(b Malïy Nesvetay, Rostov district, 10/22 April 1886 (elsewhere 10/12 June 1886); d Moscow, 19 May 1944). Russian composer and theorist. He studied theory at the music school attached to the Moscow Philharmonic Society with I.N. Protopopov and A.M. Koreshchenko (1908–11) and took private composition lessons with Sergey Taneyev. From 1910 he was active as a music critic under the pseudonym Ars and, having refused to fight in World War I, fled abroad in 1914 and worked, among other occupations, as a stoker and as a circus artist. Returning to Russia in 1917 he was appointed arts commissar of the RSFSR branch of Narkompros (1917–18) and took part in the formation of the Proletkul't organization. 1923 found him working in Dagestan but in 1926 he returned to Moscow where he became involved in a number of activities: he participated in the creation of the first Russian films with sound (1929–34), he led a sound laboratory in the Cinematic Institute of Scientific Research (1932–3) and he lectured at the Moscow Conservatory on the history and theory of sound systems (1934). While living in Nal'chik (1935–41) he collected folk music of the peoples of the north Caucasus and wrote some compositions based on these materials. He later conducted the Russian Folk Chorus (1941–3). During the early Soviet era many artists attempted to integrate technology and creativity; Avraamov's work typifies this trend. He invented a graphic-sonic art which was produced by drawing directly onto magnetic tape. He also sought to overcome equal temperament and tonality by his creation of an ‘ultrachromatic’ 48-tone system. This method was proposed in a thesis entitled Universal'naya sistema tonov (‘The Universal System of Tones’) and was realized in his demonstrations which took place in 1927 in Berlin, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. He is considered a precursor of the musique concrète movement with his Simfoniya gudkov (‘Symphony of Factory Sirens’) which was performed in Azerbaijan in 1923 and later in Moscow. He also wrote a number of compositions for more conventional forces.
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Simfoniya gudkov [Sym. of Factory Sirens] (text of instructions), several choruses with spectators, cannons, foghorns, Caspian flotilla, 2 batteries of artillery guns, several full infantry regiments incl. machine gun division, hydro-aeroplanes, all of Baku's factory sirens, conductors with pistol shots, central steam whistle machine, noise auto-transports, 1922; Marsh na kabardinskiye temï [March on Kabardin Themes], orch, 1936; Aul Batïr Ov., orch, 1940; Fantasies on Kabardin Themes, orch, 1940; inst works, choral music |
‘Puti i sredstva tvorchestva’ [Ways and means of creativity], Muzïka, no.164 (1914), 39–43; no.172 (1916), 215–17
‘Druzhestvennoye otkrïtoye pis'mo kompozitoru N. Roslavtsu’ [A friendly open letter on the composer Roslavets], Muzïka, no.215 (1915), 192; Ger. trans. in A. Wehrmeyer: Studien zum russischen Musikdenken um 1920 (Frankfurt, 1991), 326 only
‘7–1–13’, Muzïka, no.232 (1915), 476–9
‘Gryadushchaya muzïkal'naya nauka i novaya ėra v istorii muzïki’ [Music science of the future and a new era in music history], Muzïkal'niy sovremennik (1916), no.2, pp.80–103
‘“Ul'trakhromatizm” ili “omnitonal'nost”’, Muzïkal'niy sovremennik (1916), nos.4–5, pp.157–68 [on Skryabin]
‘Jenseits von Temperierung und Tonalität’, Melos, i (1920), 131–4, 160–66, 184–8
‘Klin-klinom’ [Like cures like], Muzïkal'naya kul'tura (1924), no.1, p.42; Ger. trans. in D. Gojowy: Neue sowjetische Musik der 20er Jahre (Laaber, 1980), 443
‘Universal'naya sistema tonov (U.T.S.)’ [Universal tonal system (U.T.S.)], Zhizn' iskusstva (1926), no.12, pp.3–4; no.38, pp.9–10; no.40, pp.6–7
[‘Vierteltonmusik’], Muzïka i revolyutsiya (1927), nos.5–6, p.39; Ger. trans. in Neue sowjetische Musik der 20er Jahre (Laaber, 1980), 445–6
‘Sinteticheskaya muzïka’, SovM (1939), no.8, pp.67–75
‘The Symphony of Sirens’, Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde, ed. D. Kahn and G. Whitehead (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 245–52 [incl. trans. of instruction text from Simfoniya gudkov]
N. Roslavets: ‘Druzhestvennïy otvet Ars. Avraamovu’ [A friendly answer to Avraamov], Muzïka, no.219 (1915), 256–7; Ger. trans. in A. Wehrmeyer: Studien zum russischen Musikdenken um 1920 (Frankfurt, 1991), 327–8
L.L. Sabaneyev: ‘Pis'ma o muzïke: ul'trakhromaticheskaya polemika’ [Letters about music: the ultrachromatic polemic], Muzïkal'niy sovremennik (1916), no.6, pp.99–108
D. Gojowy: Neue sowjetische Musik der 20er Jahre (Laaber, 1980)
S. Rumyanchev: ‘Kommunisticheskiye kolokola’ [Communist bells], SovM (1984), no.11, pp.54–63 [on Simfoniya gudkov]
A. Wehrmeyer: Studien zum russichen Musikdenken um 1920 (Frankfurt and New York, 1991)
M. Lobanova: Nikolay Andreevič Roslavec und die Kultur seiner Zeit (Frankfurt and New York, 1991)
MARINA LOBANOVA