Edison Denisov
Edison Vasilievich Denisov was a Soviet and Russian composer, musicologist, and public figure. He was born in Tomsk on April 6, 1929. His father, Vasily Denisov, was a radiophysicist from Ust-Kamenogorsk who stood at the origins of radio and television broadcasting in Tomsk, and his mother, Antonina Titova, was a tuberculosis physician who worked at the Tomsk tuberculosis dispensary.
In childhood he taught himself to play the mandolin and guitar, but he began serious musical study only at the age of twelve. In 1946 he entered both the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at Tomsk State University and the Tomsk Music College, where he studied with the well-known Tomsk teachers O. A. Kotlyarevskaya and E. N. Korchinsky. In 1950 he won a student composition competition and sent his works to Dmitri Shostakovich, who replied that Denisov needed to devote himself seriously to music. Denisov graduated from the piano class of the college in 1950 and from Tomsk University in 1951.
In 1951 Denisov entered the Moscow Conservatory. After graduating in 1956, he remained there as a teacher, and his works became known to a wider public. In the Soviet Union his music, labeled “avant-garde,” did not receive recognition, while abroad Denisov was called the “Mozart of the twentieth century.” After completing postgraduate study in 1959, he taught orchestration at the Moscow Conservatory and later composition.
Among his students were the composers Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova, Alexander Vustin, Sergei Pavlenko, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Ivan Sokolov, Bozhidar Spassov, Juan Gutierrez, and others. Officially they studied with Denisov only in instrumentation, because until the end of the 1980s he was not allowed openly to lead a composition class. Later his official composition students included Yuri Kasparov, Olga Rayeva, Anton Safronov, Alexandra Filonenko, Vadim Karasikov, and others. Many young composers who were not formally his students also sought his advice, among them Dmitri Kapyrin, Alexander Shchetinsky, and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky.
In 1979, at the Sixth Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers, Denisov's music was sharply criticized in the official report of the Union's First Secretary, Tikhon Khrennikov. As a result, Denisov was included in the so-called “Khrennikov Seven,” a blacklist of seven Russian composers. Until the beginning of Perestroika, official Soviet institutions obstructed the dissemination of his music.
In 1994 Denisov was involved in a very serious car accident in Staraya Ruza and was taken to France for treatment, where his work had long been known and in demand. He lived there during the last two years of his life, while periodically visiting Russia. He became an honorary citizen of Paris and received France's highest state award, the Order of the Legion of Honour. He died in a Paris clinic on November 24, 1996, from complications of an oncological illness, and was buried at the South Cemetery of Saint-Mande.
Among Denisov's notable works are the lyrical drama Foam of Days after the novel by Boris Vian (1981), the opera The Four Girls after a play by Pablo Picasso (1986), the Requiem for soprano, tenor, chorus, and orchestra on poems by Francisco Tanzer and liturgical texts (1980), The Story of the Life and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ for tenor, bass, chorus, and orchestra on texts from the New Testament and the Orthodox liturgy (1992), and The Sun of the Incas for soprano and ensemble on poems by Gabriela Mistral (1964).
His honors included the title People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 1994 and Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1989. He was also a knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour and of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.
Connections
This figure has 2 connections in the Music Lineage catalog.