Leonid Sabaneyev

Leonid Leonidovich Sabaneyev (Russian Леонид Леонидович Сабанеев; * 19 Septemberjul / October 1 1881greg in Moscow, .. † May 3, 1968 in Antibes ) was a Russian music critic, musicologist and composer who emigrated to the West in 1926.

Life and work

Leonid Sabaneyev, son of a landowner and zoologists showed early musical talent and was, among other things taught by Taneyev and Rimsky-Korsakov. Nevertheless, he studied mathematics and science at the University of Moscow. After graduating in 1906 ( dissertation in mathematics ), he devoted himself, however, the music, composed and worked as a music critic in Moscow and St. Petersburg. As a proponent of progressive currents of Russian music he steered for example, in a post about Alexander Scriabin's Prometheus for 1912 published almanac Der Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky and Hartmann translated. The Future of Music he saw in ultrachromaticism and propagated a division of the octave into 53 tones. After 1917 he held high positions in the Soviet Union, among others as the founder and president of the scientific committee of the State Institute of Musicology ( gimn ), President of the Music Department at the Academy of Fine Arts and worked as a music editor at the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia. In 1919 he married the pianist Tamara Kuznetsova, a graduate of the Conservatory of St. Petersburg. In marriage a daughter was born.

For political reasons ( and in his home henceforth hushed ) Sabaneyev emigrated in 1926 to the West and settled after stopovers in Germany, the UK and the USA in France. In Paris, he taught at the " Conservatoire de Paris Serge Rachmaninoff russe ". There, among others, included Dag Wirén and Gösta Nystroem to his pupils. In 1933 he moved with his family to Nice, wrote music for a film company and has written articles on music, among other things for appearing in Paris Russian emigre newspaper " Russkaya mysl " ( " La Pensee Russe" ). Leonid Sabaneyev lies on the Russian Orthodox cemetery of Nice buried.

Sabaneyev wrote, inter alia, Books about Alexander Scriabin, with whom he was acquainted ( memories of Scriabin, 1925) and the contemporary Russian music ( History of Russian Music, 1924; German 1926).

Some of Leonid Sabanejews compositions (such as piano sonatas and songs) that refer to the influence of Alexander Scriabin, published during his time in Russia in MP Belaieff Verlag in press.