Sirens: A Concerto for Theremin and Orchestra

28 min

October 4, 2019
Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Boston, MA
Carolina Eyck, theremin
Boston Modern Orchestra Project
conducted by Gil Rose

theremin solo - 2(II=picc).1.EH.1.bcl.1.cbn - 4.2.3.1 - timp.perc(3) - pno/cel - hp - str

I first met theremin virtuoso Clara Rockmore when I was a very young girl, during one of my frequent visits to her sister, the brilliant pianist Nadia Reisenberg. Nadia was a significant mentor during my early musical development as a pianist and composer until her passing in 1983. When I first heard Clara play her theremin, I was immediately struck by her incomparable tone that suggested a sonic mélange of violin and voice merged with the otherworldly. My affinity for the instrument led Clara to begin teaching me in 1991, when I was 16 years old, inviting Bob Moog to study her theremin (custom built for her by the inventor, Leon Theremin) so that he could build a replica for me, my Moog 91W model.

Upon Clara’s death in 1998, I resolved to realize her vision of the theremin’s admittance onto the roster of serious classical instruments, by creating for it a repertoire of art music that would reveal its hidden yet innate expressive potential and highlight the many various potential dramatic and technical facets of the instrument, aside from more obvious novelty effects such as large multiple-octave glissandi, heavy vibrato and capacity for dynamic extremes. While I have featured the theremin in works for instrumental ensembles of varying sizes and varieties for years, my ultimate goal was to compose a concerto for theremin and orchestra that would feature its timbral versatility and capability to blend within – and solo above – an orchestral music context.

The theremin has many paradoxical qualities. It is an electronic instrument, yet can sound profoundly musical, even human. While it is the forerunner for so many subsequent technological inventions ranging from high security alarm systems to the synthesizer, it also remains the electronic instrument most sensitive to human presence, despite the fact that it is played without being touched. Playing the theremin presents its highly unique challenges and marvels, among them dealing with its imaginary, fluctuating aerial fingerboard (for which having absolute pitch is preferable). Also, dynamics and articulations are achieved inversely, as the default state of the instrument – when at rest – is sound, the hand carving away at its negative space much like a sculptor chisels at stone, through interference within the electromagnetic field. To perform the theremin as the inventor intended was to imprint the human musical capacity and technique onto the non-human: it was to lend soul to a machine.

–Dalit Hadass Warshaw