Hi there Sunwaiter !
I checked the musical dictionary to find out more about Sviridov and it says -
Sviridov, Georgy Vasil'yevich
(b Fatezh, Kursk Province, 3/16 Dec 1915; d Moscow, 6 Jan 1998). Russian composer, pianist, musical and public figure. After his initial education at the music school in Kursk (1929–32), he studied composition under M.A. Yudin, and piano under Isay Braudo at the Central Music Tekhnikum in Leningrad (1932–6), later transferring to the Leningrad Conservatory (1936–41) where his teachers were Ryazanov and Shostakovich. Sviridov is one of the most significant figures in Russian music of the second half of the 20th century and one of the most popular composers of concert works in post-World War II Russia. His consistent striving towards a distinctively Russian style has made him the leader of a new nationalist movement in his country.
Sviridov first achieved acclaim with his Pushkin song cycle (1935); their sincerity, simplicity of harmony and texture, the freshness of the modality and the novelty of approach to the text all contributed to their popularity. The 19-year-old student was accepted into the ranks of the Composers Union – a rare instance in the working practices of this organization. In the late 1930s and 40s he wrote much instrumental music, while his tempered enthusiasm for the modernism of Hindemith, Stravinsky and Shostakovich is noticeable in these works, Sviridov found more straightforward resolutions to thematic problems, and felt no need to temper his penchant for melodic expansiveness. The Al'bom dlya deteï (‘Children's Album’) (1948) and Strana ottsov (‘The Land of Our Fathers’) (1950) mark a new stage in Sviridov’s development: a Neo-Romantic tendency is signalled by the arrival of the programmatic instrumental miniature, a lyrical diatonicism shattered at moments of tension by dissonant chords, orchestral piano writing, and vocal characterizations by means of recitative and exclamation. Strana ottsov, with its lyricism tinted with tragedy, was not consonant with the spirit of banal official patriotism of the late Stalinist era, and the work was first heard only in the autumn of 1953 after Stalin’s death.
The Burns cycle (1955), which contains a rare description of life in Soviet Russia (Vsyu zemlyu t'moy zavoloklo [‘The entire earth is clouded in gloom’]), signalled the beginning of the predominance of vocal music in Sviridov’s output. Setting Russian poetry from Pushkin to Pasternak, he forged a characteristically singable style. Despite the basic strophic form of the verses, he sometimes overcame the inertia created by the ostinato principle and motivic development so exhaustively employed by Neo-Classic composers; nonetheless, tonality, traditional harmony and cantabile melody shunned by the avant garde became the mainstay of Sviridov’s inventive melodic art.
With the Yesenin setting of 1955 onwards, national subject matter finally entered his music, establishing a specifically Russian character. The second half of the 1950s, the high point of Khrushchov’s liberalism, brought Sviridov wide public recognition. His most ambitious works date from this period: the oratorios Dekabristï (‘The Decembrists’), Dvenadtsat' (‘The Twelve’) – to words by his contemporaries, Pushkin and Blok respectively, and the Pateticheskaya oratoriya after Mayakovsky.
Sviridov created a new song-style oratorio and introduced symphonic development and scale into strophic verse forms. Inspired by the great Russian poets, he congenially interpreted the Russian Revolution in the spirit of Messianism and Eschatologism.
At this point, a scale – to become characteristic in Sviridov’s music – makes its first appearance: a succession of thirds (E–G–B–d–f–a–C'–E'), it forms the basis of a limited modal system replacing the extended tonality which was used in the 1940s.
In the early 1960s Sviridov wrote a series of small-scale chamber cantatas taking the inner man as the main theme, including Derevyannaya Rus' (‘Wooden Russia’) after Yesenin; Grustnïye pesni (‘Sad Songs’) after Blok; Sneg idyot (‘It is Snowing’) after Pasternak. The Kurskiye pesni (‘Kursk Songs’) of 1964 are the most successful of these and are based on lyrical folk songs from the Kursk Province all of which deal with the theme traditional in folklore – that of a woman’s position in peasant society. The expressive qualities of the old anhemitonic mode (D–E–F–G) and the resultant harmony, the economic texture, the dazzling orchestration, and the variety of the choral writing have attracted praise: Shostakovich commented that ‘there are few notes and much music’. The cantata served as the model for many such works during the 1960s and 70s. Sviridov’s association with the cinema during these years gave rise to two popular orchestral suites: Metel' (‘The Snowstorm’) and Vremya, vperyod! (‘Time, Forward!’).
The choral works of the 1970s and 80s are highly valued in Russia and mostly set to the words of folk texts or those of 20th-century Russian poets. Among these can be found a new type of virtuoso choral concerto as exemplified by the Kontsert pamyati A.A. Yurlova (‘Concerto in Memory of A.A. Yurlov’) of 1973. Logically and chronologically, as the final result of Sviridov's late-period choral work, arose the monumental Pesnopeniya i molitvï (‘Canticles and Prayers’) of 1987 to 1997, based on liturgical texts, and considered by some to be one of the more important Orthodox sacred works after Rachmaninoff’s Vsenoshchnoye bdeniye (‘All-Night Vigil’).
Sviridov’s latter-day attraction towards the philosophical, religious and visionary is reflected in Otchalivshaya Rus' (‘Russia Cast Adrift’) for voice and piano to words by Yesenin (1977). With its symbolic images of the family house in ruins flying away into the sky of Russia (an image paralleling that of the city of Kitezh as used by Rimsky-Korsakov), its vision of the iron guest – a paradoxical symbol of progress bringing destruction to the Earth – and with its evangelical theme of Judas’s betrayal, the apocalyptic and especially the chiliastic expectation of a second coming gain increasing importance in Sviridov’s late work. Non-linear composition of texts, devoid of plot, form complex multi-layered space-time continua, with freely associative links between poetic images reinforced by a subtly unified language, which requires neither leitmotifs nor thematic development. The mature style is characterized by slow tempi, the use of quasi-liturgical modal systems – usually diatonic – and a very meagre, ascetic texture in which polyphonic vertical chords in the outer registers predominate, creating a sense of depth and perspective which nonetheless conveys a sensation of upward striving.
WORKS
Choral orch: Poėma pamyati Sergeya Yesenina [Poem in Memory of Sergey Yesenin] (Yesenin), T, chorus, orch, 1955–6; Pateticheskaya oratoriya [Pathetic Oratorio] (V. Mayakovsky), B, chorus, orch, 1959; Kurskiye pesni [Kursk Songs] (trad.), chorus, orch, 1964; Derevyannaya Rus' [Wooden Russia] (Yesenin), T, chorus, orch, 1964; Sneg idyot [The Snow is Falling] (B. Pasternak), cant., chorus, orch, 1965; 5 pesen Rossii (orat, A. Blok), S, Mez, Bar, B, chorus, orch, 1967; Vesennyaya kantata [Spring Cantata] (N. Nekrasov), cant., chorus, orch, 1972; Pushkinskiy venok [A Pushkin Wreath] (A.S. Pushkin), chorus, inst ens, 1979; Nochnïye oblaka [Night clouds] (Blok), chorus, inst ens, 1981
Other choral: 5 khorov na slova russkikh poėtov [5 Choruses on Words by Russian Poets] (N. Gogol, A. Prokof'yev, S. Orlov, Yesenin, 1958; 3 khora [3 Choruses], 1973, from the incidental music to A.K. Tolstoy: Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich; Kontsert pamyati A.A. Yulova [Concerto in Memory of A.A. Yurlov], 1973; Pesnopeniya i molitvï [Canticles and Prayers], 1987–97; Strana ottsov [Land of Our Fathers] (A. Isaakian), T, B, pf, 1950; Burns Songs (trans. S. Marshak), B, pf, 1955; Peterburgskiye pesni [Petersburg Songs] (Blok), S, Mez, Bar, B, pf, vn, vc, 1961–3; Otchalivshaya Rus' [Russia Cast Adrift] (Yesenin), 1v, pf, 1977; Peterburg [St Petersburg] (Blok), Bar, pf, 1996
Chbr and solo inst: Pf Sonata, 1944; Pf Trio, 1945; 2 Partitas, pf, 1946; Al'bom dlya detey [Children’s Album], pf, 1948; Muzïka dlya kamernogo orkestra [Music for Chamber Orchestra], 1964; Malenkiy triptikh [Small Triptych], orch, 1964; Metel' [The Snowstorm], suite, orch, 1965; Vremya, vperyod! [Time, forward!], orch, 1967
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M.R. Hofmann: La musique russe des origines à nos jours (Paris, 1968), 258ff
L. Polyakova: Vokal'nïye tsiklï G. Sviridova [Sviridov’s song cycles] (Moscow, 1970)
L. Polyakova: ‘Kurskiye pesni’ G. Sviridova [Sviridov’s ‘Kursk Songs’] (Moscow, 1970)
S.D. Krebs: Soviet Composers and the Development of Soviet Music (London, 1970), chap. ‘Georgii Sviridov’
C.L. O’Riordan: Aspects of the Inter-Relationship between Russian Folk and Composed Music (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1970), chap. ‘The Approach to “Narodnost” by Sviridov in his Song Cycle “Kursk Songs”’
D. Frishman, ed.: Georgy Sviridov (Moscow, 1971)
M. Elik: ‘Poema pamyati Sergeya Yesenina’ G. Sviridova (Moscow, 1971)
A. Sokhor: Georgy Sviridov (Moscow, 1972)
B. Schwarz: Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917–1970 (London, 1972), 293f, 326f
A. Zolotov, ed.: Kniga o Sviridove [A book about Sviridov] (Moscow, 1983)
R.L. Nikolayevich: Odukhovnom renessanse v russkoy muzïke 1960–80-kh godov [About the Spiritual Renaissance of Russian music during the 1960–80s] (St Petersburg, 1998), 47–61
A. Belonenko, ed.: Muzïkal'nyï mir Georgiya Sviridova [The musical world of Georgy Sviridov] (Moscow, 1990)
Source - 'Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians'
Thanks. It will be good to hear some of his music on the forum and I will look for some.
Robert
