Roman Ledenyov

Roman Ledenyov was a Soviet and Russian composer, film composer, and music teacher. He was born on December 4, 1930, in Moscow, USSR, and became a professor of the Moscow Conservatory. In 1995 he was named People's Artist of the Russian Federation.

He studied at the Central Music School, graduating in 1948 after training in composition with Yevgeny Messner and Vissarion Shebalin. In 1955 he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Nikolai Rakov and Anatoly Alexandrov, and in 1958 he completed postgraduate study there in composition under Alexandrov.

From 1956 onward Ledenyov worked at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Between 1956 and 1964 he taught polyphony, solfeggio, instrumentation, harmony, and composition as an assistant in the music theory department. From 1978 he led a composition class, and from 1991 he held the rank of professor. He taught at the conservatory until the end of his life. From 2006 he also taught composition at the Central Music School.

Ledenyov was a member of the Union of Soviet Composers, later the Union of Composers of the Russian Federation, and served as Secretary of the Union of Composers of the Russian Federation in 1970-1973 and again in 1995-2006. He was also a member of the Union of Cinematographers and the International Academy of Creativity.

The main themes of his work were the native land and Russian nature, with its boundless expanses and heights of sky, and his music was characterized in the article as possessing elevated beauty, naturalness, and crystalline purity. His style developed under the influence of very different musical tendencies. During his student years he was strongly influenced by Sergei Prokofiev, whose music he valued for its special harmony of traditional and innovative approaches to composition. In the 1960s he closely studied the composers of the so-called Second Viennese School, especially Anton Webern, whose concise manner of writing interested him deeply. In the 1970s his artistic interests turned in the opposite direction toward the work of Georgy Sviridov, as he sought to proceed from emotion and sensation rather than from a predetermined idea. According to Svetlana Savenko, Ledenyov was not merely following Sviridov's path, but rediscovering for himself the eternal values of Russian classical art; national tradition became the support of his creative style.

His music was frequently performed in leading concert halls in Russia and abroad and entered the regular repertoire of such performers as Vladimir Fedoseyev, Boris Tevlin, Yuri Bashmet, Valery Polyansky, Vladimir Minin, and Alexander Vedernikov. His output included the ballet The Tale of Green Balloons; orchestral works such as Rus' — Green and Snow-White, Symphony in Simple Modes, and Variations on a Theme by Haydn; concert works for violin, viola, cello, flute, and chamber orchestra; chamber compositions including string quartets, sonatas, and piano works; and a large body of vocal music, including oratorios, cantatas, choral cycles, and sacred compositions. He also wrote music for theater and for many films, among them Knight's Move, Heat, Wings, Uncle's Dream, At the Thirteenth Hour of the Night, All the King's Men, Strange Woman, Poem of Wings, and Supermen.

Ledenyov received numerous distinctions, including Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1982, People's Artist of the Russian Federation in 1995, the State Prize of the Russian Federation in 1997, and the Russian Authors' Society Prize in 2005. In the same year he also received a commendation from the Minister of Culture and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation for his long and fruitful work in musical art and for his contribution to the training of highly qualified specialists.

He was active in public musical life as a jury member for Russian and international competitions, including competitions for violists, young composers, and vocalists, and in 2006 he chaired the jury of the competition Contemporary Art and Education in the composer-performer category. As a teacher he educated several generations of students, including musicians from Russia and many other countries.

Roman Ledenyov died on August 15, 2019. He was buried in Moscow at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery.

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.