Ivan Dzerzhinsky
Encyclopedia
Ivan Ivanovich Dzerzhinsky (April 9, 1909–January 18, 1978) was a Russia
n composer
. He is notable in that the work for which he best known, his opera Quiet Flows the Don (Timhiy Don), was more successful for its political potential than for any musical distinction.
, Dzerzhinsky had an extended formal background in music. He studied piano with Boleslav Yavorsky
at the First Music Tekhnikum in Moscow
between 1925 and 1929. Afterwards he spent 1930-31 at the Gnesin School as a composition student of Mikhail Gnesin
. Two years at the Leningrad Central Music Tekhnikum followed. There he studied composition first with Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov, then with Pyotr Borisovich Ryazanov
. He then proceeded to the Leningrad Conservatory
for two years of study with Boris Asafiev
.
From 1936 Dzerzhinsky held important administrative positions in the Union of Soviet Composers
as well as in party
politics. In 1948 he was appointed to the central committee of the union
. At various times after 1946, he acted as a deputy to the Leningrad City Soviet
.
, Rachmaninoff
and early Ravel
.In the early 1930s he was influenced by Shostakovich
's music, particular in his Second Piano Concerto, which he wrote in 1934. (This piece was criticized officially much later.)
novel
And Quiet Flows the Don
. According to Leonid's own account, he utilized Sholokhov's work motifs, freely rearranging and addapting to the purpose of accentuating the dramatic aspects of the plot and to condense as much as possible of the novels' social significance within the confines of the operatic format.
This opera was premiered at the Leningrad Malïy Opera Theater
in October 1935. Stalin
saw the work on January 17, 1936 and immediately recognized its propaganda
value. Its subject was heroic and patriotic; it glorified the spirit of the Don Cossacks
, whose support would become necessary in the event of war (a war that, incidentally, seemed increasingly inevitable); and its music was both lyrical and immediately appealing. Sholokhov's novel, whose first edition was the basis of the opera, was later hailed: "...with its substance, construction, style and symbolism [it] is one of the most notable contemporary literary works of the Soviet Union. The author's selected setting is the Don Cossacks, their life and ways, class struggle, schisms and seesaws, that define and evoke the patriarchal order of Cossack life, the first imperialist war, the revolution and people's struggle. The great events of history are made manifest in the quietude and tranquility of Cossack life suffering a total upheaval, degenerating into in a bloody struggle."
Within weeks Quiet Flows the Don was proclaimed a model of socialist realism
in music and won Dzerzhinsky a Stalin Prize (Ironically, Stalin saw Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
at the same theater nine days after attending Quiet Flows the Don. His disapproval of Shostakovich's opera set the stage for its composer's official denunciation, which lasted until Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony
.)
Due at least in part to official praise, Quiet Flows the Don proved wildly successful, reaching its 200th performance in May 1938. However, its undistinguished musical style—lyrical and folkloric
in style but not based on any true folk songs—possessed little potential for future development. Dzerzhinsky wrote his next opera, Virgin Soil Upturned (Podnyataya tselina), in 1937. Also based on a Sholokhov novel, it is tauter dramatically and is similar in musical style to its predecessor. Nevertheless, it failed to repeat the success of Quiet Flows the Don—nor did any of Dzerzhinsky's subsequent operas.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. He is notable in that the work for which he best known, his opera Quiet Flows the Don (Timhiy Don), was more successful for its political potential than for any musical distinction.
Personal life and career
Born in TambovTambov
Tambov is a city and the administrative center of Tambov Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tsna and Studenets Rivers southeast of Moscow...
, Dzerzhinsky had an extended formal background in music. He studied piano with Boleslav Yavorsky
Boleslav Yavorsky
Boleslav Leopoldovich Yavorsky was a Russian musicologist, music teacher, administrator and pianist.Through his teachings and editorial positions he heavily influenced the Soviet music theory. However, outside Soviet circles, he has had little impact....
at the First Music Tekhnikum in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
between 1925 and 1929. Afterwards he spent 1930-31 at the Gnesin School as a composition student of Mikhail Gnesin
Mikhail Gnesin
Mikhail Fabianovich Gnesin was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher.-Life:Gnesin was born in Rostov-on-Don and came from a musical family. His sisters founded the Gnessin State Musical College , in Moscow in 1895. He studied at the St...
. Two years at the Leningrad Central Music Tekhnikum followed. There he studied composition first with Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov, then with Pyotr Borisovich Ryazanov
Pyotr Borisovich Ryazanov
Pyotr Borisovich Ryazanov was a Russian composer, teacher, and musicologist.-Biography:Born in Narva into a musical family, he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition with Nikolay Sokolov and Aleksandr Zhitomirsky, orchestration with Maximilian Steinberg and fugue...
. He then proceeded to the Leningrad Conservatory
Saint Petersburg Conservatory
The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory is a music school in Saint Petersburg. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members and 1,400 students.-History:...
for two years of study with Boris Asafiev
Boris Asafiev
Boris Vladimirovich Asafyev was a Russian and Soviet composer, writer, musicologist, musical critic and one of founders of Soviet musicology.Asafyev had a strong influence on Soviet music. His compositions include ballets, operas, symphonies, concertos and chamber music...
.
From 1936 Dzerzhinsky held important administrative positions in the Union of Soviet Composers
Union of Soviet Composers
The USSR Union of Composers or Union of Composers of the USSR , , was a professional organisation of composers in the Soviet Union...
as well as in party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
politics. In 1948 he was appointed to the central committee of the union
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , abbreviated in Russian as ЦК, "Tse-ka", earlier was also called as the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party ...
. At various times after 1946, he acted as a deputy to the Leningrad City Soviet
Soviet (council)
Soviet was a name used for several Russian political organizations. Examples include the Czar's Council of Ministers, which was called the “Soviet of Ministers”; a workers' local council in late Imperial Russia; and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union....
.
Style and technique
Unlike Popov, Ryazanov and Asafiev, who were considered progressive in their musical outlook, Dzerzhinsky from the outset wrote works that were considered traditional. His First Piano Concerto, early songs and piano pieces were influenced by GriegEdvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
, Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
and early Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
.In the early 1930s he was influenced by Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's music, particular in his Second Piano Concerto, which he wrote in 1934. (This piece was criticized officially much later.)
Quiet Flows the Don
Dzerzhinsky consulted Shostakovich while composing the opera Quiet Flows the Don to a libretto adapted by Dzerzhinsky's brother, Leonid, from the SholokhovMichail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov was a Soviet/Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. An asteroid in main-belt is named after him, 2448 Sholokhov.-Life and work:...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
And Quiet Flows the Don
And Quiet Flows the Don
And Quiet Flows the Don or Quietly Flows the Don is the first part of the great Don epic Tikhiy Don , written by Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. It originally appeared in serialized form between 1928 and 1940...
. According to Leonid's own account, he utilized Sholokhov's work motifs, freely rearranging and addapting to the purpose of accentuating the dramatic aspects of the plot and to condense as much as possible of the novels' social significance within the confines of the operatic format.
This opera was premiered at the Leningrad Malïy Opera Theater
Mikhaylovsky Theatre
The Mikhaylovsky Theatre is one of the oldest opera and ballet houses in Russia. It was founded in 1833 and is situated in a historical building on the Arts Square in St. Petersburg...
in October 1935. Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
saw the work on January 17, 1936 and immediately recognized its propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
value. Its subject was heroic and patriotic; it glorified the spirit of the Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks
Don Cossacks were Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don.- Etymology and origins :The Don Cossack Host was a frontier military organization from the end of the 16th until the early 20th century....
, whose support would become necessary in the event of war (a war that, incidentally, seemed increasingly inevitable); and its music was both lyrical and immediately appealing. Sholokhov's novel, whose first edition was the basis of the opera, was later hailed: "...with its substance, construction, style and symbolism [it] is one of the most notable contemporary literary works of the Soviet Union. The author's selected setting is the Don Cossacks, their life and ways, class struggle, schisms and seesaws, that define and evoke the patriarchal order of Cossack life, the first imperialist war, the revolution and people's struggle. The great events of history are made manifest in the quietude and tranquility of Cossack life suffering a total upheaval, degenerating into in a bloody struggle."
Within weeks Quiet Flows the Don was proclaimed a model of socialist realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
in music and won Dzerzhinsky a Stalin Prize (Ironically, Stalin saw Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (opera)
Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District is an opera in four acts by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Op.29. The libretto was written by Alexander Preis and the composer, and is based on the story Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov. The opera is sometimes referred to informally as Lady Macbeth...
at the same theater nine days after attending Quiet Flows the Don. His disapproval of Shostakovich's opera set the stage for its composer's official denunciation, which lasted until Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony
Symphony No. 5 (Shostakovich)
The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky...
.)
Due at least in part to official praise, Quiet Flows the Don proved wildly successful, reaching its 200th performance in May 1938. However, its undistinguished musical style—lyrical and folkloric
Fakelore
Fakelore or Pseudo-folklore is inauthentic, manufactured folklore presented as if it were genuinely traditional. The term can refer to new stories or songs made up, or to folklore that is reworked and modified for modern tastes...
in style but not based on any true folk songs—possessed little potential for future development. Dzerzhinsky wrote his next opera, Virgin Soil Upturned (Podnyataya tselina), in 1937. Also based on a Sholokhov novel, it is tauter dramatically and is similar in musical style to its predecessor. Nevertheless, it failed to repeat the success of Quiet Flows the Don—nor did any of Dzerzhinsky's subsequent operas.