Fyodor Akimenko

Fyodor Akimenko was a Ukrainian composer, pianist, and teacher. He was born on February 20, 1876, in the village of Peski, Kharkiv Governorate, Russian Empire, and died on January 3, 1945, in Paris. He was the brother of the Ukrainian composer Yakiv Stepovy, the pseudonym of Yakiv Yakymenko.

At the age of ten he was selected for the Court Chapel in St. Petersburg, where he received his initial musical education as a student of the choir-regent class. He studied under Anatoly Lyadov and Mily Balakirev. At the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied from 1896 to 1900, he completed the course in the class of Professor of composition theory Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. From 1897 he worked as a teacher in the conducting courses of the Court Chapel.

He later served as conductor of a music school in Tiflis from 1901 to 1903, director of a music school in Nice from 1903 to 1906, and then director of the Kharkiv branch of the Imperial Russian Musical Society. From 1919 to 1923 he was a professor at the Petrograd Conservatory. He also collaborated with the journal Russian Musical Gazette, publishing articles including “Autobiographical Notes,” “Liszt and Dante,” “The Sphere of Music,” “On Richard’s Golden-Stringed World,” “Art and War,” and “From Memories of M. A. Balakirev.” Among his pupils were Igor Stravinsky, Z. Lisko, N. Kolessa, and others.

From 1923 Akimenko lived in France, in Nice and Paris. From 1924 he was a professor in the music department of the Mykhailo Drahomanov Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute in Prague. In addition to his teaching work, he appeared as a concert pianist and choral conductor. During these years he wrote his treatise “Practical Course of the Science of Harmony in Two Parts with Workbook,” published in Prague in 1926. In 1932 he was elected vice director of the Russian Normal Conservatory in Paris, where he also served as professor of piano.

Akimenko’s compositions were published by major Russian and foreign music publishers including Belaieff, Bassel, Jurgenson, Leduc, and Rouart-Lerolle. Belaieff issued his vocal and instrumental works opp. 1 to 21, while Jurgenson published opp. 22 to 43. These included 25 songs, mostly on texts by Russian poets, three choruses for mixed voices, a trio for violin, viola, and cello, a “Lyrical Poem” for large orchestra dedicated to Rimsky-Korsakov, and works for violin, cello, English horn, viola, clarinet, horn, harp, flute, and piano. His output also included many piano works, preludes, sketches, three idyllic dances, seven technical studies, and several notebooks of programmatic songs.

Songs on poems by Mikhail Lermontov occupy an important place in Akimenko’s early work. The first of them, “Selim’s Song” (“The Moon Floats”), was connected with the poem “Izmail-Bey” and published in Leipzig in 1896. Other Lermontov settings published in Leipzig included “K***” (“Do Not Delay”), “Prayer” (“In a Difficult Moment of Life”), later included in his collection “Four Songs with Flute Accompaniment” (1899), as well as “From Beneath the Mysterious, Cold Half-Mask,” “She Sings and the Sounds Fade,” “Why,” “We Parted,” “Rusalka,” “Do I Hear Your Voice,” “No, It Is Not You That I Love So Ardently,” and “The Captive Knight.” The songs “Sky and Stars” (“The Evening Sky Is Pure”) and “To Sushkova” (“Black-Eyed Girl”) were published in Moscow in 1905.

His music reveals solid compositional technique, refined taste, stylistic poise, poetic feeling, and sincerity of mood. His talent, predominantly lyrical, was expressed mainly in small forms. In the works of his later years, especially for piano, the influence of French modernist composers became noticeable. This influence appeared in the technical construction of the works, in the refinement of harmony, in an occasionally exaggerated simplicity of style, and in the author’s attraction to the mystical, as in “Uranie” and “Starry Dreams,” to indefinite moods, and to the revival of ancient musical manner, which can be seen to some extent in his interesting “Idyllic Dances” for piano.

Among the works named in the article are the opera “The Snow Fairy,” a ballet whose title is not given, “Lyrical Poem” for orchestra, an overture for orchestra, “Two Pieces” for violin and piano, “Eclogue” in F minor for English horn or viola or violin and piano, “Romance in E minor” for viola and piano, “Little Ballade” for clarinet and piano, “Idyll” for flute and piano, “Berceuse” for piano, “By the Fireside” for piano, “Two Fantastic Sketches” for piano, a sonata for violin and piano, piano pieces, and the “Fantastical Sonata” for piano.

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.