Today the Search engine Google is showing an interactive animated Doodle for the 105th
Birthday of Clara Rockmore.
Clara Rockmore was a Lithuanian expert performer of the theremin, an electronic musical instrument.
Rockmore was a child prodigy on the violin and entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory
at the age of five. She remains to this day the youngest student ever to be admitted to
the institution.
Clara Rockmore made music from thin air. Trained from a young age as a violinist, Rockmore
ultimately gave up the violin due to physical strain. This led her to discover the theremin,
a gesture-controlled instrument named after its inventor, Léon Theremin. Not only did
Rockmore become the instrument's most well-known performer, she also influenced its development.
She convinced Theremin that it should be made more responsive and offer a greater range
of notes (5 octaves instead of 3). Though electronic music was uncommon in formal music
settings in the 1930s, Clara Rockmore performed as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic,
the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Toronto Symphony.
Theremin is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact.
The instrument's controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas that sense
the relative position of the performer's hands and control oscillators for frequency with
one hand, and amplitude (volume) with the other. The electric signals from the theremin
are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker.