Edison Vassilievich Denisov (1929-1996); RUS   

Edison Vasilyevich Denisov was one of the leading composers who emerged in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin and used avant-garde techniques in their music despite the disapproval of the Communist Party. His father was an electrical engineer in Tomsk, and named his son Edison in honor of the American inventor and because the name is an anagram of Denisov (omitting the final "v"). Edison was interested in mathematics, music, and painting. He taught himself to play a number of folk instruments, and from 1946 to 1950 studied piano at Tomsk Music College. At the same time he was a student of mathematics and mechanics at Tomsk University (1946-1951).

Then he decided to pursue musical studies, traveling to Moscow to enter the Conservatory there and remaining until 1956. His piano teacher was Vladimir Belov and his composition instructor was Vissarion Shebalin. He also studied orchestration with Nikolai Rakov and musical analysis with Viktor Zuckerman. He became a faculty member of the Conservatory in 1960 and over the years taught orchestration, analysis of musical forms, and composition. His early music shows the beginning of his lifelong interest in using Russian folk materials.

During the early '60s, he made a thorough study of the major composers of the twentieth century, including the officially disfavored Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Nono, and Stockhausen, plus Lutoslawski and Bartók. Denisov's major work that consolidated this study and demonstrated that there was an interest in avant-garde music in the U.S.S.R. was The Sun of the Incas, premiered in Leningrad in 1964 and soon played in Western Europe by Bruno Maderna and Pierre Boulez.

In the 1960s Denisov often used rigorous serial procedures, and often tightly restricted formal ideas, such as the one reflected in the title of his Crescendo e diminuendo for harpsichord and 12 strings (1965). During the following year he had a tendency to write music in larger forms, often in the form of concertos. Many of these works were composed for Western performers, such as saxophonist Jean-Marie Londeix, oboist Heinz Holliger, clarinetist Eduard Brunner, and flutist Aurèle Nicolet. One Soviet performer who did champion Denisov's work was the Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, and he even premiered Denisov's Violin Concerto in Milan, rather than in the Soviet Union.

During this decade Denisov started using techniques other than the twelve-tone system, including aleatory (chance) techniques, electronic music, new playing techniques, and microtones. His music became less rigidly systematic. In his mature music (generally that written from 1980 onward) he usually employed various techniques freely. Russian folk music made a reappearance in this music, but often used in heterophonic textures.

The late Soviet policy of perestroika allowed Denisov to cultivate close ties with the West and employ avant-garde techniques with more freedom. In 1990 he became head of the Moscow Association of Contemporary Music. In 1991, at the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he went to work at IRCAM, the French experimental music institute.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide

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Edison Denisov was born in 1929 in Tomsk, Siberia, where he first studied mathematics at the local university before turning his attention more seriously to music. He entered the Moscow Conservatory, studying composition with Visarion Chabalin, orchestration with Nicolai Rakov, analysis with Viktor Zuckerman, and piano with Vladimir Below; he graduated in 1956. Following a period of intense self-study, Denisov achieved his first public success in 1965, when his vocal-chamber work Le Soleil des Incas was performed by Pierre Boulez' Domaine Musical, conducted by Bruno Moderna.

In the wake of this success, Denisov turned his attention to large-scale works, and received commissions to write several concertos during the 1970s, by such esteemed soloists as flutist Aurèle Nicolet, oboist Heinz Holliger, clarinetist Eduard Brunner, and violinist Gidon Kremer. Among his major compositions written during the 1980s include the opera L'ecume des jours (premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris, 1986), the ballet La Confession, and the Requiem Mass - a non-religious work, now considered among his masterpieces; these years also saw two important commissions from French sources: the vocal-chamber work Au plus haut des cieux (1986) for the 10th Anniversary of the Ensemble InterContemporain, and his Symphonie (1987) for Daniel Barenboïm and the Orchestre de Paris. His final years, during the 1990s, saw a further development of metaphysical and even religious themes, in works such as his Histoire de la Vie et de la mort de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1992) and Morgentraum (1993).

Parallel to his concert music activities, Denisov also enjoyed a 30-year collaboration with Yuri Lyubimov, director of the Taganka Theater in Moscow, for which he wrote incidental works, as well as film scores for productions in Russia and throughout Europe.

In the years since his death, in Paris, in 1996, Denisov has been widely acknowledged as among the most important leaders of the post-Shostakovich generation in Russia, as well as a vital link between Russian and European composers such as Boulez, Stockhausen, Nono, and others with whom he had contact beginning in the 1950s. His music has been, and continues to be, performed by top orchestras, ensembles, and soloists around the world, including by such esteemed conductors as Leonard Bernstein, Charles Dutoit, Daniel Barenboïm, Neeme Järvi, Pierre Boulez, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, and many others. His music is available on numerous record labels, including Columbia, Bis, and Mélodia, among others; and is published by such esteemed houses as Boosey & Hawkes, Breitkopf & Härtel, G.Schirmer, Universal Edition, and Le Chant du Monde, among others.

Beyond his compositional legacy, Denisov is also valued as being an important teacher in Russia - both at the Moscow Conservatory, where he taught from 1959, and privately. He likewise taught at IRCAM in Paris, and was the Director of Moscow's Association of Contemporary Music from 1990 until his death. In 1986 he was named Officer of the Academy of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture, and received the Grand Prix of the City of Paris in 1993.

Edison Denisov is certainly a major composer of the late 20th century, and we are pleased to feature his music here at the Classical Archives.

Edison Denisov
email: dennisova-bruggeman@wanadoo.fr

Below are works by E.Denisov that every music lover should explore: