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born in Dniepropetrovsk in 1955, he studied composition
at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Nikolai Sidelnikov and Edison
Denisov and music theory with Yuri Kholopov. His diploma work – the
Cello Concerto (1988) – was selected by Gennady Rozh-destvensky for a
series of concerts entitled ‘From the history of Soviet music’.
Tarnopolski is a frequent guest at major contemporary music festivals
including the iscm World Music Days, the Berliner Festwochen, the Münchener
Biennale, ‘Wien Modern’, the Holland Festival, Frank-furter
Musikfest, Almeida Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival,
‘Tage fur Neue Musik’ in Zurich, the San Diego Arts Festival,
Rencontres Musicales d’Evian, and the ‘Warsaw Autumn’. His
music has attracted such famous Russian conductors as Gennady Rozhdestvensky,
Mstislav Rostropovich, and Alexander Lazarev, as well as leading ensembles
including Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Ensemble Modern,
Ensemble InterContem-porain, the Schönberg Ensemble, Ensemble Recherche,
and the Bolshoi Theatre Soloists’ Ensemble. His stage works have been
premiered in Russia, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.
In Tarnopolski’s pieces there is an explosively charged musical
substance which fits into a concisely articulated, well-balanced
construction. They combine in a paradoxical manner two aesthetic aspects.
The first is a search for a new euphony, which is developed on the basis of
complex sound material, which abolishes the opposition between consonance
and dissonance, sound and noise, harmony and sonority, as well as electronic
and acoustic instruments. The second is a refined post-modernist
theatricality, filled with either a joyful irony or a surrealistic
grotesquerie.
Tarnopolski plays a significant role in the development of contemporary
Russian musical life. He was one of the initiators of the Association of
Contemporary Music in Moscow (1989), which represented a group of composers
who reacted against the official Soviet cultural policy (the so-called
socialist realism). In 1993 he founded the Centre for Contem-porary Music at
the Moscow Conservatory as well as the Studio for New Music Ensemble which
focused on the performance of works by Russian avant-garde composers. In
1994 he established the Moscow Forum,
a new annual International Festival of Contemporary Music, the main focus of
which is the integration of contemporary Russian and East-European
contemporary music with Western European contemporary music.
Since 1992 Tarnopolski is a professor of composition at the Moscow
Conservatory. He has given seminars in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands,
Switzerland, the United States and other countries.
His compositional honours include the Dmitri Shostakovich Prize (1991) and
the Paul Hindemith Prize (1991).
Selected works: Cello Concerto (1980), Symphony (1982),
Wahnfried for solo violin, piano, six Wagner tubas (or five trombones and
tuba), five recorders (or flutes and clarinets) and invisible choir (or tape),
to a text by Richard Wagner (1984), Psalmus poenitentialis, concerto for
choir, solo violin, organ and percussion (1986), Three Graces, opera-parody
in three scenes to a text by Carl Maria Weber (1987), Choralvorspiel
‘Jesu, deine tiefen Wunden’ for string trio, percussion and
ensemble (1987), Brooklyn Bridge, or My Discovery of America, cantata for
soprano, tenor and orchestra (or large ensemble) to a text by Vladimir
Mayakovsky (1988), Echoes of the Passing Day, trio for clarinet, cello and
piano (1989), Upon Reading Mussorgsky’s Draft Notebooks, music theatre
for choir, soloists, narrator and chamber orchestra (1989),
Eindruck-Ausdruck for piano (1989, version for piano and large ensemble
– 1992, version for piano, flute, clarinet and string trio –
1996), Per archi, in tribute to Luigi Nono, for percussion quartet (1990),
Cassandra for large ensemble (1991), Welt voll Irrsinn for large ensemble
(1993), Ah, ces russes... ou l’Elixir Magique, musical farce to a text
by I. Maslennikova (1993), The Breath of the Exhausted Time for orchestra
(1994), Landschaft nach der Schlacht after Duineser Elegien by
r. m. Rilke for large ensemble, solo baritone and bass choir ad libitum
(1995), ...Le vent des mots qu’il n’a pas dits for cello and
orchestra (1996), Ins Theater, music play (1998), Wenn die Zeit über die
Ufer tritt, opera in three scenes to a text by r. g. Mohnnau based on A.
Chekhov (1999), Chevengur for voice and ensemble to a text by A. Platonov
(2001), Cinderella, theatricalized cantata for children’s voices,
children’s orchestra, six narrators and professional ensemble, a
setting of R. Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes adapted by D. Sturrock (2003),
Feux follets for orchestra (2003).
Echoes of the Passing Day
The trio Echoes of the Passing Day takes the form of a kind of musical
equivalent of the Proustian-Joycean ‘stream of consciousness’.
A free stream of sound associations, themselves set in motion by the actual
title of the work, is called upon to bring out not the directly linear
logical connections between elements but rather their remote subconsciously
associative connections. The style of the composition seems like the product
of an ‘after-culture’, when such radically different phenomena
as quotations from Beethoven and instrumental theatre are naturally able to
exist side by side in a single context.
The work is dedicated to Elizabeth Wilson and interwoven within it are two
emblems of her name: Beethoven’s Für Elise and the Ame-rican popular
song Elizabeth. The process of musical development also proceeds in
archetypal national symbols (for the Germans the march-like ‘rechts-links’;
for the Russians the exasperated question ‘Shto delat?’ –
‘What is to be done?’ – ...Chernyshevsky ...Lenin...
perestroika...).
The closing quotation of a line from Ulysses draws everything that has gone
before as it were into the context of a Joycean novel.
Vladimir Tarnopolski
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