Alexander Alyabyev: a brief biography, a photo of Alexander Alexandrovich Alyabyev

The founder of the Russian romance, the wonderful composer Alexander Alyabyev founded musical Pushkinian, Russian chamber instrumental music, became a harbinger of many future achievements of the national composer school. Most of all is known for vocal works, which to this day are the most favorite and often performed even in the family circle by the will of the mood. For example, "Nightingale", "Winter Road", "Evening Bells" and many, many others.

Biography

Alexandra Alyabyeva since childhood has been taught to music. There is evidence that he took piano lessons from the famous D. Field. In any case, he devoted his first work to him, and this was the piano "The Great Polonaise" - the first concert in this genre in Russia.

Alexander Alyabyev was born in Tobolsk, in the governor's family, which gave him the opportunity to receive an excellent education. He fought Napoleon as a volunteer, in the famous detachment of the poet Denis Davydov, was seriously wounded and awarded orders for courage and courage. And after the war Alexander Alyabyev, the composer, devoted himself entirely to music.

In the high-society living rooms are very fond of and constantly performed excerpts from his operas, vaudeville, and especially often sang romances. Decorated biography of Alexander Alyabyev people remarkable: he was friends very closely with Griboyedov, Shakhovsky, Decembrists Bestuzhev, Mukhanov. He shared plans and discussed concerts with Verstovsky and the Vilhegorian brothers. Lived in Moscow - theatrical life. Even the "Triumph of the Muses" for the opening of the Bolshoi Theater was written by Alyabyev together with Verstovsky and Scholz.

Nothing foreshadowed

Across the country, music became known, which was composed by Alexander Alyabyev. The photo did not exist then, but the portraits of it were painted by artists well-known at that time - the composer was famous. His romances sang in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and in the most remote cities. On the stage of the Bolshoi Theater were his operas "Village philosopher", "Moonlight Night", ballet "The Magic Drum".

However, in 1825 his partner in a card game was dying. Suddenly. And Alyabyev was arrested. The charge of murder is not proven. Nevertheless, the composer is deprived of all ranks, orders and nobility. And exiled back to Tobolsk. In a very remote Siberian cold city, where once his happy childhood passed. On the portrait below is a friend of the composer and author of the poems of the best romances of Alyabyev - Nikolay Ogaryov.

Tobolsk and the Caucasus

Alexander Alyabyev so seriously experienced this unfair accusation that only music could keep him from the last step. Here he was organized a wonderful orchestra, he acts as a pianist, arranges all kinds of concerts. And he writes music, very different from the previous one, cloudless. Here there are his best romances: "Winter Road", "Irtysh", "Two Crows". But the nervous shock made itself felt: the biography of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Alyabyev as a secular man, who was a member of any house, was over. The composer is seriously ill.

Seven years later, in 1832, he was allowed to leave Siberia and go to the Caucasus for treatment. There are written his romances, published by a collection under the heading "Caucasian singer". Long before the main collector of folklore, Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Alyabyev writes songs of Caucasians, Kirghiz, Bashkir, harmonizes them and processes them using in his work. Participates together with Maksimovich in the collection "The Voices of Ukrainian Songs" that NV Gogol was so fond of it. Here on the portrait - the owner of the salon, where many of Alyabyev's works were performed for the first time, the composer's friend, the famous Alexander Griboyedov.

Return

"Alyabiev's forgiveness" was very gradual: in 1835 they were allowed to live with relatives in the Moscow region with a complete ban on their appearance in the capitals, in 1843 they were allowed to live in Moscow, but under constant police supervision. This means: not to see the public, not to visit either at a party, at concerts, or at a theater. Therefore, his soulful and creative path was completed by such heartfelt romances with vivid civic content, such as "Beggar", "Village watchman", "Izba". And most, it must be said, claimed by the public so far, and almost all of his works of the period of references have become academic.

None of the first composers of Russian romances took such a high place in Russian music, as Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Alyabyev. A brief biography and that impresses with the multitude of events of his difficult life. He worked in almost all musical genres, but the focus of his interest was vocal lyricism. More than 180 songs and romances composed by Alexander Alyabyev. The composer, whose biography as if did not suppose such hard work in hellish mental anguish. And he wrote romances that are still hits, such as "The Nightingale" on the poems of Delvig or "The Beggar" on the poems of Beranger. Alexander Pushkin, portrayed below, was the author of more than twenty of the best romances by Alyabyev.

Creation

Romances Alexander Alyabyev wrote on the poems of the best poets: his favorite commander Davydov, Zhukovsky, Vyazemsky, Kozlov, Koltsov, Lermontov. Twenty-two romances are written on verses by Alexander Pushkin, and fifteen of them - even during the life of the poet. At the end of his life, Ogaryov's poems inspired him more than others.

He wrote Alyabyev and a lot of symphonic music, both chamber and instrumental: the symphony in E minor is very good, tragic overture in F minor, several concert overtures, many concerts for various solo instruments and orchestra, dance suites. Till now many chamber ensembles of Alyabyev are studied in musical schools and conservatories, and also sound in concert performance. The portrait below shows the most interesting person of Alyabyev's time - the Decembrist Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, the author of the story, on which the opera was performed for Alyabyev's music, and he also wrote romances for Bestuzhev-Marlinsky verses.

Theater, folklore, sacred music

Alyabyev's legacy for the theater is a demonstration of excellent music in all genres known at the time: operas, ballets, and more than twenty vaudevilles, which differ little from operas, there is cantata and music for drama theaters, and among them - And comedy, and tragedy, and drama. To the Moscow premiere of Pushkin's "Mermaid", to the Shakespeare's "Tempest" and "Windsor Mischages," composer Alyabyev also wrote music.

Arranged, instrumented, compiled and published a considerable number of folk songs in collections - Russian, Ukrainian, Tatar, Central Asian, Caucasian. Over one hundred works of spiritual content came out from under his pen, among which - the famous liturgy.

The fate of the heritage

As is often the case with the best of artists who once do work for descendants or who modestly do not see in themselves the creators of "imperishable", the heritage of Alyabyev for the most part is not preserved. Of the 450 works (this is an approximate figure), most are still in manuscripts that have simply been lost in the past dashing half century. Many of his works are published, but for some reason undeservedly forgotten. And this music is excellent and it is quite possible to compose a posthumous glory for yourself and the composer, becoming the same hits as, for example, "Nightingale" on the verses of Delvig.

For fifty years after the death of the composer, both his work and his biography were not subjected to any serious analysis. But both of them are so many-sided! How many wonderful and such necessary nuances can not be restored from the dust of time! Until 1825, the name of Alyabyev practically did not leave the press, but afterwards only rare, literally single reviews on romances. His biography was distorted, filled with erroneous or incomplete data, so the descendants almost lost the good name and remarkable creativity of the composer and musical figure.

Persistence and principles

Even intolerable false accusations did not break the soul of the real creator. After all, the same desire for freedom, the motives for loneliness, compassion and suffering, longing for justice, that is, the same circle of images, characteristic of all creativity, we can observe and in the most recent of its periods.

Alexander Alyabyev, a composer as talented as he was unhappy, received some consolation from a meeting with a woman he had loved before, the one who wore the famous Rimsky-Korsakov family name. Then one of the best romances of Pushkin's Alyabyev was written - "I loved you". This woman, E.Ofrosimova, when she was widowed, became the wife of the composer.

Nikolai Ogaryov and Bestuzhev-Marlinsky

The composer Alyabyev and the poet Ogaryov were very close in the forties of the century before last. The best romances of Alyabyev - "Izba", "Kabak", "Village Watchman" - were created for poems by Ogaryov. Long before the advent of the searches of Mussorgsky and Dargomyzhsky, secular romances were enriched with the theme of social inequality. The poet and the composer had a lot in common: arrest and exile, at least. Although Alyabyev underwent this all unjustly and accidentally, and Ogaryov was a convinced innovator and constitutionalist, for which he was persecuted by the law. Ogaryov and Herzen, "The Bell", England - everyone knows this and remembers.

The three last operas of Alyabyev also sound with characteristic rebellious moods, this is the Shakespearean "Storm", and "Edwin Oscar" from the texts of ancient Költ tales. But the opera "Ammalat-bey" deserves a special word on Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky's novel of the same name, and a romance for his own poems "The clouds flew to the Caucasus". He was killed in the Caucasus in 1837, and this loss almost killed Alyabyev: it was already the third killed from his favorite poets. And all - Alexandra: Pushkin, Griboedov, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky. The rebellious Decembrist spirit never faded in the composer's works.

Memory return

The beginning of the performance of previously unknown works of Alexander Alyabyev took place only in the spring of 1947. Then a concert was organized at the Moscow Philharmonic, where over 100 years of total oblivion "Variation for Violin and Orchestra", "The Third String Quartet" and two orchestral overtures were heard. The success was great! The propaganda of the chamber creativity of the composer involved such great musicians as Gilels, Oistrakh, and collectives - the Sveshnikov choir, the Beethoven State Quartet.

Since 1949, never published works Alyabyev, incidentally revealed the white spots of his biography. The understanding of that great role that he played in the whole history of the musical art of Russia came to him. The most interesting thing is that in various archives continue to discover his unknown works. Since his travels lasted a long time and the geography of their extensive, there may be more discoveries of such a plan.