name	Anna Akhmatova
alt	Akhmatova in 1922 (Portrait by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin)
birth name	Anna Andreevna Gorenko
birth date	June 23, 1889
birth place	Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)
death date	March 05, 1966
death place	Leningrad (St. Petersburg)
nationality	Russian/Soviet
ethnicity	Ukrainian, Russian, Tatar
occupation	poet, translator, memoirist
movement	Acmeism
spouse	Nikolay Gumilev (divorced)Vladimir Shilejko (divorced)Nikolai Punin (died in labour camp)
children	Lev Gumilyov }}

Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (; ) ( – March 5, 1966), better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova (), was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.

Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as ''Requiem'' (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Her writing can be said to fall into two periods - the early work (1912–25) and her later work (from around 1936 until her death), divided by a decade of reduced literary output. Her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities and she is notable for choosing not to emigrate, and remaining in Russia, acting as witness to the atrocities around her. Her perennial themes include meditations on time and memory, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism.

Primary sources of information about Akhmatova's life are relatively scant, as war, revolution and the totalitarian regime caused much of the written record to be destroyed. For long periods she was in official disfavour and many of those who were close to her died in the aftermath of the revolution.

Early life and family

Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan, near the Black Sea port of Odessa. Her father, Andrey Antonovich Gorenko, a civil servant, and her mother, Inna Erazmovna Stogova, were both descended from the Russian nobility. Akhmatova wrote,

"No one in my large family wrote poetry. But the first Russian woman poet, Anna Bunina, was the aunt of my grandfather Erasm Ivanovich Stogov. The Stogovs were modest landowners in the Mozhaisk region of the Moscow Province. They were moved here after the insurrection during the time of Posadnitsa Marfa. In Novgorod they had been a wealthier and more distinguished family. Khan Akhmat, my ancestor, was killed one night in his tent by a Russian killer-for-hire. Karamzin tells us that this marked the end of the Mongol yoke on Russia. [...] It was well known that this Akhmat was a descendant of Genghiz Khan. In the eighteenth century, one of the Akhmatov Princesses - Praskovia Yegorvna - married the rich and famous Simbirsk landowner Motovilov. Yegor Motovilov was my great-grandfather; his daughter, Anna Yegorovna, was my grandmother. She died when my mother was nine years old, and I was named in her honour. Several diamond rings and one emerald were made from her brooch. Though my fingers are thin, still her thimble didn't fit me."

Her family moved north to Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg when she was eleven months old. The family lived in a house on the corner of Shirokaya Street and Bezymyanny Lane; (the building is no longer there today), spending summers from age 7 to 13 in a dacha near Sevastopol. She studied at the Mariinskaya High School, moving to Kiev (1906–10) and finished her schooling there, after her parents separated in 1905. She went on to study law at Kiev University, leaving a year later to study literature in St Petersburg.

Akhmatova started writing poetry at the age of 11, and published in her late teens, inspired by the poets Nikolay Nekrasov, Racine, Pushkin, Baratynsky and the Symbolists however none of her juvenilia survives. Her sister Inna also wrote poetry though she did not pursue the practice and married shortly after high school. Akhmatova's father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, so she chose to adopt her grandmother's distinctly Tatar surname 'Akhmatova' as a pen name. She met the young poet, Nikolay Gumilev on Christmas Eve 1903, who encouraged her to write and pursued her intensely, making numerous marriage proposals from 1905. At 17 years old, in his journal ''Sirius'', she published her first poem which could be translated as ''On his hand are many shiny rings'', (1907) signing it ‘Anna G.’ She soon became known in St Petersburg's artistic circles, regularly giving public readings. That year, she wrote unenthusiastically to a friend, “He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my fate to be his wife. Whether or not I love him, I do not know, but it seems to me that I do.” She married Gumilev in Kiev in April 1910, however none of Akhmatova’s family attended the wedding. The couple honeymooned in Paris, and there she met and befriended the Italian artist Modigliani.

In late 1910, she came together with poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Sergey Gorodetsky to form the Guild of Poets. It promoted the idea of craft as the key to poetry rather than inspiration or mystery, taking themes of the concrete rather than the more ephemeral world of the Symbolists. Over time, they developed the influential Acmeist anti-symbolist school, concurrent with the growth of Imagism in Europe and America. From the first year of their marriage, Gumilyov began to chafe against its constraints. She wrote that he had "lost his passion" for her and by the end of that year he left on a six month trip to Africa. Akhmatova had "her first taste of fame", becoming renowned, not so much for her beauty, as her intense magnetism and allure, attracting the fascinated attention of a great many men, including the great and the good. She returned to visit Modigliani in Paris, where he created at least 20 paintings of her, including several nudes. She later began an affair with the celebrated Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam, whose wife, Nadezhda, declared later, in her autobiography that she came to forgive Akhmatova for it in time. Akhmatova's son, Lev, was born in 1912, and would go on to become a renowned Neo-Eurasianist historian.

Silver Age

In 1912, the Guild of Poets published her book of verse ''Evening'' (''Vecher'') - the first of five in nine years. (She noted that ''Song of the Last Meeting'', dated 29 September 1911, was her 200th poem). The book secured her reputation as a new and striking young writer, the poems ''Grey-eyed king'', ''In the Forest'', ''Over the Water'' and ''I don’t need my legs anymore'' making her famous. She later wrote "These naïve poems by a frivolous girl for some reason were reprinted thirteen times [...] And they came out in several translations. The girl herself (as far as I recall) did not foresee such a fate for them and used to hide the issues of the journals in which they were first published under the sofa cushions".

Her second collection, ''The Rosary'' (or ''Beads'' - ''Chetki'') appeared in March 1914 and firmly established her as one of the most popular and sought after poets of the day. She became close friends with Boris Pasternak (who, though married, proposed to her many times) and rumours began to circulate that she was having an affair with influential lyrical poet Alexander Blok. In July 1914, Akhmatova wrote “Frightening times are approaching/ Soon fresh graves will cover the land"; on August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, marking the start of "the dark storm" of world war, civil war, revolution and totalitarian repression for Russia. The Silver Age came to a close.

Akhmatova had a relationship with the mosaic artist and poet Boris Anrep; many of her poems in the period are about him and he in turn created mosaics in which she features. She selected poems for her third collection ''Belaya Staya'' (''White Flock'') in 1917, In February 1917, the revolution started in Petersburg (then named Petrograd); soldiers fired on marching protestors, and others mutinied. They looked to a past in which the future was "rotting". In a city with out electricity or sewage service, with little water or food, they faced starvation and sickness. Her friends died around her and others left in droves for safer havens in Europe and America, including Anrep, who escaped to England. She had the option to leave, and considered it for a time, but chose to stay and was proud of her decision to remain. That summer she wrote:

:You are a traitor, and for a green island, :Have betrayed, yes, betrayed your native :Land, :Abandoned all our songs and sacred :Icons, :And the pine tree over a quiet lake. (From ''Green Island''. Trans. Jane Kenyon) She wrote of her own temptation to leave: :A voice came to me. It called out comfortingly. :It said, "Come here, :Leave your deaf and sinful land, :Leave Russia forever, :I will wash the blood from your hands, :Root out the black shame from your heart, :[...] calmly and indifferently, :I covered my ears with my hands, :So that my sorrowing spint :Would not be stained by those shameful words. (From ''When in suicidal anguish'' (Trans. Jane Kenyon)

At the height of Akhmatova's fame, in 1918, she divorced her husband and that same year, though many of her friends considered it a mistake, Akhmatova married prominent Assyriologist and poet Vladimir Shilejko. She later said “I felt so filthy. I thought it would be like a cleansing, like going to a convent, knowing you are going to lose your freedom.” She began affairs with theatre director Mikhail Zimmerman and composer Arthur Lourié, who set many of her poems to music.

The accursed years

In 1921, Akhmatova's former husband Nikolay Gumilyov was prosecuted for his alleged role in a monarchist anti-Bolshevik conspiracy and on 25 August was shot along with 61 others. According to the historian Rayfield, the murder of Gumilev was part of the state response to the Kronstadt Rebellion. The Cheka (secret police) blamed the rebellion on Petrograd's intellectuals, prompting the senior Cheka officer Agranov to forcibly extract the names of 'conspirators', from an imprisoned professor, guaranteeing them amnesty from execution. Agranov then pronounced death sentences on a large number of them, including Gumilev. Gorky and others appealed, but by the time Lenin agreed to several pardons, the condemned had been shot. Within a few days of his death, Akhmatova wrote: Terror fingers all things in the dark, Leads moonlight to the axe. There's an ominous knock behind the wall: A ghost, a thief or a rat...

The murders had a powerful effect on the Russian intelligentsia, destroying the Acmeist poetry group, and placing a stigma on Akhmatova and her son Lev (by Gumilev). Lev's later arrest in the purges and terrors of the 1930s were based on being his father's son. From a new Marxist perspective, Akhmatova's poetry was deemed to represent an introspective "bourgeois aesthetic", reflecting only trivial "female" preoccupations, not in keeping with these new revolutionary politics of the time. She was roundly attacked by the state, by former supporters and friends, and seen to be an anachronism. During what she termed "The Vegetarian Years", Akhmatova's work was unofficially banned by a party resolution of 1925 and she found it hard to publish, though she didn't stop writing poetry. She made acclaimed translations of works by Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore, Giacomo Leopardi and pursued academic work on Pushkin and Dostoyevsky. She worked as a critic and essayist, though many critics and readers both within and outside USSR concluded she had died. She had little food and almost no money; her son was denied access to study at academic institutions by dint of his parents' alleged anti-state activities. The impact of the nation-wide repression and purges had a decimating effect on her St Petersburg circle of friends, artists and intellectuals. Her close friend and fellow poet Mandelstam was deported and then sentenced to a Gulag labour camp, where he would die. Akhmatova narrowly escaped arrest, though her son Lev was imprisoned on numerous occasions by the Stalinist regime, accused of counter-revolutionary activity. She would often queue for hours to deliver him food packages and plead on his behalf. She describes standing outside a stone prison: "One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there): " 'Can you describe this?' "And I said: 'I can.' "Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face." Akhmatova wrote that by 1935 every time she went to see someone off at the train station as they went into exile, she'd find herself greeting friends at every step as so many of St Petersburg's intellectual and cultural figures would be leaving on the same train. In her poetry circles Mayakovsky and Esenin committed suicide and Akhmatova's sister poet Marina Tsvetaeva would follow them in 1941, after returning from exile.

Akhmatova married an art scholar and lifelong friend, Nikolai Punin, whom she stayed with until 1935. He too was repeatedly taken into custody and died in the Gulag in 1953. Her tragic cycle ''Requiem'' documents her personal experience of this time; as she writes, "one hundred million voices shout" through her "tortured mouth".

Seventeen months I've pleaded for you to come home. Flung myself at the hangman’s feet. My terror, oh my son. And I can’t understand. Now all’s eternal confusion. Who’s beast, and who’s man? How long till execution? (from ''Requiem''. Trans. A.S. Kline, 2005).

From 1939: The thaw

In 1939, Stalin approved the publication of one volume of poetry, ''From Six Books'', however the collection was withdrawn and pulped after only a few months. In 1993, it was revealed that the authorities had bugged her flat and kept her under constant surveillance, keeping detailed files on her from this time, accruing some 900 pages of "denunciations, reports of phone taps, quotations from writings, confessions of those close to her". Although officially stifled, Akhmatova's work continued to circulate in secret (''samizdat''), her work hidden, passed and read in the gulags. Akhmatova's close friend and chronicler Lydia Chukovskaya described how writers working to keep poetic messages alive used various strategies. A small trusted circle would, for example, memorise each others' works and circulate them only by oral means. She tells how Akhmatova would write out her poem for a visitor on a scrap of paper to be read in a moment, then burnt in her stove. The poems were carefully disseminated in this way, however it is likely that many complied in this manner were lost. "It was like a ritual," Chukovskaya wrote. "Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter."

During World War II, Akhmatova witnessed the 900 day Siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg). In 1940, Akhmatova started her ''Poem without a Hero'', finishing a first draft in Tashkent, but working on "The Poem" for twenty years and considering it to be the major work of her life, dedicating it to "the memory of its first audience - my friends and fellow citizens who perished in Leningrad during the siege". She was evacuated to Chistopol in the autumn of 1941 and then to greener, safer Tashkent in Uzbekistan, along with other artists, such as Shostakovitch. During her time away she became seriously ill with typhus (she had suffered from severe bronchitis and tuberculosis as a young woman). On returning to Leningrad in May 1944, she writes of how disturbed she was to find "a terrible ghost that pretended to be my city". She regularly read to soldiers in the military hospitals and on the front line; indeed, her later pieces seem to be the voice of those who had struggled and the many she has outlived. She moved away from romantic themes towards a more diverse, complex and philosophical body of work and some of her more patriotic poems found their way to the front pages of ''Pravda''. She was condemned for a visit by the liberal, western, Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin in 1946, and Official Andrei Zhdanov publicly labelled her "half harlot, half nun", her work "the poetry of an overwrought, upper-class lady", her work the product of "eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference". He banned her poems from publication in the journals ''Zvezda'' and ''Leningrad'', accusing her of poisoning the minds of Soviet youth. Her surveillance was increased and she was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. Berlin described his visit to her flat: It was very barely furnished—virtually everything in it had, I gathered, been taken away—looted or sold—during the siege . . . . A stately, grey-haired lady, a white shawl draped about her shoulders, slowly rose to greet us. Anna Akhmatova was immensely dignified, with unhurried gestures, a noble head, beautiful, somewhat severe features, and an expression of immense sadness.

Akhmatova's son Lev was arrested again at the end of 1949 and sentenced to 10 years in a Siberian prison camp. She spent much of the next years trying to ensure his release, to this end, and for the first time, she published overtly propagandist poetry, “In Praise of Peace,” in the magazine ''Ogoniok'', openly supporting Stalin and his regime. Lev remained in the camps until 1956, well after Stalin's death, his final release potentially aided by his mother's concerted efforts. Bayley suggests that her period of pro-Stalinist work may also have saved her own life; notably however, Akhmatova never acknowledged these pieces in her official corpus. Akhmatova's stature among Soviet poets was slowly conceded by party officials, her name no longer cited in only scathing contexts and she was readmitted to Union of Writers in 1951, being fully recognised again following Stalin's death in 1953. With the press still heavily controlled and censored under Nikita Khrushchev, a translation by Akhmatova was praised in a public review in 1955, and her own poems began to re-appear in 1956. In this year Lev was released from the camps, embittered, believing that his mother cared more about her poetry than her son and that she had not worked hard for his release. Akhmatova's status was confirmed by 1958, with the publication of ''Stikhotvoreniya'' ''(Poems)'' and then ''Stikhotvoreniya 1909-1960'' ''(Poems: 1909-1960)'' in 1961. ''Beg vremeni'' ''(The flight of time)'', collected works 1909-1965, published in 1965, was the most complete volume of her works in her lifetime, though the long damning poem ''Requiem'', condemning the Stalinist purges, was conspicuously absent. Isaiah Berlin predicted at the time that it could never be published in the Soviet Union.

Last years

During the last years of her life she continued to live with the Punin family in Leningrad, still translating, researching Pushkin and writing her own poetry. Though still censored, she was concerned to re-construct work that had been destroyed or suppressed during the purges or which had posed a threat to the life of her son in the camps, such as the lost, semi-autobiographical play ''Enûma Elish''. She worked on her official memoirs, planned novels and worked on her epic ''Poem without a hero'', 20 years in the writing.

Akhmatova was widely honoured in USSR and the West. In 1962 she was visited by Robert Frost; Isaiah Berlin tried to visit her again, but she refused him, worried that her son might be re-arrested due to family association with the ideologically suspect western philosopher. She inspired and advised a large circle of key young Soviet writers. Her dacha in Komarovo was frequented by such poets as Yevgeny Rein and Joseph Brodsky, whom she mentored. Brodsky, arrested in 1963 and interned for social parasitism, would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987) and become Poet Laureate (1991) as an exile in the US. As one of the last remaining major poets of the Silver Age, she was newly acclaimed by the Soviet authorities as a fine and loyal representative of their country and permitted to travel. At the same time, by virtue of works such as ''Requiem'', Akhmatova was being hailed at home and abroad as an unofficial leader of the dissident movement, and reinforcing this image herself. She was becoming representative of both Russias, more popular in the 1960s than she had ever been before the revolution, this reputation only continuing to grow after her death. For her 75th birthday in 1964, new collections of her verse were published.

Akhmatova was able to meet some of her pre-revolutionary acquaintances in 1965, when she was allowed to travel to Sicily and England, in order to receive the Taormina prize and an honorary doctoral degree from Oxford University, accompanied by her life-long friend and secretary Lydia Chukovskaya. Akhmatova's ''Requiem'' in Russian finally appeared in book form in Munich in 1963, the whole work not published within USSR until 1987. Her long poem ''The Way of All the Earth'' or ''Woman of Kitezh'' (''Kitezhanka'') was published in complete form in 1965.

In November 1965, soon after her Oxford visit, Akhmatova suffered a heart attack and was hospitalised. She was moved to a sanatorium in Moscow in the spring of 1966 and died of heart failure on March 5, at the age of 76. Thousands attended the two memorial ceremonies which were held in Moscow and in Leningrad. After being displayed in an open coffin, she was interred at Komarovo Cemetery in St Petersburg.

Isaiah Berlin described the impact of her life, as he saw it:

The widespread worship of her memory in Soviet Union today, both as an artist and as an unsurrendering human being, has, so far as I know, no parallel. The legend of her life and unyielding passive resistance to what she regarded as unworthy of her country and herself, transformed her into a figure [...] not merely in Russian literature, but in Russian history in [the Twentieth] century.

In 1988, to celebrate what would have been Akhmatova's 100th birthday, the University of Harvard held an international conference on her life and work. Today her work may be explored at the Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum in St Petersburg.

Work and themes

Akhmatova joined the Acmeist group of poets in 1910 with poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Sergey Gorodetsky, working in response to the Symbolist school, concurrent with the growth of Imagism in Europe and America. It promoted the use craft and rigorous poetic form over mysticism or spiritual in-roads to composition, favouring the concrete over the ephemeral. Akhmatova modelled its principles of writing with clarity, simplicity, and disciplined form. Her first collections ''Evening'' ( 1912 ) and ''Rosary'' ( 1914 ) received wide critical acclaim and made her famous from the start of her career. They contained brief, psychologically taut pieces, acclaimed for their classical diction, telling details, and the skilful use of colour. ''Evening'' and her next four books were mostly lyric miniatures on the theme of love, shot through with sadness. Her early poems usually picture a man and a woman involved in the most poignant, ambiguous moment of their relationship, much imitated and later parodied by Nabokov and others. Critic Roberta Reeder notes that the early poems always attracted large numbers of admirers: "For Akhmatova was able to capture and convey the vast range of evolving emotions experienced in a love affair, from the first thrill of meeting, to a deepening love contending with hatred, and eventually to violent destructive passion or total indifference. But [...] her poetry marks a radical break with the erudite, ornate style and the mystical representation of love so typical of poets like Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Her lyrics are composed of short fragments of simple speech that do not form a logical coherent pattern. Instead, they reflect the way we actually think, the links between the images are emotional, and simple everyday objects are charged with psychological associations. Like Alexander Pushkin, who was her model in many ways, Akhmatova was intent on conveying worlds of meaning through precise details." She often complained that the critics "walled her in" to their perception of her work in the early years of romantic passion, despite major changes of theme in the later years of The Terror. This was mainly due to the secret nature of her work after the public and critical effusion over her first volumes. The risks during the purges were very great. Many of her close friends and family were exiled, imprisoned or shot; her son was under constant thread of arrest, she was often under close surveillance. Following artistic repression and public condemnation by the state in the 1920s, many within literary and public circles, at home and abroad, thought she had died. Her readership generally didn't know her later opus, the railing passion of ''Requiem'' or ''Poem without a Hero'' and her other scathing works, which were shared only with a very trusted few or circulated in secret by word of mouth (samizdat).

Between 1935 and 1940 Akhmatova composed, worked and reworked the long poem ''Requiem'' in secret, a lyrical cycle of lamentation and witness, depicting the suffering of the common people under Soviet terror. She carried it with her as she worked and lived in towns and cities across the Soviet Union. It was conspicuously absent from her collected works, given its explicit condemnation of the purges. The work in Russian finally appeared in book form in Munich in 1963, the whole work not published within USSR until 1987. It consists of ten numbered poems that examine a series of emotional states, exploring suffering, despair, devotion, rather than a clear narrative. Biblical themes such as Christ's crucifixion and the devastation of Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mary Magdelene, reflect the ravaging of Russia, particularly witnessing the harrowing of women in the 1930s. It represented, to some degree, a rejection of her own earlier romantic work as she took on the public role as chronicler of the Terror. A role she holds to this day.

Her essays on Pushkin and ''Poem Without a Hero'', her longest work, were only published after her death. This long poem, composed between 1940 and 1965, is often critically regarded as her best work and also one of the finest poems of the twentieth century. It offers a complex analysis of the times she lived though and her relationship with them, including her significant meeting with Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) in 1945. Her talent in composition and translation is evidenced in her fine translations of the works of poets writing in French, English, Italian, Armenian, and Korean.

Honours

1964 Etna-Taormina prize

1965 honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1965.

Selected poetry collections

Published by Akhmatova

1912 ''Vecher''/''Вечар'' (''Evening'') . 1914 ''Chetki'' (''Rosary'' or literally ''Beads'') 1917 ''Belaya Staya'' (''White flock'') 1921 ''Podorozhnik'' (''Wayside grass'' / ''Plantain''). 60 pages, 1000 copies published. 1921 ''Anno Domini MCMXXI''

''Reed'' - 2 Volume Selected Poems (1924–1926) was compiled but never published.

''Uneven'' - compiled but never published.

1940 ''From Six Books'' (Publication suspended shortly after release, copies pulped). 1943 ''Izbrannoe Stikhi'' (''Selections of poetry'') Tashkent, government edited. ''Iva'' not separately published

Later editions

1967 ''Poems of Akhmatova.'' Ed. and Trans. Stanley Kunitz, Boston

1976 ''Anna Akhmatova Selected Poems.'' D.M. Thomas Penguin Books

1985 ''Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova'' - Trans. Jane Kenyon; Eighties Press and Ally Press ISBN 0915408309

1988 ''Selected Poems'' Trans. Richard McKane; Bloodaxe Books Ltd; ISBN 1852240636

2000 ''The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova'' Trans. Judith Hemschemeyer .Ed. Roberta Reeder; Zephyr Press; ISBN 0939010275

2004 ''The Word That Causes Death's Defeat: Poems of Memory (Annals of Communism)''. Trans. Nancy Anderson. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103778

2006 ''Selected Poems'' Trans D. M. Thomas; Penguin Classics; ISBN 0140424644

2009 ''Selected Poems'' Trans. Walter Arndt; Overlook TP; ISBN 0882331809

Notes

References

Sources

Akhmatova, Anna, Trans. Kunitz, Staney and Hayward, Max (1973) ''Poems of Akhmatova''. Houghton Mifflin

Akhmatova, Anna, Trans. Kunitz, Staney and Hayward, Max (1998) ''Poems of Akhmatova''. Houghton Mifflin ISBN10 0395860032

Akhmatova, Anna (1989) Trans. Mayhew and McNaughton. ''Poem Without a Hero & Selected Poems''. Oberlin College Press ISBN 0932440517

Akhmatova, Anna 1992) Trans. J. Herschemeyer ''The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova''. Ed. R. Reeder, Boston: Zephyr Press; (2000)

Feinstein, Elaine. (2005) ''Anna of all the Russias: A life of Anna Akhmatova''. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 0297643096); Alfred A. Knopf, (2006) ISBN 1400040892

Harrington, Alexandra (2006) ''The poetry of Anna Akhmatova: living in different mirrors''. Anthem Press ISBN 9781843312222

Martin, Eden (2007) ''Collecting Anna Akhmatova''. ''The Caxtonian'' Vol. 4 April 2007 Journal of the Caxton Club. Accessed 2010-05-31

Polivanov, Konstantin (1994) ''Anna Akhmatova and Her Circle'', University of Arkansas Press.

Reeder, Roberta. (1994) ''Anna Akhmatova: Poet and Prophet''. New York: Picador ISBN 0-312-13429-0

Reeder, Roberta. (1997) ''Anna Akhmatova: The Stalin Years'' Journal article by Roberta Reeder; ''New England Review'', Vol. 18, 1997

Wells, David (1996) ''Anna Akhmatova: Her Poetry'' Berg Publishers ISBN 978-1859730997

External links

Anna Akhmatova on youtube (English Translation)

Collection of Poems by Anna Akhmatova (English Translations)

Essay on Anna Akhmatova by John Simon May 1994

''Film About Anna Akhmatova'' by Helga Landauer and Anatoly Naiman (Russian and English)

Poems in Russian and English text side by side, translated by Andrey Kneller

Akhmatova's poems in English at ''Poems Found In Translation''

Essay - ''The Obverse of Stalinism: Akhmatova's self-serving charisma of selflessness'' by Alexander Zholkovsky

English and Russian text of "Requiem" translated by Lyn Coffin

English translations of ''Clenched My Hands...'' ''Grey Eyed King''

English translations of 5 miniature poems, 1911-1917

Anna Akhmatova at RT Russiapedia

Category:1889 births Category:1966 deaths Category:People from Odessa Category:Russian-language poets Category:Russian people of Ukrainian descent Category:Russian poets Category:Russian women writers Category:Russian World War I poets Category:Russian writers of Ukrainian descent Category:Soviet people of Ukrainian descent Category:Soviet poets Category:Translators to Russian

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name	Joseph Brodsky
birth name	Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky
birth date	May 24, 1940
birth place	Leningrad, Russia, USSR
death date	January 28, 1996
death place	New York City, New York, USA
occupation	Poet, essayist
citizenship	United States
nationality	Russian - American
ethnicity	Russian Jew
spouse	Maria Sozzani (1990–1996)
awards	Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award (1991)
signature	}}

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (, ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996), was a Russian-American poet and essayist. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 for alleged "social parasitism" and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at universities including those at Yale, Cambridge and Michigan.

Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed American Poet Laureate in 1991.

A movie based on his life has been made, "A Room And A Half", directed by Andrey Khrzhanovsky.

Early years

Brodsky was born into a Jewish family in Leningrad. His father, Aleksandr Brodsky, was a professional photographer in the Soviet Navy and his mother Maria Volpert Brodsky was a professional interpreter, whose work often helped to support the family. They lived in communal apartments, in poverty, marginalized by their Jewish status. In early childhood Brodsky survived the Siege of Leningrad when he and his parents nearly died of starvation, and later he suffered from various health problems caused by the siege. Brodsky commented that many of his teachers were anti-Semitic and that he felt like a dissident from an early age. He noted "I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political philosophy or practice [...] but because of his omnipresent images."

At fifteen, Brodsky left school and tried to enter the School of Submariners without success. He went on to work as a milling machine operator. Later, having decided to become a physician, he worked at the morgue at the Kresty prison, cutting and sewing bodies. He subsequently held a variety of jobs in hospitals, in a ship's boiler room, and on geological expeditions. At the same time, Brodsky engaged in a program of self-education. He learned Polish so he could translate the works of Polish poets like Czesław Miłosz, and English so he could translate John Donne, acquiring a deep interest in classical philosophy, religion, mythology, and English and American poetry.

Career and family

In 1955, Brodsky began writing his own poetry and producing literary translations, circulating them in secret, some published by the underground journal ''Sintaksis''.His writings were apolitical. The young Brodsky met the great poet of the Silver age Anna Akhmatova in 1960. She encouraged his work, and would go on to become his mentor. By 1958 he was already well known in literary circles for his poems "The Jewish cemetery near Leningrad" and "Pilgrims". Asked when he first felt called to poetry, he recollected, "In 1959, in Yakutsk, when walking in that terrible city, I went into a bookstore. I snagged a copy of poems by Baratynsky. I had nothing to read. So I read that book and finally understood what I had to do in life. Or got very excited, at least. So in a way, Evgeny Abramovich Baratynsky is sort of responsible". His friend Ludmila Shtern recalled working with Brodsky on an irrigation project in his "Geological Period" (working as a geologist's assistant): "We bounced around the Leningrad Province examining kilometers of canals, checking their embankments, which looked terrible. They were falling down, coming apart, had all sorts of strange things growing in them. [...] It was during these trips, however, that I was privileged to hear the poems "The Hills" and "You Will Gallop in the Dark." Brodsky read them aloud to me between two train cars as we were going towards Tikhvin.

In 1962, in Saint Petersburg, Anna Akhmatova introduced Brodsky to the artist Marina Basmanova. From then until his exile in 1972 they were occasional partners and together they had a son, Andrey, registered under her surname. A severe disruption in their relations occurred on New Year's Eve at the end of 1963, when Basmanova, whom Brodsky (who had fled to Moscow to avoid arrest) had left in the care of his friend and fellow poet Dmitri Bobyshev, slept with Bobyshev; as soon as Brodsky heard of this, he hurried back to Leningrad and confronted them, breaking off relations with Bobyshev. Basmanova later joined Brodsky in his sentence in Archangelsk, disappearing from time to time to rejoin Bobyshev, but she refused to marry Brodsky or join him when he was exiled from the country.

Denunciation

In 1963, Brodsky's poetry was denounced by a Leningrad newspaper as "pornographic and anti-Soviet." His papers were confiscated, he was interrogated, twice put in a mental institution and then arrested. After a secret trial in 1964, he was charged with social parasitism by the Soviet authorities, finding that his series of odd jobs and role as a poet were not a sufficient contribution. They called him "a pseudo-poet in velveteen trousers" who failed to fulfill his "constitutional duty to work honestly for the good of the motherland." The trial judged asked "Who has recognized you as a poet? Who has enrolled you in the ranks of poets?" — "No one," Brodsky replied, "Who enrolled me in the ranks of the human race?" For his "parasitism" Brodsky was sentenced to five years hard labor and served 18 months on a farm in the arctic Archangelsk region where he chopped wood, hauled manure and crushed rocks, and at night read his anthology of English and American poetry. His sentence was commuted in 1965 after protests by prominent Soviet and foreign cultural figures, including Evgeny Evtushenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as Akhmatova Brodsky became a cause celebre in the West also when the secret trial manuscript was smuggled out of the country, transmuting him into a symbol of artistic dissidence in a totalitarian society, much like his mentor Akhmatova.

Brodsky returned to Leningrad and continued to write over the next seven years, many of his works being translated into German, French and English and published abroad. ''Verses and Poems'' was published by Inter-Language Literary Associates in Washington in 1965, ''Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems'' was published in London in 1967 by Longmans Green, and ''A Stop in the Desert'' was issued in 1970 by Chekhov Publishing in New York. Only four of his poems were published in Leningrad anthologies in 1966 and 1967, most of his work appearing outside the Soviet Union or circulated in secret (samizdat) until 1987. Persecuted for his poetry and his Jewish heritage, he was denied permission to travel. In 1972, while Brodsky was being considered for exile, the authorities consulted mental health expert Andrei Snezhnevsky, a key proponent of the notorious pseudo-medical diagnosis of "paranoid reformist delusion". This political tool allowed the state to lock up dissenters in psychiatric institutions indefinitely. Without examining him personally, Snezhnevsky diagnosed Brodsky as having schizophrenia, concluding that he was "not valuable person at all and may be let go." In 1971, Brodsky was twice invited to emigrate to Israel. When called to the Ministry of the Interior in 1972 and asked why he had not accepted, he stated that he wished to stay in the country. Within 10 days officials broke into his apartment, took his papers, and on 4 June 1972 put him on a plane for Vienna.

In Austria, he met Carl Proffer and Auden, who would both help in Brodsky's transit to America and prove influential to Brodsky's career. Proffer of the University of Michigan, one of the co-founders of Ardis Publishers, became Brodsky's Russian publisher from this point on. Recalling his landing in Vienna, Brodsky commented "I knew I was leaving my country for good, but for where, I had no idea whatsoever. One thing which was quite clear was that I didn't want to go to Israel... I never even believed that they'd allow me to go. I never believed they would put me on a plane, and when they did I didn't know whether the plane would go east or west... I didn't want to be hounded by what was left of the Soviet Security Service in England. So I came to the States." Although the poet was invited back after the fall of the Soviet Union, Brodsky never returned to his country.

America

After a short stay in Vienna, Brodsky settled in Ann Arbor, with the help of poet Auden and Proffer and became poet in residence at the University of Michigan for a year. Brodsky went on to become a Visiting Professor at Queens College (1973–74), Smith College, Columbia University, and Cambridge University, later returning to the University of Michigan (1974–80). He was the Andrew Mellon Professor of Literature and Five College Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College, brought there by poet and historian Peter Viereck. In 1978, Brodsky was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Yale University, and on 23 May 1979, he was inducted as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He moved to New York's Greenwich Village in 1980 and In 1981, Brodsky received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius" award. He was also a recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence. In 1986, his collection of essays ''Less Than One'' won the National Book Critics Award for Criticism and he was given an honorary doctorate of literature from Oxford University.

In 1987, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the fifth Russian-born writer to do so. In an interview he was asked: "You are an American citizen who is receiving the Prize for Russian-language poetry. Who are you, an American or a Russian?" He responded: "I am Jewish – a Russian poet and an English essayist". The Academy stated that they had awarded the prize for his "all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity." It also called his writing "rich and intensely vital," characterized by "great breadth in time and space." It was "a big step for me, a small step for mankind," he joked. The prize coincided with the first legal publication in Russia of Brodsky's poetry as an exile.

In 1991, Brodsky became Poet Laureate of the United States. The Librarian of Congress said that Brodsky had "the open-ended interest of American life that immigrants have. This is a reminder that so much of American creativity is from people not born in America". His inauguration address was printed in ''Poetry Review''. Brodsky held an honorary degree from the University of Silesia in Poland and was an honorary member of the International Academy of Science. In 1995, Gleb Uspensky, a senior editor at the Russian publishing house Vagrius, asked Brodsky to return to Russia for a tour but he could not agree. For the last ten years of his life, Brodsky was under considerable pressure from those that regarded him as a "fortune maker". He was a greatly honored professor, was on first name terms with the heads of many large publishing houses, and connected to the significant figures of American literary life. His friend Ludmila Shtern wrote that many Russian intellectuals in both Russia and America assumed his influence was unlimited, that a nod from him could secure them a book contract, a teaching post or a grant, that it was in his gift to assure a glittering career. A helping hand or a rejection of a petition for help could create a storm in Russian literary circles, which Shtern suggests became very personal at times. His position as a lauded émigré and Nobel Prize winner won him enemies and stoked resentment, the politics of which, she writes, made him feel "deathly tired" of it all towards the end.

In the 1990s, Brodsky invited his son Andrey to visit him in New York for three months, and they maintained a father-son relationship until Brodsky's death. Andrey married in the 1990s and had three children, all of whom were recognized and supported by Brodsky as his grandchildren; Marina Basmanova, Andrey and Brodsky's grand-children live in Saint Petersburg. In 1990, while teaching literature in France, Brodsky married a young student, Maria Sozzani, who has a Russian-Italian background; they had one daughter, Anna.

Brodsky died of a heart attack aged 55, in his New York City apartment on January 28, 1996. He had had open-heart surgery in 1979 and later two bypass operations, remaining in frail health since that time. He was buried in the Episcopalian section at Isola di San Michele cemetery in Venice, Italy. In 1997, a plaque was placed on his house in St Petersburg (Leningrad) with his portrait in relief, and the words "In this house from 1940 to 1972 lived the great Russian poet Iosif Aleksandrovich". Brodsky's close friend, the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, memorialized him in his collection ''The Prodigal'' (2004).

Work

Brodsky is perhaps most known for his poetry collections ''A Part of Speech'' (1977) and ''To Urania'' (1988) and the essay collection ''Less Than One'' (1986), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other notable works include the play ''Marbles'' (1989) and ''Watermark'', a prose collection (1992). Throughout his career he wrote in Russian and English, self-translating and working with eminent poet-translators.

Themes and forms

In his introduction to Brodsky's ''Selected Poems'' (New York and Harmondsworth, 1973), W. H. Auden described Brodsky as a traditionalist lyric poet fascinated by "encounters with nature, [...] reflections upon the human condition, death, and the meaning of existence". He drew on wide-ranging themes, from Mexican and Caribbean literature to Roman poetry, mixing "the physical and the metaphysical, place and ideas about place, now and the past and the future". Critic Dinah Birch suggests that Brodsky's " first volume of poetry in English, ''Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems (1973)'', shows that although his strength was a distinctive kind of dry, meditative soliloquy, he was immensely versatile and technically accomplished in a number of forms."

''To Urania: Selected Poems 1965–1985'' collected translations of older work with new work written during his American exile and reflect on themes of memory, home and loss. His two essay collections consist of critical studies of such poets as Osip Mandelshtam, W. H. Auden, Thomas Hardy, Rainer Maria Rilke and Robert Frost, sketches of his own life, and those of contemporaries such as Akhmatova, Nadezhda Mandelshtam, and Stephen Spender.

A recurring theme in Brodsky's writing is the relationship between the poet and society. In particular, Brodsky emphasized the power of literature to positively impact its audience and to develop the language and culture in which it is situated. He suggested that the Western literary tradition was in part responsible for the world having overcome the catastrophes of the twentieth century, such as Nazism, Communism and the World Wars. During his term as the Poet Laureate, Brodsky promoted the idea of bringing the Anglo-American poetic heritage to a wider American audience by distributing free poetry anthologies to the public through a government-sponsored program. Billington wrote "Joseph had difficulty understanding why poetry did not draw the large audiences in the United States that it did in Russia. He was proud of becoming an American citizen in 1977 (the Soviets having made him stateless upon his expulsion in 1972) and valued the freedoms that life in the United States provided. But he regarded poetry as "language's highest degree of maturity," and wanted everyone to be susceptible to it. While poet laureate, he suggested that inexpensive anthologies of the best American poets be made available in hotels and airports, hospitals and supermarkets. He thought that people who are restless or fearful or lonely or weary might pick up poetry and discover unexpectedly that others had experienced these emotions before and had used them to celebrate life rather than escape from it. Joseph's idea was picked up, and thousands of such books have in fact been placed where people may come across them out of need or curiosity."

This passion for promoting the seriousness and importance of poetry comes through in Brodsky's opening remarks as poet laureate in October, 1991. He says "By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan. [...] In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech. [...] Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal, our evolutionary, linguistic beacon." This sentiment is echoed throughout his work. In interview with Sven Birkerts in 1979 Brodsky reflected" In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself, as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony, those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror. Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as "a read", commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself. "

Influences

Librarian of Congress Dr James Billington, wrote "He was the favored protégé of the great lady of Petersburg, Anna Akhmatova, and to hear him read her poems in Russian in the Library of Congress was an experience to make one's hair stand on end even if one did not understand the Russian language. Joseph Brodsky was the embodiment of the hopes not only of Anna Akhmatova, the last of the great Petersburg poets from the beginning of the century, but also Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of another great martyred poet [ Osip Mandelstam ]. Both of them saw Joseph as part of the guiding light that might some day lead Russia back to her own deep roots." Brodsky was also deeply influenced by the English metaphysical poets from John Donne to Auden. Many works were dedicated to other writers such as Tomas Venclova, Octavio Paz, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Benedetta Craveri.

Brodsky's work is seen to have been vitally enhanced by the work of renowned translators. ''A Part of Speech'' (New York and Oxford, 1980), his second major collection in English, includes translations by Anthony Hecht, Howard Moss, Derek Walcott and Richard Wilbur. Critic and poet Henri Cole notes that Brodsky's "own translations have been criticized for turgidness, lacking a native sense of musicality."

Awards and honors

1978 honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, Yale University

1979 Fellowship of American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters

1981 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award.

1986 Honorary doctorate of literature from Oxford University

The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence

1986 National Book Critics Award for Criticism, for ''Less Than One'' (essay collection)

1987 Nobel Prize

1991 United States Poet Laureate

1991 Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award

1993 Honorary degree from the University of Silesia in Poland

Honorary member of the International Academy of Science.

Works

Poetry collections

1967: ''Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems'', selected, translated, and introduced by Nicholas William Bethell, London: Longman

1968: ''Velka elegie'', Paris: Edice Svedectvi

1972: ''Poems'', Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis

1973: ''Selected Poems'', translated from the Russian by George L. Kline. New York: Harper & Row

1977: ''A Part of Speech''

1977: ''Poems and Translations'', Keele: University of Keele

1980: ''A Part of Speech'', New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

1981: ''Verses on the Winter Campaign 1980'', translation by Alan Myers.–London: Anvil Press

1988: ''To Urania : Selected Poems, 1965-1985'', New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

1995: ''On Grief and Reason: Essays'', New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

1996: ''So Forth : Poems'', New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

1999: ''Discovery'', New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

2000: ''Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999'', edited by Ann Kjellberg, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

2001: ''Nativity Poems'', translated by Melissa Green–New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Essay and interview collections

1986: ''Less Than One: Selected Essays'', New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. (Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award)

1992: ''Watermark'', Noonday Press; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

1996: ''On Grief and Reason: Essays''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

2003: ''Joseph Brodsky: Conversations'', edited by Cynthia L. Haven. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi Literary Conversations Series.

Plays

1989: ''Marbles : a Play in Three Acts'', translated by Alan Myers with Joseph Brodsky.–New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

1991: ''Democracy!'' in Granta 30 New Europe, translated by Alan Myers and Joseph Brodsky.

See also

List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

Sources

Bethea, David (1994) ''Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile'', Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ)

Miłosz, Czesław and Haven, Cynthia L. (Ed.) (2006) ''Czesław Miłosz: Conversations''. Includes "Interview between Joseph Brodsky and Czeslaw Milosz". University Press of Mississippi ISBN 978-1578068296

Loseff, Lev (2010) ''Joseph Brodsky: a Literary Life'', Yale University Press (New Haven, CT)

Speh, Alice J (1996) ''The Poet as Traveler: Joseph Brodsky in Mexico and Rome'', Peter Lang (New York, NY)

Shtern, Ludmila (2004) ''Brodsky: A Personal Memoir'', Baskerville Publishers ISBN 978-1880909706

External links

19 February 1996 "Death of a Poet Laureate: Joseph Brodsky Turned Exile into Inspiration" Library of Congress, obituary.

Interview 29 January 1996 PBS (US)

Profile, poems and audio files from the Academy of American Poets.

Brodsky Biography and bibliography, Poetry Foundation (US)

Obituary ''New York Times'' "Joseph Brodsky, Exiled Poet Who Won Nobel, Dies at 55" 29 January 1996.

Short Biography

Joseph Brodsky–Biography at Nobelprize.org

Written in Stone - Burial locations of literary figures.

Finding aid for the Joseph Brodsky Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

Category:1940 births Category:1996 deaths Category:Russian essayists Category:Russian poets Category:Russian Nobel laureates Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:American writers of Russian descent Category:Russian Jews Category:Soviet dissidents Category:American Poets Laureate Category:American poets Category:Burials at Isola di San Michele Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Fellows of Clare Hall, Cambridge Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish poets Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Mount Holyoke College faculty Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Nobel laureates in Literature Category:People from Saint Petersburg Category:Soviet emigrants to the United States Category:Soviet expellees Category:Soviet prisoners and detainees

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David "Dudu" Fisher (born November 18, 1951; ) is an Israeli cantor and stage performer.

He is best known for his Broadway performance as Jean Valjean in the musical ''Les Misérables''.

Cantorial career

The son of a Holocaust survivor, Fisher was born in Petah Tikva, Israel. He began studying at age 22, after the Yom Kippur War and his discharge from the army following three years of service.

Fisher studied at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music, and studied privately under cantor Shlomo Ravitz. He then took up the cantorial position at the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv, followed by four years in South Africa. For over 20 years, Fisher was the cantor at Kutsher's Hotel in the Catskills during the Jewish high holidays. In 2005 Fisher became the Chief Cantor of New York Synagogue.

''Les Miserables''

After being mesmerised by the London performance of the 1980s hit musical, Fisher, despite no prior acting experience, requested the part in a Hebrew production of ''Les Misérables''. He played its leading role, Jean Valjean, in Israel from 1987 to 1990, and made local fame.

He played the role on New York's Broadway during the winter of 1993-4, and later at London's West End, where he was invited to perform before Queen Elizabeth II. At both venues, Dudu was the first performer excused from Friday night and Saturday performances, as he is an Orthodox Jew and was not able to perform because of the Sabbath.

Other performance roles

Among Fisher's other performances is his one-man Off-Broadway show, ''Never on Friday'', an anecdotal work exploring the complications of his experience on Broadway as an observant Jew. He performed in many tours around Israel, the United States, and the world, particularly in Jewish communities, performing classics, as well as musicals, such as ''Over the Rainbow'' which toured Israel with Fisher performing 40 Broadway show tunes.

He performed for United States President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, for Britain's Royal family, and for the Thai Royal family.

Fisher has also performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, with a performance televised in France, and with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Queens Symphony Orchestra. He has recorded an album of show tunes with the London Symphony Orchestra. He was the first Israeli artist allowed to sing in the Soviet Union before perestroika.

In May 2009 Fisher sang, along with contratenor David D'Or, for Pope Benedict XVI as the Pope visited Israel.

Discography

In addition to his stage and synagogue performance, Dudu Fisher has released over 25 albums, including songs in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English, many classics and cantorial pieces, as well as music for children. He also sang the part of Moses in the Hebrew version of Steven Spielberg's animated film, ''The Prince of Egypt''.

''Hatikvah'' (2005)

''Lehitei Yiddish Beivrit'' (''Yiddish hits in Hebrew'') (2005)

''Coming to America'' (2004)

''Prayers On Broadway'' (2003)

''Songs Of My Heart'' (2002)

''Mamenyu'' (2001)

''Odecha'' (1999)

''L'tav Ulchayim V'lishlam'' (''For Good, For Life & For Peace'') (1997)

''Never On Friday'' (1996)

''Az Yashir David'' (1996)

''Beshem Hashem'' (''In God's Name'') (1994)

''Showstoppers'' (1994)

''The Malavsky Family Songs'' (1993)

''Mamma Loshon'' (''Mother Tongue'') (1992)

''Velvet Tiger'' (1992)

''Golden Chasidic Song'' (1992)

''Gift'' (1992)

''Tonight, A Musical'' (1991)

''Stairways To Heaven'' (1990)

''Over the Rainbow'' (1989)

''Yiddishkeit'' (1988)

''Elokai Neshama'' (1985)

''Golden Yiddish Favorites'' (1985)

''Childhood Years''

''Raisins and Almonds''

''Songs Of The Living''

''Yiddishe Mamme''

''Dudu Fisher's Kindergarten'' (DVD/VHS):

# (1998) (translated to English)

# ''We Are All Friends'' (2000)

# ''From The Heart And Soul'' (2001)

# ''The Friendship Trip'' (2002) (Translated to English)

# ''It's The Thought That Counts'' (2003)

# ''From The Mouth Of The Infants''

# ''Shabat Shalom''

# ''Shana Tova''

# ''And Thou Rejoice In Thy Feast''

# ''From Slavery To Freedom''

# ''A Great Miracle Happened There''

# ''Shavuot Holyday

# ''Jerusalen'' (Translated to English)

# ''Purim''

# ''Song Of The Animals''

He also joined David D'Or, Eran Zur, and Meir Banai in the song "Lisa" on the 1994 album "''Radio Blah-Blah''" by the Israeli band "The Friends of Natasha". In 2009, Fisher recorded the song "Saleinu" for the organization Pioneers For A Cure, with the proceeds benefiting Ezer Mizion.

References

"Bridge between people - 'Dudu' Fisher to bring music to Warner Theatre". ''Dallas Jewish Week''. 13 June 2002.

Dudu Fisher at Golden Land Concerts & Connections. Accessed 12 December 2005.

Golden Land Dudu Fisher

External links

Official web site

Sameach Music's full Dudu Fisher discography

Jewish Australia Dudu Fisher

Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:Yiddish singers Category:Jewish musicians Category:Israeli male singers Category:Hazzans Category:Israeli Orthodox Jews Category:Israeli hazzans Category:Children of Holocaust survivors

es:Dudu Fisher he:דודו פישר sv:Dudu Fisher yi:דודו פישער

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev (''Russian'': Серге́й Серге́евич Проко́фьев) (23 April 1891 – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century.

Biography

Childhood compositions

Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka (now Krasne in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine), an isolated rural estate in Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire. He displayed unusual musical abilities by age five. His first piano composition to be written down (by his mother), an 'Indian Gallop', was in the Lydian mode (a major scale with a raised 4th scale degree) as the young Prokofiev felt 'reluctance to tackle the black notes'. By seven he had also learned to play chess. Much like music, chess would remain a passion, and he became acquainted with world chess champions José Raúl Capablanca and Mikhail Botvinnik. At age nine he was composing his first opera, ''The Giant'', as well as an overture and miscellaneous pieces.

Formal education and controversial early works

In 1902, Prokofiev's mother met Sergei Taneyev, director of the Moscow Conservatory, who initially suggested that Prokofiev should start lessons in piano and composition with Alexander Goldenweiser. When Taneyev was unable to arrange this, he instead arranged for composer and pianist Reinhold Glière to spend the summer of 1902 in Sontsovka teaching Prokofiev. This first series of lessons culminated, at the 11-year-old Prokofiev's insistence, with the budding composer making his first attempt to write a symphony. Glière subsequently revisited Sontsovka the following summer to give further tuition. When decades later Prokofiev wrote about his lessons with Glière, he gave due credit to Glière's sympathetic qualities as a teacher but complained that Glière had introduced him to "square" phrase structure and conventional modulations which he subsequently had to unlearn. Nonetheless, equipped with the necessary theoretical tools, Prokofiev started experimenting with dissonant harmonies and unusual time signatures in a series of short piano pieces which he called "ditties" (after the so-called "song form"—more accurately ternary form—they were based on), laying the basis for his own musical style.

After a while, Prokofiev's mother felt that the isolation in Sontsovka was restricting his further musical development, yet his parents hesitated over starting their son on a musical career at such an early age. Then in 1904, while Prokofiev was in Saint Petersburg with his mother exploring the prospect of their moving there for his education, they were introduced to composer Alexander Glazunov, a professor at the Conservatory. Glazunov agreed to see Prokofiev and his music, and was so impressed that he urged Prokofiev's mother that her son apply to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. By this point Prokofiev had composed two more operas, ''Desert Islands'' and ''The Feast during the Plague'' and was working on his fourth, ''Undine''. He passed the introductory tests and entered the Conservatory that same year.

Several years younger than most of his classmates, he was viewed as eccentric and arrogant, and he often expressed dissatisfaction with much of the education, which he found boring. During this period he studied under, among others, Anatoly Lyadov, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (though when Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908, Prokofiev noted that he had only studied orchestration with him 'after a fashion'—that is, in a heavily attended class with other students—and regretted that he otherwise 'never had the opportunity to study with him'). He also became friends with composers Boris Asafyev and Nikolai Myaskovsky.

As a member of the Saint Petersburg music scene, Prokofiev developed a reputation as a musical rebel, while getting praise for his original compositions, which he would perform himself on the piano. In 1909, he graduated from his class in composition with unimpressive marks. He continued at the Conservatory, studying piano under Anna Yesipova and conducting under Nikolai Tcherepnin.

In 1910, Prokofiev's father died and Sergei's financial support ceased. Fortunately he had started making a name for himself as a composer, although he frequently caused scandals with his forward-looking works. The ''Sarcasms'' for piano, Op. 17 (1912), for example, make extensive use of polytonality, and Etudes, Op. 2 (1909) and Four Pieces, Op. 4 (1908) are highly chromatic and dissonant works. He composed his first two piano concertos around this time, the latter of which caused a scandal at its premiere (23 August 1913, Pavlovsk). According to one account, the audience left the hall with exclamations of "'To hell with this futuristic music! The cats on the roof make better music!'", but the modernists were in rapture.

In 1911 help arrived from renowned Russian musicologist and critic Alexander Ossovsky, who wrote a supportive letter to music publisher Boris P. Jurgenson, thus a contract was offered to the composer. Prokofiev made his first foreign trip in 1913, travelling to Paris and London where he first encountered Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

The first ballets

In 1914, Prokofiev finished his career at the Conservatory by entering the so-called 'battle of the pianos', a competition open to the five best piano students for which the prize was a Schreder grand piano: Prokofiev won by performing his own Piano Concerto No. 1. Soon afterwards, he journeyed to London where he made contact with the impresario Diaghilev. Diaghilev commissioned Prokofiev's first ballet, ''Ala and Lolli'', but rejected the work in progress when Prokofiev brought it to him in Italy in 1915. Diaghilev then commissioned Prokofiev to compose the ballet ''Chout''. Under Diaghilev's guidance, Prokofiev chose his subject from a collection of folktales by the ethnographer Alexander Afanasyev; the story, concerning a buffoon and a series of confidence tricks, had been previously suggested to Diaghilev by Igor Stravinsky as a possible subject for a ballet, and Diaghilev and his choreographer Léonide Massine helped Prokofiev to shape this into a ballet scenario. Prokofiev's inexperience in ballet led him to revise the work extensively in the 1920s, following Diaghilev's detailed critique, prior to its first production. The ballet's premiere in Paris on 17 May 1921 was a huge success and was greeted with great admiration by an audience that included Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky and Maurice Ravel. Stravinsky called the ballet "the single piece of modern music he could listen to with pleasure," while Ravel called it "a work of genius."

First World War and Revolution

During World War I, Prokofiev returned to the Conservatory. He studied organ in order to avoid conscription. He composed ''The Gambler'' based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel of the same name, but rehearsals were plagued by problems and the scheduled 1917 première had to be canceled because of the February Revolution. In the summer of that year, Prokofiev composed his first symphony, the ''Classical''. This was his own name for the symphony, which was written in the style that, according to Prokofiev, Joseph Haydn would have used if he had been alive at the time. It is more or less classical in style but incorporates more modern musical elements (see Neoclassicism). This symphony was also an exact contemporary of Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19, which was scheduled to premiere in November 1917. The first performances of both works had to wait until 21 April 1918 and 18 October 1923, respectively. He stayed briefly with his mother in Kislovodsk in the Caucasus. Worried about the enemy capturing Saint Petersburg, he returned in 1918. By then he was determined to leave Russia, at least temporarily. He saw no room for his experimental music and, in May, he headed for the USA. Before leaving, he developed acquaintances with senior Bolsheviks including Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Education, who told him: "You are a revolutionary in music, we are revolutionaries in life. We ought to work together. But if you want to go to America I shall not stand in your way."

Life abroad

Arriving in San Francisco after having been released from questioning by immigration on Angel Island on 11 August 1918, Prokofiev was soon compared to other famous Russian exiles (such as Sergei Rachmaninoff), and he started out successfully with a solo concert in New York, leading to several further engagements. He also received a contract for the production of his new opera ''The Love for Three Oranges'' but, due to illness and the death of the director, the premiere was postponed. This was another example of Prokofiev's bad luck in operatic matters. The failure also cost him his American solo career, since the opera took too much time and effort. He soon found himself in financial difficulties, and, in April 1920, he left for Paris, not wanting to return to Russia as a failure.

Paris was better prepared for Prokofiev's musical style. He reaffirmed his contacts with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. He also returned to some of his older, unfinished works, such as the Third Piano Concerto. ''The Love for Three Oranges'' finally premièred in Chicago in December 1921, under the composer's baton.

In March 1922, Prokofiev moved with his mother to the town of Ettal in the Bavarian Alps for over a year so he could concentrate on composing. Most of his time was spent on an opera project, ''The Fiery Angel'', based on the novel ''The Fiery Angel'' by Valery Bryusov. By this time his later music had acquired a following in Russia, and he received invitations to return there, but he decided to stay in Europe. In 1923, he married the Spanish singer Lina Llubera (1897–1989), before moving back to Paris.

There, several of his works (for example the Second Symphony) were performed, but critical reception was lukewarm. However the Symphony appeared to prompt Diaghilev to commission ''Le Pas d'acier'' (The Steel Step), a 'modernist' ballet score intended to portray the industrialisation of the Soviet Union. It was enthusiastically received by Parisian audiences and critics.

Prokofiev and Stravinsky restored their friendship, though Prokofiev did not particularly like Stravinsky's later works; it has been suggested that his use of text from Stravinsky's ''A Symphony of Psalms'' to characterise the invading Teutonic knights in the film score for Eisenstein's ''Alexander Nevsky'' (1938) was intended as an attack on Stravinsky's musical idiom. However, Stravinsky himself described Prokofiev as the greatest Russian composer of his day, after himself.

Around 1927, the virtuoso's situation brightened; he had exciting commissions from Diaghilev and made concert tours in Russia; in addition, he enjoyed a very successful staging of ''The Love for Three Oranges'' in Leningrad (as Saint Petersburg was then known). Two older operas (one of them ''The Gambler'') played in Europe and in 1928 Prokofiev produced his Third Symphony, which was broadly based on his unperformed opera ''The Fiery Angel''. The conductor Sergei Koussevitzky characterized the Third as "the greatest symphony since Tchaikovsky's Sixth."

During 1928–29 Prokofiev composed what was to be the last ballet for Diaghilev, ''The Prodigal Son'', which was staged on 21 May 1929 in Paris with Serge Lifar in the title role. Diaghilev died only months later.

In 1929, Prokofiev wrote the Divertimento, Op. 43 and revised his Sinfonietta, Op. 5/48, a work started in his days at the Conservatory. Prokofiev wrote in his autobiography that he could never understand why the Sinfonietta was so rarely performed, whereas the "Classical" Symphony was played everywhere. Later in this year, however, he slightly injured his hands in a car crash, which prevented him from performing in Moscow, but in turn permitted him to enjoy contemporary Russian music. After his hands healed, he toured the United States successfully, propped up by his recent European success. This, in turn, propelled him on another tour through Europe.

In 1930 Prokofiev began his first non-Diaghilev ballet ''On the Dnieper'', Op. 51, a work commissioned by Serge Lifar, who had been appointed ''maitre de ballet'' at the Paris Opéra. In 1931 and 1932 he completed his fourth and fifth piano concertos. The following year saw the completion of the Symphonic Song, Op. 57, a darkly scored piece in one movement.

In the early 1930s, Prokofiev was starting to long for Russia again; he moved more and more of his premieres and commissions to his home country from Paris. One such was ''Lieutenant Kijé'', which was commissioned as the score to a Soviet film. Another commission, from the Kirov Theater in Leningrad, was the ballet ''Romeo and Juliet''. Today, this is one of Prokofiev's best-known works, and it contains some of the most inspired and poignant passages in his body of work. However, the ballet's original happy ending (contrary to Shakespeare), caused the premiere to be postponed for several years.

In this period he began to practice the religion and teachings of Christian Science, to which he remained faithful for the rest of his life.

Return to the Soviet Union

In 1935, Prokofiev returned permanently to the Soviet Union; his family followed a year later. At this time, the official Soviet policy towards music changed; a special bureau, the "Composers' Union", was established in order to keep track of the artists and their doings. By limiting outside influences, these policies would gradually cause almost complete isolation of Soviet composers from the rest of the world. Both Prokofiev and Shostakovich came under particular scrutiny for "formalist tendencies." Forced to adapt to the new circumstances (whatever misgivings he had about them in private), Prokofiev wrote a series of "mass songs" (Opp. 66, 79, 89), using the lyrics of officially approved Soviet poets. At the same time Prokofiev also composed music for children (''Three Songs for Children'' and ''Peter and the Wolf'', among others) as well as the gigantic ''Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution,'' which was banned from performance and had to wait until May 1966 for a partial premiere.

In 1938, Prokofiev collaborated with Eisenstein on the historical epic ''Alexander Nevsky''. For this he composed some of his most inventive and dramatic music. Although the film had a very poor sound recording, Prokofiev adapted much of his score into a large-scale cantata for mezzo-soprano, orchestra and chorus, which was extensively performed and recorded. In the wake of ''Alexander Nevsky'''s success, Prokofiev composed his first Soviet opera ''Semyon Kotko'', which was intended to be produced by the director Vsevolod Meyerhold. However the première of the opera was postponed because Meyerhold was arrested on 20 June 1939 by the NKVD (Joseph Stalin's Secret Police), and shot on 2 February 1940. Only months after Meyerhold's arrest, Prokofiev was 'invited' to compose ''Zdravitsa'' (literally translated 'Cheers!', but more often given the English title ''Hail to Stalin'') (Op. 85) to celebrate Joseph Stalin's 60th birthday.

War years

Later in 1939, Prokofiev composed his Piano Sonatas Nos. 6, 7, and 8, Opp. 82–84, widely known today as the "War Sonatas." Premiered respectively by Prokofiev (No. 6: 8 April 1940), Sviatoslav Richter (No. 7: Moscow, 18 January 1943) and Emil Gilels (No. 8: Moscow, 30 December 1944), they were subsequently championed in particular by Richter. Biographer Daniel Jaffé argued that Prokofiev, "having forced himself to compose a cheerful evocation of the nirvana Stalin wanted everyone to believe he had created" (i.e. in ''Zdravitsa'') then subsequently, in these three sonatas, "expressed his true feelings". As evidence of this, Jaffé has pointed out that the central movement of Sonata No. 7 opens with a theme based on a Robert Schumann lied, 'Wehmut' ('Sadness', which appears in Schumann's Liederkreis, Op. 39): the words to this translate "I can sometimes sing as if I were glad, yet secretly tears well and so free my heart. Nightingales... sing their song of longing from their dungeon's depth... everyone delights, yet no one feels the pain, the deep sorrow in the song." Ironically (because, it appears, no one had noticed his allusion) Sonata No. 7 received a Stalin Prize (Second Class), and No. 8 a Stalin Prize First Class,

Prokofiev had been considering making an opera out of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel ''War and Peace'', when news of the German invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941 made the subject seem all the more timely. Prokofiev took two years to compose his original version of ''War and Peace''. Because of the war he was evacuated together with a large number of other artists, initially to the Caucasus where he composed his Second String Quartet. By this time his relationship with the 25-year-old writer Mira Mendelson (1915–1968) had finally led to his separation from his wife Lina, although they were never technically divorced: indeed Prokofiev had tried to persuade Lina and their sons to accompany him as evacuees out of Moscow, but Lina opted to stay.

During the war years, restrictions on style and the demand that composers should write in a 'socialist realist' style were slackened, and Prokofiev was generally able to compose in his own way. The Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 80, ''The Year 1941'', Op. 90, and the ''Ballade for the Boy Who Remained Unknown'', Op. 93 all came from this period. Some critics have said that the emotional springboard of the First Violin Sonata and many other of Prokofiev's compositions of this time "may have more to do with anti-Stalinism than the war", and most of his later works "resonated with darkly tragic ironies that can only be interpreted as critiques of Stalin's repressions."

In 1943 Prokofiev joined Eisenstein in Alma-Ata, the largest city in Kazakhstan, to compose more film music (''Ivan the Terrible''), and the ballet Cinderella (Op. 87), one of his most melodious and celebrated compositions. Early that year he also played excerpts from ''War and Peace'' to members of the Bolshoi Theatre collective. However, the Soviet government had opinions about the opera which resulted in many revisions. In 1944, Prokofiev moved to a composer's colony outside Moscow in order to compose his Fifth Symphony (Op. 100) which would turn out to be the most popular of all his symphonies, both within Russia and abroad. Shortly afterwards, he suffered a concussion after a fall due to chronic high blood pressure. He never fully recovered from this injury, which severely reduced his productivity in the ensuing years, though some of his last pieces were as fine as anything before.

Post-war

Prokofiev had time to write his postwar Sixth Symphony and a ninth piano sonata (for Sviatoslav Richter) before the Party, as part of the so-called "Zhdanov Decree", suddenly changed its opinion about his music. The war's end allowed the Party to tighten its reins on domestic artists, forcing creative attention to turn inward again. Prokofiev's music was now seen as a grave example of formalism, and was branded as "anti-democratic". With many works banned, most concert and theatre administrators panicked and would not program Prokofiev's music at all, leaving him in severe financial straits.

On 20 February 1948, Prokofiev's wife Lina was arrested for 'espionage', as she tried to send money to her mother in Spain. She was sentenced to 20 years, but was eventually released after Stalin's death in 1956 and in 1974 left the Soviet Union.

His latest opera projects were quickly cancelled by the Kirov Theatre. This snub, in combination with his declining health, caused Prokofiev to progressively withdraw from active musical life. His doctors ordered him to limit his activities, limiting him to composing for only an hour or two each day. In 1949 he wrote his Cello Sonata in C, Op. 119, for the 22-year old Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave the first performance in 1950, with Sviatoslav Richter. The last public performance of his lifetime was the première of the somewhat bittersweet Seventh Symphony in 1952. The music was written for a children's television program.

Death

Prokofiev died at the age of 61 on 5 March 1953, the day Joseph Stalin's death was announced. He had lived near Red Square, and for three days the throngs gathered to mourn Stalin, making it impossible to carry Prokofiev's body out for the funeral service at the headquarters of the Soviet Composer's Union. Paper flowers and a taped recording of the funeral march from ''Romeo and Juliet'' had to be used, as all real flowers and musicians were reserved for Stalin's funeral. He is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

The leading Soviet musical periodical reported Prokofiev's death as a brief item on page 116. The first 115 pages were devoted to the death of Stalin. Usually Prokofiev's death is attributed to cerebral hemorrhage (bleeding into the brain). He had been chronically ill for the prior eight years; the precise nature of Prokofiev's terminal illness remains uncertain.

Lina Prokofieva outlived her estranged husband by many years, dying in London in early 1989. Royalties from her late husband's music provided her with a modest income. Their sons Sviatoslav (1924–2010), an architect, and Oleg (1928–1998), an artist, painter, sculptor and poet, dedicated a large part of their lives to the promotion of their father's life and work.

Recordings

Prokofiev was a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Piero Coppola, in the first recording of his Piano Concerto No. 3, recorded in London by His Master's Voice in June 1932. Prokofiev also recorded some of his solo piano music for HMV in Paris in February 1935; these recordings were issued on CD by Pearl and Naxos. In 1938, he conducted the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra in a recording of the second suite from his ''Romeo and Juliet'' ballet; this performance was later released on LP and CD. Another reported recording with Prokofiev and the Moscow Philharmonic was of the First Violin Concerto with David Oistrakh as soloist; Everest Records later released this recording on an LP. Despite the attribution, the conductor was Alexander Gauk. A short sound film of Prokofiev playing some of the music from his opera ''War and Peace'' and then explaining the music has been discovered.

Posthumous reputation

Prokofiev may well be the most popular composer of 20th century music. His orchestral music alone is played more frequently in the United States than that of any other composer of the last hundred years, save Richard Strauss, while his operas, ballets, chamber works, and piano music appear regularly throughout the major concert halls world-wide.

Yet he has never won the admiration of Western academics and critics currently enjoyed by Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, composers purported to have a greater influence on a younger generation of musicians. While his Symphony No. 1, Op. 25, "Classical" is likely the first definitive neo-classical composition, arriving 4–5 years before such works as Stravinsky's ''Pulcinella'', some contend that "the movement started in earnest with Stravinsky", or even cite the influence of Stravinsky's neo-classicism on Prokofiev.

Nor has Prokofiev's biography captured the imagination of the public, in the way that Shostakovich appeared, for example, in sources such as Volkov's ''Testimony'', as an impassioned dissident. Whilst Arthur Honegger proclaimed that Prokofiev would "remain for us the greatest figure of contemporary music", his reputation in the West has suffered greatly as a result of cold-war antipathies.

But Prokofiev's music and his reputation stand well-positioned to benefit from the demise of cultural politics. His fusion of melody and modernism and his "gift, virtually unparalleled among 20th-century composers, for writing distinctively original diatonic melodies", may stand him in good stead as we begin to appreciate the unique genius of this most prolific and enigmatic of composers.

Works

Important works include (in chronological order):

Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, op. 10

Toccata in D minor, Op. 11, for piano

Piano Sonata No. 2 in D minor, Op. 14

Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16

''Sarcasms'', Op. 17, for piano

Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19

''Scythian Suite'', Op. 20, suite for orchestra

''Chout'', Op. 21, ballet in six scenes

''Visions fugitives'', Op. 22, set of twenty piano pieces

''The Gambler'', Op. 24, opera in four acts

Symphony No. 1 in D major ''Classical'', Op. 25, an archetypal neo-classical composition

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26

''The Love for Three Oranges'', Op. 33, opera in four acts, includes the famous ''March from the Love for Three Oranges''

Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34, for clarinet and piano quintet

Quintet, Op. 39, for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, and double-bass

''The Fiery Angel'', Op. 37, opera in five acts

Symphony No. 2 in D minor, Op. 40

''Le pas d'acier'', ballet in two scenes, Op. 41

Divertimento, Op. 43

Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 44

''The Prodigal Son'', Op. 46, ballet in three scenes

Symphony No. 4 in C major, Op. 47 (revised as Op. 112)

Sinfonietta, Op. 5/48

Four Portraits from "The Gambler", Op. 49

String Quartet No. 1 in B minor, Op. 50

''Symphonic Song'', Op. 57

''Lieutenant Kije'', Op. 60, suite for orchestra, includes the famous ''Troika''

Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63

''Romeo and Juliet'', Op. 64, ballet in four acts, contains the famous "Dance of the Knights"

*Orchestral suites extracted from ''Romeo and Juliet'':

**''Suite No. 1 from Romeo and Juliet'', Op. 64bis

**''Suite No. 2 from Romeo and Juliet'', Op. 64ter

**''Suite No. 3 from Romeo and Juliet'', Op. 101

*''Ten Pieces for Piano from Romeo and Juliet'', Op. 75

''Peter and the Wolf'', Op. 67, a children's tale for narrator and orchestra

''Alexander Nevsky'', Op. 78, cantata for mezzo-soprano, chorus, and orchestra

Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80

The three so-called ''War Sonatas'':

*Piano Sonata No. 6 in A major, Op. 82

*Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 83

*Piano Sonata No. 8 in B-flat major, Op. 84

Betrothal in a Monastery, Op. 86, opera.

''Cinderella'', Op. 87, ballet in three acts

''War and Peace'', Op. 91, opera in thirteen scenes

String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 92

Flute Sonata in D, Op. 94 (later arranged as Violin Sonata No. 2, Op. 94a))

Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100

Piano Sonata No. 9 in C major, Op. 103

Symphony No. 6 in E-flat minor, Op. 111

''Ivan the Terrible'', Op. 116, music for Eisenstein's classic film of the same name.

''The Tale of the Stone Flower'', Op. 118, ballet in two acts

Symphony-Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in E minor, Op. 125, written for Mstislav Rostropovich

Symphony No. 7 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131

Bibliography

Autobiography and diaries

ISBN 2-9518138-1-3, ISBN 2-9518138-2-1

Biographies

Dictionary articles

''The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'', 8th ed. Revised by Nicolas Slonimsky. New York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 0-02-872416-X

''Prokofiev, Sergei'' by Richard Taruskin, in 'The New Grove Dictionary of Opera', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) ISBN 0-333-73432-7

Notes

External links

The Prokofiev Page

The Serge Prokofiev Foundation

Boosey and Hawkes' Prokofiev page – Most of Prokofiev's music is published by B&H.;

Holdings of the Serge Prokofiev Archive listed under AIM25.

The chess games of Sergei Prokofiev Four for posterity

List of Prokofiev's complete works

Prokofiev's gravesite at findagrave.com

"Bad Boy of the Keyboard – An Interview with Recording Artist Barbara Nissman" on AdventuresInMusic.biz, 2008

"Finding Unlikely Ideology in Prokofiev: Polyphonic and Anti-Authoritarian Gestures in ''The Gambler''

Recordings

Piano Rolls (The Reproducing Piano Roll Foundation)

Category:1891 births Category:1953 deaths Category:People from Donetsk Oblast Category:Russians in Ukraine Category:Russian composers Category:Soviet composers Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Ballet composers Category:Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery Category:Modernist composers Category:Russian Christian Scientists Category:Neoclassical composers Category:Opera composers Category:Soviet film score composers Category:Russian classical pianists Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:Stalin Prize winners Category:Russian expatriates in the United States Category:Deaths from cerebral hemorrhage Category:Disease-related deaths in the Soviet Union

ar:سيرغي بروكوفييف be:Сяргей Сяргеевіч Пракоф'еў be-x-old:Сяргей Пракоф’еў br:Sergey Prokofyev bg:Сергей Прокофиев ca:Serguei Prokófiev cs:Sergej Prokofjev cy:Sergei Prokofiev da:Sergej Prokofjev de:Sergei Sergejewitsch Prokofjew et:Sergei Prokofjev el:Σεργκέι Προκόφιεφ es:Serguéi Prokófiev eo:Sergej Prokofjev eu:Sergei Prokofiev fa:سرگئی پروکفیف fr:Sergueï Prokofiev gl:Serguei Prokofiev ko:세르게이 프로코피예프 hy:Սերգեյ Պրոկոֆև hr:Sergej Prokofjev id:Sergei Prokofiev it:Sergej Sergeevič Prokof'ev he:סרגיי פרוקופייב ka:სერგეი პროკოფიევი la:Sergius Prokof'ev lv:Sergejs Prokofjevs lt:Sergejus Prokofjevas lij:Sergej Prokofiev hu:Szergej Szergejevics Prokofjev nl:Sergej Prokofjev ja:セルゲイ・プロコフィエフ no:Sergej Prokofjev pl:Siergiej Prokofjew pt:Serguei Prokofiev ro:Serghei Prokofiev ru:Прокофьев, Сергей Сергеевич simple:Sergei Prokofiev sk:Sergej Sergejevič Prokofiev sl:Sergej Prokofjev sr:Сергеј Прокофјев sh:Sergej Prokofjev fi:Sergei Prokofjev sv:Sergej Prokofjev tr:Sergey Sergeviç Prokofyev uk:Прокоф'єв Сергій Сергійович zh:謝爾蓋·謝爾蓋耶維奇·普羅科菲耶夫

Sergei Mikhailovich Slonimsky (, born August 12, 1932, Leningrad) is a Russian and Soviet composer, pianist and musicologist.

Biography

He is a son of Soviet writer Mikhail Slonimsky and a nephew of the Russian-American composer Nicolas Slonimsky. He studied at the Musical College in Moscow from 1943 until 1950. From 1950 Slonimsky was at the Leningrad Conservatory. He studied composition under Boris Arapov, Vissarion Shebalin and Orest Yevlakhov, polyphony under Nicolai Uspensky and piano under Anna Artobolevskaya, Samari Savshinsky and Vladimir Nielsen. Slonimsky is a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. While the majority of his students are Russian, Slonimsky teaches a large percentage of the international composition students at the Conservatory from countries including: Colombia, Korea, China, Italy, Germany, Iran and the United States.

Music and style

Sergei Slonimsky composed more than a hundred pieces: 5 operas, 2 ballets, 19 symphonies and works in all genres of chamber, vocal, choral, theatre and cinema music, including ''Pesn' Volnitsy'' (''The Songs of Freedom'', for mezzo-soprano, baritone and symphony orchestra based on Russian folk songs, 1962), ''A Voice from the Chorus'', a cantata set to the poems by Alexander Blok, ''Concerto-Buffo'', Piano Concerto (''Jewish Rhapsody''), Cello Concerto, ''24 preludes and fugues'', etc.

Mostly eclectic, he has experimented with a folkloric style as well as with 12-tone techniques and new forms of notations. He has also used forms and styles of jazz and neo-romantic music.

Operas

''Virinea'', an opera in 7 scenes. Libretto by S. Tsenin after the novel by L. Seifullina (1967)

''Ioann the Terrible's vision'' Russian tragedy in 13 visions with 3 epilogues and overture. Libretto by Ya. Gordin after historical documents (1970)

''Tsar Iksion'' monodical drama after ancient myth and tragedy by Innokenty Annensky. Libretto by S. Slonimsky (1970) premiered January 31, 1981, Kuibyshev.

''Mary Stuart'', a ballad opera in 3 acts. Libretto by Y. Gordin after the novel by Stefan Zweig (1980)

''Master and Margarita'', a chamber opera in 3 acts. Libretto by Y. Dimitrin and V. Fialkovsky after the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (1970), (1985) 25'

''Hamlet'' dramma per musica in 3 acts. Libretto by Ya. Gordin and S. Slonimsky after the Shakespeare's tragedy translated by Boris Pasternak, (1990)

Ballets

''Ikarus'', a ballet in 3 acts. Libretto by Y. Slonimsky after an ancient Greek myth (1971)

''Magic nut'' ballet, libretto by Michael Shemjakin, 2005, premiere May 14, 2005, Mariinsky Theatre

References

Oxford Music Online, ''Slonimsky, Sergey Mikhaylovich'', article by Larisa Danko.

G. Abramovsky: ‘Simfoniya Sergeya Slonimskogo’, Sovetskaya simfon iya za 50 let, ed. G. Tigranov (Leningrad, 1967), 336–43

D. Pabinovich and others: ‘Na obsuzhdenii “Virinei” S. Slonimskogo’ [In discussion of Slonimsky’s ‘Vireniya’], SovM (1968), no.4, pp.31–46 [incl. contribution by Slonimsky, 43–4]

V. Smirnov: ‘“Virineya” S. Slonimskogo’, Voprosï teorii i ėstetiki muzïki, ed. L. Raaben, xi (Leningrad, 1972), 50–67

A. Stratiyevsky: ‘Kantata S. Slonimskogo “Golos iz khora”’, Blok i muzïka, ed. M.A. Elik (Leningrad and Moscow, 1972), 229–45

L. Rappoport: ‘Nekotorïye stilevïye osobennosti muzïki S. Slonimskogo i yego baleta “Ikar”’ [Certain particular stylistic features of the music of Slonimsky and of his ballet ‘Icarus’], Muzïka i zhizn′, ii (1973), 80–97

Ye. Ruch′yevskaya: ‘O metodakh pretvoreniya i vïrazitel′nom znachenii rechevoy intonatsii, na primere tvorchestva S. Slonimskogo’ [On the methods of realization and the expressive significance of speech intonation, with examples from the work of Slonimsky], Poėziya i muzïka, ed. V. Frumkin (Moscow, 1973), 137–85

A. Milka: Sergey Slonimsky, monograficheskiy ocherk [Slonimsky, a monographic sketch] (Leningrad and Moscow, 1976)

A. Klimovitsky: ‘Opernoye tvorchestvo Sergeya Slonimskogo’ [The operatic work of Slonimsky], Sovremennaya sovetskaya opera, ed. A.L. Porfir′yeva (Leningrad, 1985), 24–59

M. Rïtsareva: Kompozitor Sergey Slonimsky, monografiya (Leningrad, 1991)

L.N. Raaben: O dukhovnom renessanse v russkoy muzïke 1960–80kh godov [About the spiritual renaissance of Russian music during the 1960s–80s] (St Petersburg, 1998)

External links

Official Site of composer "Sergei Slonimsky" | Saint-Petersburg Contemporary Music Center

Interview with Sergei Slonimsky | reMusik Journal

Composer’s home page

Ovar’s Russian collection

Category:Russian Jews Category:Jewish composers and songwriters Category:Russian composers Category:Soviet composers Category:Opera composers Category:1932 births Category:Living people Category:People from Saint Petersburg Category:Academics of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory

de:Sergei Michailowitsch Slonimski ja:セルゲイ・スロニムスキー pl:Siergiej Słonimski ru:Слонимский, Сергей Михайлович uk:Слонімський Сергій Михайлович