Ivan Wyschnegradsky
Ivan Wyschnegradsky was a Russian and French composer and one of the pioneers of quarter-tone music. He was born in St. Petersburg on May 16, 1893. He attended the First St. Petersburg Gymnasium, studied philosophy at St. Petersburg University, and studied composition with Nikolai Sokolov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He began composing at 17. His first known work dates from 1910; his 1912 debut piece, Andante religioso et funèbre, was premiered in Pavlovsk in 1913, but has not survived.
Wyschnegradsky regarded Alexander Scriabin as his chief spiritual guide in music. His first mature work, The Day of Existence, was written in 1916 to his own text. He then began dividing the musical scale into microintervals, pursuing what he called ultrachromatism. On November 7, 1918, he wrote Four Fragments for piano and a second version for two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart, his first formal experiment in microchromatic music.
In 1920, he left Petrograd to meet piano makers in Paris and Berlin and develop an instrument suited to his music. He spent time in Berlin in 1922 and 1923, where he became friends with Alois Hába, who had independently explored quarter-tone music. Wyschnegradsky wrote string quartets, choral works, songs, and pieces for quarter-tone piano. Since pianists found the technique difficult, he returned to using two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart; this made possible a Paris concert of his music in 1926. By 1937, he had developed a way to perform it using two pianos tuned with different tuning forks.
Wyschnegradsky gave successful Paris concerts in 1937 and 1945. He met Olivier Messiaen in 1937 and later came into contact with Henri Dutilleux and Pierre Boulez, who performed his music. After 1950, he wrote for orchestra and the Martenot waves and took an interest in early forms of electronic music. A 1958 meeting with Julián Carrillo led him to write several pieces for Carrillo’s microtonal pianos.
His music received few performances. A concert devoted to his work, organized by his student Martine Joste, took place in Paris in 1977, and The Day of Existence received a major performance in 1978. His final commission, the String Trio, Op. 53, remained unfinished at his death and was completed by Claude Ballif. Wyschnegradsky died in Paris on September 29, 1979, and was buried in Bagneux.