Nikolai Myaskovsky

Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky (ru: ??????? ??????????, also transliterated to Miaskovskii) (April 20,1881 – August 8,1950) was a Russian composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "father of the Soviet symphony".

Biography

Myaskovsky was born in Norvogeorgiyevsk, near Warsaw, and moved to Saint Petersburg in his teens. He was discouraged from a musical career, instead joining the military. However he did enter the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1906 and eventually resigned his military comission. There he met Sergei Prokofiev and they remained friends throughout the older man's life. In Conservatory, they shared a dislike of their professor Lyadov which came out in Myaskovsky's choice of theme for the variations with which he closed his third string quartet (probably not his third, but eventually so published), since Lyadov disliked Grieg, the theme's author. Prokofiev and Myaskovsky worked together in Conservatory on at least one work, a mostly lost symphony, part of which was later scavenged to provide material for the slow movement of Prokofiev's fourth piano sonata. They both later produced works subtitled From old notebooks using materials from this period — in Prokofiev's case the third and fourth piano sonatas; in Myaskovsky's, other works, such as his 10th string quartet and what are now the fifth and sixth piano sonatas, are revisions of works he wrote at this time. The first of his surviving symphonies (C minor, op. 3, 1908/1921) was his Conservatory graduation piece.

Related Topics:
Norvogeorgiyevsk - Warsaw - Saint Petersburg - St. Petersburg Conservatory - 1906 - Sergei Prokofiev - Lyadov - Third string quartet - Grieg - Fourth piano sonata - First - 1908 - 1921

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Drafted into the First World War, his stint in the 'Great War' produced shell shock, and while recovering he produced two diametrically opposite works, his fourth symphony (op. 17 in e) and his fifth (op. 18 in D). (His third of 1914 has a Scriabin-influenced sound, though its concluding funeral march has a sense of direction that may be lacking in some works by that composer.) The next few years brought ascents and reversals — the death of his father from the anger of a revolutionary, and his appointment to the teaching staff of the Moscow Conservatory and membership of the composers' union.

Related Topics:
First World War - Fourth symphony - Fifth - Third - Scriabin - Moscow Conservatory

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