Alexander Davidenko (13 April 1899 – 1 May 1934) was a Soviet proletarian composer. Born in Odessa into the family of a telegraph operator, he was orphaned at the age of eight. His stepfather placed him in a theological seminary, from which he ran away and began an independent life.
Davidenko studied composition with Witold Maliszewski at the Odessa Conservatory in 1918–1919. He later attended the Kharkiv Music Institute in 1921, then studied at the Moscow Conservatory from 1922 to 1929 under Reinhold Glière. At the same time, from 1922 to 1924, he studied at the Choral Academy with Alexander Kastalsky. He was a postgraduate student at the Moscow Conservatory from 1929 to 1932 and also taught at its workers' faculty.
From 1924, Davidenko directed choral circles in workers' clubs. In 1925 he founded the Production Collective of Student Composers of the Moscow Conservatory, known as Prokoll, and led it until 1929. He worked extensively with amateur music-making and directed large choirs at public celebrations, experimenting with the participation of listeners in choral singing. He also arranged older revolutionary songs, including “Execution” and “The Prisoner,” and travelled widely to establish choral circles and write songs for them.
His songs were popular in concert performance and on radio, and he became an important figure in the development of Soviet mass choral song. Among his best-known pieces were “Budyonny's Cavalry” (1925), based on a text by Nikolai Aseev; “The Little Drummer,” his arrangement of a German song in a Russian translation by Mikhail Svetlov; and “They Wanted to Beat Us,” to words by Demyan Bedny. He also wrote the choral works “The Sea Roared Furiously” (1925) and the choral suite “Workers' May” (1926), as well as a collection of Chechen songs and melodies.
Davidenko's larger works included the unfinished opera 1919, of which one act was staged in 1931 as Derailment, and the opera 1905, completed after his death by Boris Shekhter. Other compositions included the vocal-symphonic fragments Raising the Wagon, the ballad Communist, Barge Haulers after Nikolai Nekrasov, romances including “Mother” and “Letter,” a suite on Chechen folk themes, and songs such as “Chapaev Song” and “The May Day Sun.”
From 1923 until his death, he lived at 51 Arbat Street in Moscow. He died unexpectedly in Moscow on 1 May 1934, shortly after a May Day demonstration, and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery. At his funeral, a choir of Moscow Conservatory students and amateur performers sang his songs.