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".

Students of his middle years

The years 1921 – 1933 were years in which he most often experimented in music, producing works such as the tenth and thirteenth symphonies, fourth piano sonata, and first string quartet — also some of the suites of piano pieces — whose harmony is very much stretched, and the first years of his teaching at the Conservatory. Perhaps the thirteenth symphony is alone even among them, in one atmospheric and strange movement complete with fugato. And the only work by the composer premiered in the United States. (In passing, note that the third and fourth string quartets, though they share opus 33 with the first two, were first published together with them in the collected edition published after the composer's death, whether or not they were first published around the same time. These works — #3 in d, #4 in f — are mid-1930s revisions of works written in the last years of the 1900s, not new works as are the other two; so their style is quite different. Whether they sound worse is a matter of opinion, though they have a very high level of craftsmanship.)

Related Topics:
1921 - 1933 - Tenth - Thirteenth - Fugato - Opus - 1900s

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His pupils were eventually to include such composers as Khachaturian, Rodion Shchedrin, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Vissarion Shebalin and many others. The sixth symphony (1921–3, rev. 1947 — this is the version that is almost always played or recorded) his only choral symphony and the longest of what eventually became twenty-seven, sets a brief poem (in Russian though the score allows Latin alternatively — see the American Symphony 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 theme, as well as French revolutionary tunes.

Related Topics:
Khachaturian - Rodion Shchedrin - Dmitri Kabalevsky - Vissarion Shebalin - Sixth symphony - 1921 - 3 - 1947 - American Symphony - Dies Irae

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The next few years, after 1933, showed primarily a retreat from that style, though with — again mostly — no general retreat in craftsmanship. The violin concerto dates from these years — in all he was to write two concerti, one for violin and also a cello concerto (several times recorded by Mstislav Rostropovich), or three if we count the Lyric Concertino of op. 32. Another standout, besides the violin concerto, of the years up to 1940 is the one-movement symphony no. 21 (in F-sharp minor, op. 51) produced in that year and recorded by Morton Gould, a compact and mostly lyrical work, very different in harmonic language from the thirteenth.

Related Topics:
Violin concerto - Cello concerto - Mstislav Rostropovich - Lyric Concertino - 1940 - Symphony no. 21 - Morton Gould

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