Edison Denisov

• 1. Introduction

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  Edison Denisov trained as a mathematician before he ever wrote a note of music. He gave that up to compose instead, and the decision won an unlikely ally. Dmitri Shostakovich approved so strongly that he personally gave Denisov lessons in composition. That early support set up a career full of contradictions. Soviet officials would later treat his music as a threat to approved Soviet style. Listeners abroad heard something else, a voice polished enough to catch the attention of Igor Stravinsky. This documentary follows that mathematician turned composer through a Moscow classroom, an official blacklist, and concert stages across Western Europe.

• 2. A Conservatory Education

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  Tomsk, Siberia, is where Denisov was born, on the 6th of April 1929. Denisov studied at the Moscow Conservatory in 1951-56, taking composition with Vissarion Shebalin and orchestration with Nikolai Rakov. He also studied analysis with Viktor Tsukkerman and piano with Vladimir Belov. In 1956-59 he composed his first major stage work, the three-act opera Ivan-Soldat, based on Russian folk fairy tales.

  Scores by Mahler, Debussy, Boulez, and Stockhausen were difficult to find inside the Soviet Union, yet Denisov sought them out anyway. He studied them closely and wrote a series of articles analyzing contemporary compositional techniques in detail. At the same time he was experimenting in his own music, searching for a language of his own. That search would soon collide with the tastes of the Soviet Composers' Union.

• 3. Teaching A New Generation

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  After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, Denisov stayed on to teach, first orchestration and later composition. His students there included Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova, Dilorom Saidaminova, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Sergey Pavlenko, Ivan Sokolov, and Yuri Kasparov.

  Dmitri Capyrin and Alexander Shchetynsky were never formally his pupils, yet Denisov supported and encouraged both composers. Two decades later, several of his students would carry his methods into a Conservatory system that had once tried to sideline their teacher.

• 4. Breakthrough And Backlash

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  Le soleil des Incas, a 1964 cycle for soprano and chamber ensemble, set poems by Gabriela Mistral and carried a dedication to Pierre Boulez. Performances of the piece in Darmstadt and in Paris in 1965 brought Denisov international recognition for the first time. Igor Stravinsky heard it and said he had discovered the composer's "remarkable talent."

  The Union of Soviet Composers took a far harsher view of the same piece. Officials, including composer Tikhon Khrennikov, condemned it for its "western influences" and its "erudition instead of creativity," dismissing it as "total composer's arbitrary." After that, performances of Denisov's works were frequently banned inside the Soviet Union.

• 5. Blacklisted By The State

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  The Sixth Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers, held in 1979, produced an official blacklist known as "Khrennikov's Seven," and Denisov was one of the seven names on it. The stated reason was his unapproved participation in a number of festivals of Soviet music staged in the West.

  Denisov worked within what was sometimes labeled the Underground, or nonconformist, division of Soviet music, a label that made him an obvious target for this kind of sanction. The blacklist did nothing to slow demand for his music outside Soviet borders, where commissions kept arriving from performers across Western Europe.

• 6. Music For Star Performers

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  Aurèle Nicolet commissioned a flute concerto from Denisov, one of several works written for specific virtuoso performers. Gidon Kremer received a violin concerto, and the oboist Heinz Holliger and clarinetist Eduard Brunner each received pieces written for their own instruments. Jean-Marie Londeix received a sonata for alto saxophone and piano that went on to become highly popular among saxophone players.

  Denisov's Requiem set a sombre, multi-lingual text combining English, French, German, and Latin, and it received its first performance in Hamburg in 1980. Major works from this period included two operas and a ballet. L'écume des jours, based on Boris Vian's novel, appeared in 1981, and Quatre Filles, based on a work by Pablo Picasso, followed in 1986. His ballet Confession drew on a work by Alfred de Musset. These were not his only unusual commissions; his catalogue also runs to music built around electronic synthesizers and to scores other composers had left unfinished.

• 7. Sound Experiments And Completions

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  The ANS photoelectronic synthesizer, an experimental Soviet electronic instrument, is the sound source behind Denisov's 1969 piece The Singing of the Birds. That same year he wrote Chant des Oiseaux, for prepared piano or harpsichord and tape, another work built around electronically altered sound.

  In 1969 he also wrote a chamber piece titled DSCH, scored for clarinet, trombone, cello, and piano. In 1968 he had written Ode, in memory of Che Guevara, for clarinet, piano, and percussion. In his later years Denisov also finished works other composers had left incomplete. In 1993 he completed Debussy's opera Rodrigue et Chimène, and in 1995 he completed Schubert's opera-oratorio Lazarus oder Die Feier der Auferstehung. In 1996, the same year he died, Denisov wrote three cadenzas for Mozart's Concerto for flute and harp.

• 8. Final Years And Honours

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  Denisov became a leader of the Association for Contemporary Music after it was reestablished in Moscow in 1990. He later moved to France, where he lived through an accident and a long illness. He died in a hospital in Saint-Mandé, France, on the 24th of November 1996.

  France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. Russia named him a People's Artist of the Russian Federation and an Honoured Artist of the RSFSR. In that same final year, Denisov also completed his Symphony No. 2, one of the last works he ever finished.