Sergey Mikhaylovich Slonimsky

Sergey Mikhaylovich Slonimsky (Leningrad, 12 August 1932) is a Russian composer, pianist and professor from the generation that began composing after the Second World War. The son of the writer M. L. Slonimsky and a relative of the composer Nicholas Slonimsky, he combines an interest in the avant-garde with the revival of folk and medieval materials, which makes him a singular figure in Soviet and Russian music of the second half of the twentieth century.

He began studying composition at the age of eleven with Shebalin and, between 1945 and 1950, attended a school for gifted children. He graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory in composition under Yevlakhov (1955) and in piano under V. Nil'sen (1956), and in 1958 completed postgraduate studies in music theory under Ter-Martirosian. From 1959 he taught theoretical subjects at the conservatory and, from 1967, composition. He recorded Russian folk songs on folklore expeditions. He was awarded the degree of Candidate of Arts (1963, with a dissertation on the symphonies of Prokofiev), a professorship (1976), the Glinka State Prize (1983) and the title of People's Artist of Russia (1987). He organises gatherings devoted to promoting Russian music of the twentieth century, especially that of the 1920s.

From the mid-1950s he took an interest in the avant-garde and in a decisive stylistic renewal. His early works, such as the Karneval'naya uvertyura (1957) and the Symphony in F minor (1958), attracted attention for their unconventional means. Partly influenced by Stravinsky, he was one of the promoters of the 'new folk wave' at the beginning of the 1960s, with the cycle Pesni vol'nitsï (1960) and the opera Virineya (1967). He subsequently combined archaic folk materials, medieval music and the avant-garde, sometimes separately and sometimes superimposed, as in Kontsert-buff (1964–65) or the cantata Golos iz khora (1964). From the late 1950s he occasionally employed dodecaphony and, from the 1960s, aleatoric, sonoristic and graphic-notation techniques.

He wrote ten symphonies (1958–1992), in which he experimented with different models of the symphonic sonata cycle. The Tenth, which is programmatic in character, is inspired by Dante's Divina Commedia and is articulated in nine uninterrupted parts. His stage output includes five operas, among them Master i Margarita, based on Bulgakov's novel, which remained unstaged for years for reasons of censorship. His vocal works draw on poets of the Russian 'Silver Age' and on contemporary authors such as Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Kharms, Reyn and Brodsky.

In his work Slonimsky sustains a tension between tradition and the avant-garde, and between folklore and European music of the past. His pedagogical and promotional work completes a career of considerable importance, both for his compositions and for his role at the Leningrad Conservatory.