Mykola Roslavets (b. 4 January 1881, Surazh, Chernihiv province - d. 23 August 1944, Moscow) was a Ukrainian composer and violinist. He was also a music critic and public figure.
He was born on 24 December 1880 (4 January 1881) in Surazh, Chernihiv Oblast (modern Bryansk Oblast). His professional training began in the 1890s in Kursk, in the music classes of the Russian Musical Society.
In 1901, he moved to Moscow. There he entered the Conservatoire in 1901 (or 1902) and graduated from the composition class of A. Ilyinsky and S. Vasilenko and the violin class of Ivan Grzhimali in 1912 with the Grand Silver Medal.
Roslavets immediately entered the musical world as a serious artist, and proved himself to be the avant-garde of the avant-garde at a time when the revolutionary ideas of left-wing composers were only beginning to emerge in the minds of their creators. From 1913 onwards, he confidently declared himself as a mature, deeply thinking master with his own style and original compositional technique.
Creativity
Intensive intellectual work from the spring of 1912 to the spring of 1913 bore fruit - one by one his works appeared in the 1910s: the vocal cycle "Sad Landscapes" by P. Verlaine (1913), the First Symphony of the Year (1913). Verlaine (1913), the First String Quartet (1913), the symphonic poem "At the Time of the New Moon" (1913), "Nocturne" for harp, oboe, two violas and cello (1913), "Three..." and "Four Works for Voice and Piano" (1913-1914), the First Violin Sonata (1913), the First and Second Piano Sonatas (1914, 1916) and many other compositions, mostly in the chamber genre.
The essence of Roslavets's innovation was the creation of a special system of pitch organisation of music - the synthetic chord technique (twelve-tone seriality). Around the same time, E. Golyshev, I. Stravinsky, M. Obukhov, and I. Vyshnegradsky arrived at this point in time by different means, on the one hand, and composers of the New Viennese school, such as A. Webern, A. Schoenberg, and A. Berg in the West, on the other hand (and much later). By laying the foundations of a new compositional technique, they revolutionised musical understanding.
Roslavets and Ukraine
There are still disagreements about Roslavets's place of birth, which is given differently in different publications. Sometimes the village of Kozarychi, in the modern Hordiivka district of the Bryansk region, is mentioned, while in his autobiography Roslavets himself listed his birthplace as "the remote half-Ukrainian, half-Belarusian town of Dushatin in the former Chernihiv province" (now in the Surazh district of the Bryansk region). The Soviet "Musical Encyclopaedia" also points to Dushatin as the place of Roslavets's birth. Contemporary researcher M. Lobanova notes that Roslavets was forced to conceal his true origin during the Soviet years, and thus the data given in his autobiography is not true, and his real place of birth is Surazh. But in any case, it is worthy of note that Mykola Roslavets was born in Starodubshchyna, the territory of the former Ukrainian Hetmanate, which is now part of the Bryansk region of Russia.
In his Autobiography, Roslavets noted that by the time he was twelve years old, he was "doing peasant work appropriate to his age: helping his elders in the field, on the hayfield, in the garden, and herding cattle (he especially liked to drive horses at night)." There were many self-taught craftsmen in Roslavets' family - musicians and violinists. Under the influence of his uncle, at the age of 7-8, Mykola fell in love with the violin and learnt to play it by ear. Since 1893, he has been earning his living by his own labour - he was hired to work in small offices, travelled to Ukraine, but wherever possible, he tried to get the best musical education, taking lessons from a Jewish "wedding" violinist in Konotop, for example. In Kursk, he was lucky enough to get into the music classes of the Russian Musical Society, after which he went to Moscow in 1901 to enter the conservatory. At the Conservatory, he studied composition with Oleksandr Ilyinsky and Serhiy Vasylenko, and violin was taught by I. Grzhymali. In 1912, Roslavets graduated from the Conservatory with the Grand Silver Medal.
Roslavets returned to Ukraine in 1921 and found himself in Kharkiv (then the Ukrainian capital), where he became rector and professor of the Kharkiv Music Institute, and at the same time headed the department of artistic education of the People's Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR. Roslavets creates a vocal and instrumental cycle based on the words of Taras Shevchenko, sets his "Testament" to music, but at the same time does not abandon the trends of Western European art, promoting the works of the so-called "innovators" in the Soviet Union - A. Webern, A. Schoenberg, and A. Berg. Together with them, Mykola Roslavets made a real revolution in the musical understanding of the time, laying the foundations of a new compositional technique. The essence of Roslavets's innovation was the creation of a special system of pitch organisation of music - the twelve-tone serial. Roslavets's musical works of this period include the symphonic poem "Man and the Sea" after S. Baudelaire (1921), Five Preludes for piano (1921-1922), the symphonic poem "The End of the World" after P. Lafargue (1922). Lafargue (1922), the Fifth Sonata for Piano (1923), the Second Sonata for Cello and Piano (1924), the First Violin Concerto (1925) and many other chamber works made him write about the most authoritative music publications of the time: "mastery, technical perfection in performance, extraordinary conviction of the author in his principles - all this has now put him in the first ranks of composers of the USSR".
But the Iron Curtain was gradually closing the way to the West for the citizens of the Soviet state. In Ukraine, it became difficult to receive new information about musical life in Europe, so in 1923 Mykola Roslavets moved back to Moscow, where there was still some possibility of staying informed about the events taking place in the West. Nevertheless, contemporary Ukraine also considers Roslavets "its own", referring to him in numerous publications as "a Ukrainian and Russian composer, violinist, music critic and activist".
Works
Symphony in C-moll (1910s); Composer International (Mainz) 51585
"In the hours of the New Moon" ("In the hours of the New Moon"), symphonic poem (1912-1913); SCHOTT ED 8107
"Heaven and Earth, a mystery based on Byron (1912)
String Quartet No. 1 (1913); SCHOTT ED 8126
Sonata for violin and piano No. 1 (1913)
Three Etudes for piano (1914); SCHOTT ED 7907
Piano Sonata No. 1 (1914); SCHOTT ED 7941
Piano Sonata No. 2 (1916); SCHOTT ED 8391
Sonata for violin and piano No. 2 (1917); SCHOTT ED 8043
Five Preludes for piano (1919 - 1922); SCHOTT ED 7907
String Quartet No. 3 (1920); SCHOTT ED 8127
Piano Trio No. 2 (1920); SCHOTT ED 8059
Sonata for violin and piano No. 4 (1920); SCHOTT ED 8044
Piano Trio No. 3 (1921); SCHOTT ED 8035
Sonata for cello and piano No. 1 (1921); SCHOTT ED 8038
"Man and the Sea, a symphonic poem after Baudelaire (1921); lost
"Reflection" ("Razdumie"), for cello and piano (1921)
Symphony in four movements (probably Symphony No. 1) (1922); fragments of the score
Sonata for cello and piano No. 2 (1922); SCHOTT ED 8039
Piano Sonata No. 5 (1923); SCHOTT ED 8392
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No. 1 (1925); SCHOTT ED 7823 (score); SCHOTT ED 7824 (clarinet)
Chamber Symphony (unfinished, 1926, known in a free version by A. M. Raskatov)
Sonata for viola and piano No. 1 (1926); SCHOTT ED 8177
"October" ("Октябрь"), cantata (1927)
Piano Trio No. 4 (1927); SCHOTT ED 8036
Sonata for violin and piano No. 6 (1930s); SCHOTT ED 8431
Sonata for viola and piano No. 2 (1930s); SCHOTT ED 8178
"Maslyanka ("Buttermilk" Cotton), ballet-pantomime (1931-1932)
"Uzbekistan", symphonic poem (1932); fragments have been preserved
Chamber Symphony for 18 performers (in 4 movements, 1934 - 1935); Composer International (Mainz) 51581
Violin Concerto No. 2 (1936); Kompositor International (Mainz) 52700
String Quartet No. 5 (1941); SCHOTT ED 8128
24 Preludes for violin and piano (1941 - 1942); SCHOTT ED 7940
