Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky was a Russian

Russians

The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

 and Soviet 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 sometimes referred to as the "father of the Soviet symphony".

Early years and first important works

Myaskovsky was born in Novogeorgiyevsk (Polish - Modlin Fortress

Modlin Fortress

Modlin Fortress is one of the biggest 19th century fortresses in Poland. It is located the town of Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki in district Modlin on the Narew river, some 50 kilometres north of Warsaw...

), near Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

, Congress Poland

Congress Poland

The Kingdom of Poland , informally known as Congress Poland , created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna, was a personal union of the Russian parcel of Poland with the Russian Empire...

, Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, the son of an engineer officer in the Russian army. After the death of his mother the family was brought up by his father's sister, Yelikonida Konstantinovna Myaskovskaya, who had been a singer at the Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 Opera. The family moved to Saint Petersburg in his teens.

Though he learned piano and violin, he was discouraged from pursuing a musical career, and entered the military; however, a performance of Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...

's Pathétique Symphony

Symphony No. 6 (Tchaikovsky)

The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, Pathétique is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's final completed symphony, written between February and the end of August 1893. The composer led the first performance in Saint Petersburg on 16/28 October of that year, nine days before his death...

 conducted by Arthur Nikisch

Arthur Nikisch

Arthur Nikisch ; 12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London and - most importantly - Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Liszt...

 in 1896 made him decide to become a composer. In 1902 he completed his training as an engineer, like his father. As a young subaltern with a Sappers Battalion 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...

, he took some private lessons with Reinhold Glière

Reinhold Glière

Reinhold Moritzevich Glière was a Russian and Soviet composer of German–Polish descent.- Biography :Glière was born in Kiev, Ukraine...

 and when he was posted to St Petersburg he studied with Ivan Krizhanovsky as preparation for entry into the Saint Petersburg 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:...

, where he enrolled in 1906 and became a student of Anatoly Lyadov and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five.The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful or The Mighty Coterie, refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev , César...

.

A late starter, Myaskovsky was the oldest student in his class but soon became firm friends with the youngest, Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

, and they remained friends throughout the older man's life. At the Conservatory, they shared a dislike of their professor Anatoly Lyadov, which, since Lyadov disliked the music of Edvard Grieg

Edvard 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...

, led to Myaskovsky's choice of a theme by Grieg for the variations with which he closed his String Quartet No. 3.

Prokofiev and Myaskovsky worked together at the conservatory on at least one work, a lost symphony, parts of which were later scavenged to provide material for the slow movement of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 4

Piano Sonata No. 4 (Prokofiev)

Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 4 in C minor, Op. 29, was composed in 1917. It was first performed by the composer on April 17, 1918, in Petrograd.The work was dedicated to Prokoviev's good friend Maximilian Schmidthof, whose suicide in 1913 shocked and saddened the composer.-Style:In his notes...

. They both later produced works using materials from this period — in Prokofiev's case the Third and Fourth piano sonatas; in Myaskovsky's, other works, such as his Tenth string quartet and what are now the Fifth and Sixth piano sonatas, all revisions of works he wrote at this time.

Early influences on Myaskovsky's emerging personal style were Tchaikovsky, strongly echoed in the first

Symphony No. 1 (Myaskovsky)

The Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 3, by Nikolai Myaskovsky was written in 1908 .It is in three movements:# Lento, ma non troppo. Allegro.# Larghetto, quasi andante# Allegro assai e molto risoluto...

 of his surviving symphonies (in C minor, Op. 3, 1908/1921), which was his Conservatory graduation piece, and Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...

, whose influence comes more to the fore in Myaskovsky's First Piano Sonata in D minor, Op. 6 (1907-10), described by Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould

Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach...

 as 'perhaps one of the most remarkable pieces of its time', and his Symphony No. 3

Symphony No. 3 (Myaskovsky)

Nikolai Myaskovsky wrote his Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 15 in 1914.It is in two movements:#Non troppo vivo, vigoroso#Deciso e sdegnosoIt is dedicated to Boris Asafyev....

 in A minor, Op. 15 of 1914, a turbulent and lugubrious work in two large movements.

Myaskovsky graduated in 1911 and afterwards taught in Saint Petersburg, where he also developed a supplementary career as a penetrating musical critic. (He was one of the most intelligent and supportive advocates in Russia for the music of Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

, though the story that Stravinsky dedicated The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring, original French title Le sacre du printemps , is a ballet with music by Igor Stravinsky; choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky; and concept, set design and costumes by Nicholas Roerich...

to Myaskovsky is untrue.)

Called up during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, he was wounded and suffered shell-shock on the Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n front, then worked on the naval fortifications at Tallinn

Tallinn

Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

. During this period he produced two diametrically opposed works, his Symphony No. 4 (Op. 17, in E minor) and his Symphony No. 5 (Op. 18, in D major). The next few years saw the violent death of his father, who as an ex-Tsarist general was murdered by Red Army soldiers while waiting for a train in the winter of 1918-19, and the death of his aunt, to whom he was closely attached, in the winter of 1919-20. His brother-in-law, the husband of his sister Valentina Yakovlevna, had committed suicide before the War because of financial troubles. Myaskovsky himself served in the Red Army from 1917 to 1921; in the latter year he was appointed to the teaching staff of the Moscow Conservatory

Moscow Conservatory

The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...

 and membership of the Composers' Union. Thereafter he lived in Moscow, sharing an apartment with his widowed sister Valentina and her daughter (he also had a married sister, Vera.)

Works of his middle years

In the 1920s and 1930s Myaskovsky was the leading composer in the USSR dedicated to developing basically traditional, sonata-based forms. He wrote no operas - though in 1918 he planned one based on Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot

The Idiot (novel)

The Idiot is a novel written by 19th century Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published serially in The Russian Messenger between 1868 and 1869. The Idiot is ranked beside some of Dostoyevsky's other works as one of the most brilliant literary achievements of the "Golden Age" of...

, with a libretto by Pierre Souvtchinsky

Pyotr Suvchinsky

Pyotr Petrovich Suvchinsky, later known as Pierre Souvtchinsky , was a Ukrainian artistic patron and writer on music. The heir to a sugar fortune, he took piano lessons from Felix Blumenthal and initially hoped to become an operatic tenor. He was the patron and co-publisher of the Saint Petersburg...

; but he would eventually write a total of 27 symphonies (plus three sinfoniettas, three concertos and works in other orchestral genres), 13 string quartets, 9 piano sonatas as well as many miniatures and vocal works. Through his devotion to these forms, and the fact that he always maintained a high standard of craftsmanship, he was sometimes referred to as 'the musical conscience of Moscow'. His continuing commitment to musical modernism was shown by the fact that along with Alexander Mosolov

Alexander Mosolov

Alexander Vasilyevich MosolovMosolov's name is transliterated variously and inconsistently between sources. Alternative spellings of Alexander include Alexandr, Aleksandr, Aleksander, and Alexandre; variations on Mosolov include Mossolov and Mossolow...

, Gavriil Popov and Nikolai Roslavets

Nikolai Roslavets

Nikolai Andreevich Roslavets was a significant Soviet modernist composer. Roslavets was a convinced modernist and cosmopolitan thinker; his music was officially suppressed from 1930 onwards....

, Myaskovsky was one of the leaders of the Association for Contemporary Music. While he remained in close contact with Prokofiev during the latter's years of exile from the USSR, he never followed him there.

Nevertheless, in the 1920s and 1930s Myaskovsky's symphonies were quite frequently played in Western Europe and the USA. In 1935, a survey made by CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 of its radio audience asking the question 'Who, in your opinion, of contemporary composers will remain among the world's great in 100 years?' placed Myaskovsky in the top ten along with Prokofiev, 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...

, Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

, Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

, Stravinsky, Sibelius

Jean Sibelius

Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...

, Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

, de Falla

Manuel de Falla

Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....

 and Fritz Kreisler

Fritz Kreisler

Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...

.

His most immediate reaction to the events of 1917-21 inspired his Symphony No. 6

Symphony No. 6 (Myaskovsky)

The Symphony No. 6 in E flat minor, Op. 23 by Nikolai Myaskovsky was composed between 1921 and 1923. It is the largest and most ambitious of his 27 symphonies, planned on a Mahlerian scale, and uses a chorus in the finale. It has been described as 'probably the most significant Russian symphony...

 (1921–1923, rev. 1947 — this is the version that is almost always played or recorded) his only choral symphony and the longest of his 27 symphonies, sets a brief poem (in Russian though the score allows Latin alternatively — see the American Symphony Orchestra

American Symphony Orchestra

The American Symphony Orchestra is a New York-based American orchestra founded in 1962 by Leopold Stokowski, then aged 80. Following Maestro Stokowski's departure, Kazuyoshi Akiyama was appointed Music Director of the American Symphony Orchestra from 1973-1978. Music Directors during the early...

 page below on the origins of the poem, — the soul looking at the body it has abandoned.) The finale contains quite a few quotes — the Dies Irae

Dies Irae

Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...

 theme, as well as French revolutionary tunes.

The years 1921–1933, the first years of his teaching at the Conservatory, were the years in which he experimented most, producing works such as the Tenth

Symphony No. 10 (Myaskovsky)

The Symphony No. 10 in F minor, Op. 30 by Nikolai Myaskovsky is among the more remarkable of the Russian composer's large output of 27 symphonies....

 and Thirteenth

Symphony No. 13 (Myaskovsky)

The Symphony No. 13 in B minor, Op. 36 by Nikolai Myaskovsky was composed in 1933.It is in one movement in three sections:#Andante moderato#Agitato molto e tenebroso#Andante nostalgicoIts premiere was conducted by Leo Ginzburg...

 symphonies, the fourth piano sonata and his first string quartet. Perhaps the best example of this experimentative phase is the Thirteenth symphony, which was the only one of his works to be premiered in the United States.

The next few years after 1933 are characterized mostly by his apparent discontinuation of this trend, though with no general decrease in craftsmanship. The Violin Concerto dates from these years, the first of two or three concerti, depending on what one counts, the second being for cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

, and a third if one counts the Lyric Concertino, Op. 32 as a concerto work.

Another work one might mention from this period up to 1940 besides the Violin Concerto is the one-movement Symphony No. 21 in F-sharp minor, Op. 51, a compact and mostly lyrical work, very different in harmonic language from the Thirteenth.

Despite his personal feelings about the Stalinist

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

 regime Myaskovsky did his best not to engage in overt confrontation with the Soviet state, and while some of his works refer to contemporary themes, they do not do so in a programmatic or propagandistic way. The Symphony No. 12 was inspired by a poem about the collectivization of farming, while No. 16

Symphony No. 16 (Myaskovsky)

Nikolai Myaskovsky's Symphony No. 16 in F major, op. 39, was composed in 1935-6 and has the nickname Aviation-Symphony.The Symphony is in four movements:#Allegro vivace#Andantino e semplice, in B major...

 was prompted by the crash of the huge airliner Maxim Gorky

Tupolev ANT-20

-See also:*Dornier Do X-External links:* * Russian: Babelfish rough English translation * * Babelfish rough English translation from Russian History of Aviation, Publ Young Guards...

 and was known under the Soviets as the Aviation Symphony. This symphony, sketched immediately after the disaster and premiered in Moscow on 24 October 1936, includes a big funeral march as its slow movement, and the finale is built on Myaskovsky's own song for the Red Air Force, 'The Aeroplanes are Flying'. The Salutation Overture was dedicated to Stalin on his sixtieth birthday.

Last ten years and classicizing

The year 1941 saw Myaskovsky evacuated, along with Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian

Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a prominent Soviet composer. Khachaturian's works were often influenced by classical Russian music and Armenian folk music...

 among others, to what were then the Kabardino-Balkar

Kabardino-Balkaria

The Kabardino-Balkar Republic , or Kabardino-Balkaria , is a federal subject of Russia located in the North Caucasus. Population: -Geography:The republic is situated in the North Caucasus mountains, with plains in the northern part....

 regions. Here he completed the Symphony-Ballade

Symphony No. 22 (Myaskovsky)

Nikolai Myaskovsky composed his Symphony No. 22 in B minor in 1941. Its official name is Symphonic Ballad , and it lasts about 35-40 minutes in performance.The symphony is in one movement in three sections:#Lento...

 (Symphony No. 22) in B minor, inspired in part by the first few months of the war. Prokofiev's Second String Quartet and Myaskovsky's Symphony No. 23 and Seventh String Quartet contain themes in common — they are Kabardinian folk-tunes the composers took down during their sojourn in the region. The sonata-works (symphonies, quartets, etc.) written after this period and into the post-war years (especially starting with the Symphony No. 24, the piano sonatina, the Ninth Quartet) while Romantic in tone and style, are direct in harmony and development. He does not deny himself a teasingly neurotic scherzo, as in his last two string quartets (that in the Thirteenth Quartet, his last published work, is frantic, and almost chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....

 but certainly contrasted) and the general paring down of means usually allows for direct and reasonably intense expression, as with the Cello Concerto (dedicated to and premiered by Sviatoslav Knushevitsky

Sviatoslav Knushevitsky

Sviatoslav Nikolayevich Knushevitsky was a Russian classical cellist. He was particularly noted for his partnership with the violinist David Oistrakh and the pianist Lev Oborin in a renowned piano trio from 1940 until his death...

) and Cello Sonata No. 2 (dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...

).

What there is not is much experiment, no suggestion as with some earlier works that Scriabin or Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

 might still be an influence. Some things may work better and some worse in a late style like this. This may have been an attempt to dodge condemnation by the authorities, especially after the Zhdanov

Andrei Zhdanov

Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician.-Life:Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934...

 Decree. There was no dodging possible, and in 1947 Myaskovsky was singled out, with Shostakovich, Khachaturian and Prokofiev, as one of the principal offenders in writing music of anti-Soviet, 'anti-proletarian' and formalist

Formalism (music)

In music theory and especially in the branch of study called the aesthetics of music, formalism is the concept that a composition's meaning is entirely determined by its form.-Aesthetic theory:Leonard B...

 tendencies. Myaskovsky refused to take part in the proceedings, despite a visit from Tikhon Khrennikov

Tikhon Khrennikov

Tikhon Nikolayevich Khrennikov was a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist, leader of the Union of Soviet Composers, who was also known for his political activities...

 pointedly inviting him to deliver a speech of repentance at the next meeting of the Composers' Union. He was only rehabilitated after his death from cancer in 1950, leaving an output of eighty-seven published opus numbers spanning some forty years and students with recollections. (There is also a recollection in the Volkov-Shostakovich book Testimony

Testimony (book)

Testimony is a book that was published in October 1979 by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. He claimed that it was the memoirs of the composer Dmitri Shostakovich...

.) Myaskovsky was awarded with the Stalin Prize six times — no other composer was awarded this prize so often.

Character and influence

Myaskovsky was long recognized as an individualist even by the Soviet establishment. In the 1920s the critic Boris Asafyev commented that he was 'not the kind of composer the Revolution would like; he reflects life not through the feelings and spirit of the masses, but through the prism of his personal feelings. He is a sincere and sensible artist, far from "life's enemy", as he has been portrayed occasionally. He speaks not only for himself, but for many others'. He never married and was shy, sensitive and retiring; Pierre Souvtchinsky believed that a 'brutal youth (in military school and service in the war)' left him 'a fragile, secretive, introverted man, hiding some mystery within. It was as if his numerous symphonies provide a convenient if not necessary refuge in which he could hide and transpose his soul into sonorities'. Stung by the many accusations in the Soviet press of 'individualism, decadence, pessimism, formalism and complexity', Myaskovsky wrote to Asafiev in 1940 'Can it be that the psychological world is so foreign to these people?' When somebody described Zhdanov's decree against 'formalism' to him as 'historic', he is reported to have retorted 'Not historic - hysterical'. Shostakovich, who visited Myaskovsky on his deathbed, described him afterwards to the musicologist Marina Sabinina as 'the most noble, the most modest of men'. Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...

, for whom Myaskovsky wrote his Second Cello Sonata late in life, described him as 'a humorous man, a sort of real Russian intellectual, who in some ways resembled Turgenev'.

As professor of composition at Moscow Conservatory from 1921 until his death, Myaskovsky exercised an important influence on his many pupils. The young Shostakovich considered leaving Leningrad to study with him, and those who did become his students were eventually to include such composers as Aram Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian

Aram Ilyich Khachaturian was a prominent Soviet composer. Khachaturian's works were often influenced by classical Russian music and Armenian folk music...

, Dmitri Kabalevsky

Dmitri Kabalevsky

Dmitry Borisovich Kabalevsky was a Russian composer.He helped to set up the Union of Soviet Composers in Moscow and remained one of its leading figures. He was a prolific composer of piano music and chamber music; many of his piano works have been performed by Vladimir Horowitz. He is probably...

, Vissarion Shebalin

Vissarion Shebalin

Vissarion Yakovlevich Shebalin was a Soviet composer.-Biography:Shebalin was born in Omsk, where his parents were school teachers. He studied in the musical college in Omsk. He was 20 years old when, following the advice of his professor, he went to Moscow to show his first compositions to...

, Rodion Shchedrin

Rodion Shchedrin

Rodion Konstantinovich Shchedrin is a Russian composer. He was one оf the leading Soviet composers, and was the chairman of the Union of Russian Composers from 1973 until 1990.-Life and Works:...

, German Galynin

German Galynin

German Germanovich Galynin was a Soviet composer, student, and continuer of the Shostakovich and Myaskovsky line in Soviet classic music....

, Andrei Eshpai

Andrei Eshpai

Andrei Yakovlevich Eshpai is an ethnic Mari composer.Eshpai was born at Kozmodemyansk, Mari El. A Red Army World War II veteran, he studied piano at Moscow Conservatory from 1948 to 1953 under Vladimir Sofronitsky, and composition under Nikolai Rakov, Nikolai Myaskovsky and Evgeny Golubev...

, Alexander Lokshin

Alexander Lokshin

Alexander Lazarevich Lokshin was a Russian composer of classical music. He was born on September 19, 1920, in the town of Biysk, in the Altai Region, Western Siberia, and died in Moscow on June 11, 1987....

, Boris Tchaikovsky

Boris Tchaikovsky

Boris Alexandrovich Tchaikovsky was a Soviet composer, born in Moscow, whose oeuvre includes orchestral works, chamber music and film music. He is considered as part of the second generation of Russian composers, following in the steps of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and especially Mussorgsky.He was admired...

, and Evgeny Golubev

Evgeny Golubev

Evgeny Kirillovich Golubev was a Russian Soviet composer.He was taught by Nikolai Myaskovsky, and his students included Alfred Schnittke, who studied with him from 1953 until 1958 and Michael L. Geller...

, a teacher and prolific composer whose students included Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke

Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...

. The degree and nature of his influence on his students is difficult to measure. What is lacking is an account of his teaching methods, what and how he taught, or more than brief accounts of his teaching; Shchedrin makes a mention in an interview he did for the American music magazine Fanfare, and that section in Testimony, if authentic, is another. It has been said that the earlier music of Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and other of his students has a Myaskovsky flavor, with this quality decreasing as the composer's own voice emerges (since Myaskovsky's own output is internally diverse such a statement needs further clarification.) — while some composers, for instance the little-heard Evgeny Golubev, kept something of his teacher's characteristics well into their later music. The latter's sixth piano sonata is dedicated to Myaskovsky's memory and the early 'Symphony No. 0' of Golubev's pupil Alfred Schnittke, released on CD in 2007, has striking reminiscences of Myaskovsky's symphonic style and procedures.

Recordings

Miaskovsky has not been as popular on recordings as have Shostakovich and Prokofieff. Still, most of his works have been recorded, many of them more than once, including the Cello Concerto, the Violin Concerto, many of the Symphonies, and much of his chamber and solo music. Between 1991 and 1993 the conductor Yevgeny Svetlanov realized a massive project to record Myaskovsky's entire symphonic output and most of his other orchestral works on 16 CDs, with the Symphony Orchestra of the USSR and the State Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation. In the chaotic conditions prevailing at the breakup of the USSR, Svetlanov is rumoured to have had to pay the orchestral musicians himself in order to undertake the sessions. The recordings began to be issued in the West by Olympia Records in 2001, but ceased after volume 10; the remaining volumes were issued by Alto Records starting in the first half of 2008. To complicate matters, in July 2008, Warner Music France issued the entire 16-CD set, boxed, as volume 35 of their 'Édition officielle Evgeny Svetlanov'. In a testimony printed in French and English in the accompanying booklet, Svetlanov describes Myaskovsky as 'the founder of Soviet symphonism, the creator of the Soviet school of composition, the composer whose work has become the bridge between Russian classics and Soviet music ... Myaskovsky entered the history of music as a great toiler like Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. ... He invented his own style, his own intonations and manner while enriching and developing the glorious tradition of Russian music'. He also likens the current neglect of his symphonies to the neglect formerly suffered by the symphonies of Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

 and Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...

.

Advocates

One of Myaskovsky's strongest early advocates was the conductor Konstantin Saradzhev

Konstantin Saradzhev

Konstantin Saradzhev was an Armenian conductor and violinist. He was an advocate of new Russian music, and conducted a number of premieres of works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Aram Khachaturian...

. He conducted the premieres of Myaskovsky's 8th, 9th and 11th symphonies and the symphonic poem

Symphonic poem

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...

 Silence, Op. 9 (which was also dedicated to him). The 10th Symphony was also dedicated to Saradzhev. In 1934 Myaskovsky wrote a Preludium and Fughetta on the name Saradzhev (for orchestra, Op. 31H; he also arranged it for piano 4-hands, Op. 31J).

In the 1930s, Myaskovsky was also one of two Russian composers championed by Frederick Stock

Frederick Stock

Frederick Stock was a German conductor and composer.-Biography:...

, the conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...

. The other was Reinhold Glière

Reinhold Glière

Reinhold Moritzevich Glière was a Russian and Soviet composer of German–Polish descent.- Biography :Glière was born in Kiev, Ukraine...

, whom he met in 1940 and commissioned to write his "Feast in Fergana", Op. 75, a large-scale orchestral fantasia.

There is no record to suggest that Frederick Stock met Myaskovsky. He did, however, commission the 21st Symphony (Symphony-Fantasy in F-sharp minor) for the Chicago Symphony's Fiftieth Anniversary; although the first performance was in Moscow on November 6, 1940 (conducted by Gauk), Stock conducted the Chicago premiere on December 26, 1940.

Honours and awards

• Stalin Prizes:

1941 - first class for symphony number 21

1946 - first class for string quartet number 9

1946 - first class for Concerto for Cello and Orchestra

1950 - second class for Sonata for number 2 for cello and piano

1951 (posthumous) - first class for symphony number 27 and string quartet number 13.

• People's Artist of the USSR
  People's Artist of the USSR
  People's Artist of the USSR, also sometimes translated as National Artist of the USSR, was an honorary title granted to citizens of the Soviet Union.- Nomenclature and significance :...
  
   (1946)
• Order of Lenin
  Order of Lenin
  The Order of Lenin , named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union...
  
  

External links

• A Myaskovsky website
• List of students from above website
• Myaskovsky opus list
• Myaskovsky String Quartet No.8 Soundbites & Discussion
• Performance of Cello Concerto
• detailed article about Myaskovsky and his works
• Nikolai Myaskovsky took lessons in harmony from Reinhold Gliere
• Cello Concerto review
• About Piano Sonatas No. 2, 3 and 4