Khrennikov's Seven

Chrennikows Seven (Russian Хренниковская семёрка ) was a group of Soviet composers, was strongly criticized by the Secretary-General Tikhon Khrennikov during the 6th Congress of the Composers' Union of the Soviet Union in November 1979.

The pretext of this attack the inclusion of works by these composers in the programs of music festivals in Cologne and Venice was used without prior approval of the Board of the Composers' Union. Khrennikov described these works as " devoid of musical thought, lost in the power crazed noise and screaming, full of babble ". This accusation was reminiscent of another speech Chrennikows on the 1st Congress of the Composers' Union in 1948, in which he attacked the works of Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Myaskovsky.

The speech Chrennikows was directed against the following composers:

These composers appeared afterwards in a "black list", which was one of the reasons for the aggravation of public execution, and publication of their works in the Soviet Union in the following years. In 1991, four members of this group, Firsova, Smirnov, Suslin and Gubaidulina left their country and moved to Western Europe over; Firsova and Smirnov to England, Gubaidulina and Suslin to Germany. Denisov, seriously ill after a traffic accident in 1994 went to Paris, where he died in 1996.