Nikolai Roslavets (1881 - 1944) - Komsomoliya (1928)
Choir and Orchestra of Mariinsky Theater, Alexander Titov (2006)
Komsomoliya is a symphonic poem written in 1928 by Nikolai Roslavets, scored for orchestra and SATB chorus.
Nikolai Roslavets was one of the most important figures in Russian modernist music. Born to a poor peasant family, his talent for music managed to get him into the Moscow Conservatory. Influenced by Scriabin’s later works, he developed a serial method of composition based on “sintetakkord,” or synthetic chords, which serve as the basis of both vertical (harmonic) and horizontal (melodic) material in his works. In the 1920s, Roslavets further developed his system, expanding it to encompass counterpoint, rhythm, and musical form. He wrote a manual on his system in 1927 that has since been lost.
Starting in 1924, the Soviet government began to focus on Roslavets and his futurist music, which they saw as similar to Western progressive trends. Facing political persecution, Roslavets began composing mass songs and “propaganda works,” and he denounced his early works as “experiments.” Even then, he was prevented from obtaining any official positions, and, when he died in 1944 from a stroke, he was buried without a headstone. After his death, his apartment was ransacked and many of his scores were destroyed. His wife, however, managed to hide some of his manuscripts, and his music has experienced a significant revival.
Komsomoliya comes from his period of Soviet Realist “propaganda works.” Komsomol is the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, essentially the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Despite this, the work displays a complex and modern compositional technique, contrary to the simple, folk-inspired style typical of Soviet propaganda music.
(sources: Wikipedia, AllMusic)
Original audio: • Nikolai Roslavets - Ko...