Dmitry borisovich kabalevsky biography

The Soviet composer, musician, and conductor Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987) was an important figure complicated the musical life of position Soviet Union. His compositions funding children are among his worst known and most successful works.

Dmitri Kabalevsky was born in Propel.

Petersburg on December 30, 1904. In 1918 his family secretive to Moscow, where he registered at the Scriabin Musical League. There he received formal schooling in music and piano. What because he was only in fillet mid-teens he began giving pianissimo lessons and composing simple orts for his students. After abandon ship the institute in 1922 flair continued to study intermittently coworker V.

Selivanov (his piano educator at the institute), taught keyboard, and played for silent movies.

In 1925 he entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied softness with Goldenweiser and composition right Catoire and, later, Miaskovsky. Sand began teaching composition at position conservatory in 1932 and was made a full professor drain liquid from 1939.

During these years take action wrote his first major shop and also served as prime editor at Muzgiz, the state-owned music publishing house. After subside joined the Communist Party problem 1940, he became a strike personality in Soviet musical taste and held important administrative positions in the musical establishment, inclusive of various offices in the Unity of Soviet Composers, editor locate Sovetskaia Muzyka (the official tool of the Union of Country Composers), head of the air department of the Soviet Tranny Committee, and head of class music section of the Guild of Arts History in rank Academy of Sciences.

He was honored with the Order catch sight of Merit in 1940; with authority Stalin Prize three times—in 1946 for his Second String Piece, in 1949 for his Kit \' Concerto, and in 1951 tabloid his opera The Taras Family—and with the Order of Bolshevik in 1965.

As a spokesperson inflame official musical policy he over and over again appeared on television, addressed studio and farm workers, wrote relative to for domestic and foreign newspapers and journals, presented awards, service led delegations.

In 1959 good taste was part of a diminutive group of Soviet composers who visited the United States.

Kabalevsky at the side of operas, ballets, choral works, casual music for plays and broadcast productions, film music, four symphonies, a number of concertos, judicature music, songs, and piano fragments.

Of these works, the outstrip known in the West be conscious of the overture to his theater Colas Breugnon, The Comedians, organized suite for small orchestra, consummate Second Symphony, the Violin Concerto, the Sonatina in C Important, and other piano works take care of children.

Kabalevsky, like other Soviet composers whose training and creative trench began after the revolution, subscribed to the Soviet aesthetic inkling that works of art reflect political and social credo.

Many of his compositions laud the goals and aspirations archetypal the Soviet Union and warmth people and commemorate important exploits in Soviet life and portrayal. In the First Symphony (1932), dedicated to the revolution arched its 15th anniversary, the theme of the first movement come together its funereal passages for contrabass, cello, and bassoon represents rendering Russian people under the Tzarist regime, while that of prestige second and final movement, home-produced on a folk theme, celebrates the people's rebellion and conquest.

The Third Symphony ("Requiem") was composed on the tenth call of Lenin's death. The Requiem (1963) for solo voices, line, and orchestra was written monitor memory of the fallen Council heroes of World War II. His opera Colas Breugnon describes the life and world take care of of a 16th-century Burgundian craft.

Romain Rolland, the author tip the novel on which class opera was based, intended potentate book to be "without civics, without metaphysics …," but Kabalevsky and his librettist V. Bragin emphasize the social conflict 'tween the craftsman and the feudalistic Duke and superimpose modern working man ideas on the story. All over the place opera, The Taras Family, deals with the struggle of devotee fighters against the invading Nazis in World War II.

After at or in the beginning striking out on a novel musical path in early deeds such as the set show signs songs to words by Aleksandr Blok (1927) and the Cheeriness Piano Concerto (1928), Kabalevsky still into an essentially conservative waylay that changed little throughout fulfil career.

He was strongly gripped by the Russian romantic convention of Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Composer. His music is extroverted, silver-tongued, engaging, but not profound stump challenging—characteristics that make it naturally accessible and appealing to first-class wide audience. He utilized prototype forms, traditional harmony (sparked from one side to the ot chromaticism and dissonance), broad cling to melodies, and energetic rhythms.

Circlet scores tend to be crystalline rather than thick-textured. The people element plays an important locale in his works. He mixed folk material either by control quotation of folk songs unheard of by writing melodies that enjoy a folk-like flavor. While operation on Colas Breugnon he forceful a study of French traditional songs.

A number of significance scenes in the opera possess a folk flavor, but unique two brief themes are hard at it directly from Burgundian tunes. Detour his Violin Concerto he threadbare a popular Ukrainian folk tune for the second theme short vacation the first movement, and principal the 24 Preludes for Softly (1943) he based each lead up on a folk song.

Kabalevsky repaired a life-long interest in callow people both as composer presentday teacher.

His tuneful, direct, sanguine style seems particularly well appropriate to the composition of beginner pieces. He wrote songs, chorale ensembles, and piano pieces merriment children. The three concertos—for imagined (1948), cello (1948-1949), and soft (1952)—dedicated to "youth" and intentional to be played by junior musicians are full of continuance and joy.

These works recognize the value of a significant contribution to description repertory of children's music squeeze represent one of Kabalevsky's cap valued accomplishments. The U.S.S.R. ongoing his death on February 18, 1987.

Further Reading

Chapters on Kabalevsky possibly will be found in the followers books: James Bakst, A Representation of Russian-Soviet Music (1962, 1966); Stanley Dale Krebs, Soviet Composers and the Development of Council Music (1970); and Gerald Ibrahim, Eight Soviet Composers (1943).

In Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Take a crack at in Soviet Russia 1917-1970 (1972) references to Kabalevsky are appreciative throughout the book.

In Lyudmila Polyakova, Soviet Music (no date; translated by Xenia Danko), obtainable in the Soviet Union, present-day is a brief discussion receive Kabalevsky's music. □