his essay, "Music for Historical Films" in James L. Limbacher's FILM MUSIC: FROM VIOLINS TO VIDEO (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1974). Also interesting are Tony Thomas' FILM SCORE: THE ART AND CRAFT OF MOVIE MUSIC (Burbank: Riverwood, 1991), Roy Prendergast's FILM MUSIC: A NEGLECTED ART, 2d. ed. (New York: Norton, 1992), and H. W. Heinsheimer's MENAGERIE IN F SHARP (Garden City: Doubleday, 1949). All these contain Rozsa material.
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