Arseny Gladkovsky

Arseny Pavlovich Gladkovsky was a Soviet composer, best known as the author of the first Soviet opera, For Red Petrograd, or The Year 1919.

From 1912 he studied harmony, counterpoint, and formal analysis with Vasily Kalafati. He studied in the mathematics department of St. Petersburg University and graduated in 1917. From 1915 to 1917 he served as secretary and teacher of music theory in the university's music circle. Between 1918 and 1922 he worked as a lecturer at concerts of the Political Education Department of the 7th Army.

In 1924 he graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory, where he studied composition with Vasily Kalafati and Maximilian Steinberg. From 1922 to 1932 he was head of the music department and a teacher of theoretical subjects at the 1st Art Studio and the Art Polytechnic. From 1930 to 1934 he taught theoretical subjects at the N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov music courses.

From 1934 to 1941 Gladkovsky taught composition at the music college and school attached to the Leningrad Conservatory, as well as at the Palace of Pioneers. He also held important organizational posts in the musical life of Leningrad: from 1929 to 1932 he was chairman of the bureau of the composers' section of Vseroskomdram in Leningrad, and from 1932 to 1940 he was chairman of the Leningrad city committee of composers.

His principal works include the opera For Red Petrograd, or The Year 1919 (1925, co-written with Yevgeny Prussak to a libretto by A. P. Lebedev), the opera-oratorio Front and Rear (1930), the poem In Memory of the 26 Baku Commissars (1931) for voice, declamation, and symphony orchestra, the musical comedy Rustam (1932), the Children's Suite (1934), the symphonies Heroic (1935), Pushkin (1937), and Karelian (1945), the musical comedies The Poet and the Drummer (1937) and The Emerald Ring (1938), and the ballet Tom Sawyer (1939, libretto by B. Fenster).

Gladkovsky also wrote a large number of songs to texts by V. Azarov, P. Korshunov, V. Lopukhin, A. Prokofyev, A. Surkov, N. Tikhonov, and N. Shcherbakov. He composed incidental music for the plays Friendship by V. Gusev, The Marriage of Balzaminov by Alexander Ostrovsky, and Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller.

Among his students were Mark Fradkin, Alexey Muravyov, Vadim Salmanov, and Daniil Frenkel. Gladkovsky died in Leningrad in 1945 and was buried at the Volkov Lutheran Cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Connections

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