Nikolai Obukhov

Russia Obukhov was born in Ol'shanka, in Kursk Governorate, Russia, about 80 km south-southeast of the city of Kursk. While still a child, his family moved to Moscow. They were attentive to his musical development, having him taught piano and violin from an early age. In 1911 he began studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and he continued at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory from 1913 to 1916, where his teachers included Maximilian Steinberg and Nikolai Tcherepnin. In 1913 Obukhov married Xenia Komarovskaya; they had two sons before they left Russia. His early music, composed after 1910, attracted sufficient attention to inspire the periodical ''Muzykal'niy Sovremennik'' to organize a concert of his compositions in 1915, and another in Saint Petersburg in 1916, in which all the music performed used a new method of music notation he had developed the preceding year. In 1918 he fled Russia with his wife and two children to escape the hardships following the Bolshevik Revolution and ensuing civil war; after a period of travel in the Crimea, by way of Constantinople they settled in Paris, a common destination for artistic and intellectual refugees due to traditional cultural ties between the two nations. Move to France In France Obukhov met and studied with Maurice Ravel, who not only showed some interest in his music but provided financial assistance for the refugee family and set Obukhov up with a publisher. While he at first lived in poverty, he was able to obtain sufficient outside help to be able to focus on composition and associated projects. These projects included the development of an electronic instrument, the croix sonore, a device similar to the theremin but built in the shape of a cross, with the electronics hidden inside a brass orb to which the cross was affixed. He worked with Pierre Dauvillier and Michel Billaudot on the construction of the device, probably at different times. They demonstrated a prototype of the croix sonore in 1926, withdrawing it to create a refined version in 1934; many of Obukhov's concurrent and subsequent works use the instrument. In 1926 Serge Koussevitzky, always a proponent of new music, particularly that of experimental Russian composers – he was long a champion of Scriabin and Stravinsky – became interested in Obukhov's massive (and incomplete) magnum opus, the liturgical cantata Kniga Zhizni (The Book of Life), and conducted a performance of its Prologue in Paris. Obukhov remained in Paris, living in a small apartment with his wife, composing and writing about his harmonic and notational system. Physically robust, he made a living as a bricklayer. One of his students, the pianist Countess Marie-Antoinette Aussenac-Broglie, intrigued by his mystical religious world-view as well as his music, mastered the art of playing the croix sonore. She became one of the most vigorous proponents both of Obukhov's music and of his unusual electronic instrument, and she also provided him with a house and financial support. His numerous manuscripts are kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. Only a few have been published. Larry Sitsky, in his 1994 Music of the repressed Russian avant-garde, 1900–1929, includes a complete alphabetical listing of the composer's works from that archive. ==Works==

Overview While Obukhov is most notorious for his gargantuan The Book of Life, he also wrote numerous miniatures, several of which have been published. His output includes works for piano; songs for voice and piano; works for electronic instrument and piano, usually the croix sonore or sometimes the ondes Martenot; chamber works for combinations of voices, instruments, and Obukhov's invented instruments; works for orchestra; and enormous oratorios or cantatas for voices, croix sonore, piano, organ, and orchestra. Most of his works include parts for a piano, and the croix sonore figures prominently in his output. In addition to the novelty of his 12-tone method, Obukhov was also one of the first composers to require singers to make sounds other than singing, including shouts, screams, whispers, whistles, and groans. An important part of his aesthetic was the idea of religious ecstasy expressed through sound, and later through the other senses. His early songs, composed in Russia, include unusual directions to the singers. The ''Berceuse d'un bienheureux au chevet d'un morte'' ("Berceuse of a blessed one at the bedside of the departed") (1918, published in 1921) includes, for detached short utterances, markings such as "suffering furiously", "whistling", "suffering, regretting with a harsh voice", "with an insane smile", "enthusiastically threatening", and "with malignancy". Original notation On 15 July 1915, according to the composer, he invented his new method of notation, which eliminated the need for accidentals by replacing noteheads with crosses for tones raised by one-half step. The symbol he used was similar to the standard symbol for the double sharp, except that it was used in place of a notehead. Only C, D, F, G, and A – the white keys on the piano with a black key adjacent to the right – could be replaced with a cross. In addition to his notehead symbol, Obukhov employed a symbol similar to a Maltese Cross to indicate barlines in his scores, and he often placed these divisions at phrase boundaries, resulting in bars of enormous length. The crosses, both in the noteheads and at the phrase divisions, were symbolic of the crucifix, and Obhukov often inserted tempo markings and rehearsal numbers in his manuscripts in his own blood, as a symbol of Christ's sacrifice. Performance on the croix sonore was a visual as well as an auditory experience. Obukhov intended the performer to be like a priestess performing a religious rite, and no public performance is known to have taken place in which the performer was male. In October 1934, Germaine Dulac made a film of Aussenac de Broglie playing the instrument, with Obukhov at the piano. This took place in Italy with the assistance of the Institute of Rome. Rather than using his full name, he signed this piece, as well as many others, as "Nicolas l'illuminé" (Nicolas the visionary). The score itself is part of the presentation: it was huge, amounting to 800 pages in the lost fair copy, and 2,000 pages in the copy in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale; some of the pages were cut and mounted in the shape of the cross, on cloth and colored paper. The score contains numerous fold-outs and collages. Some of the performance markings, in addition to the repairs, were in the composer's own blood. ==References==

File:Nicolas_Obouhow_35_h683.jpg|Nikolai Obukhov. 1930s. File:Nicolas_Obouhow_02_h396.jpg|Nikolai Obukhov. A fragment of a poster from the 1930s. File:24_1926June_large_edited.jpg|The concert poster of 3 June 1926. File:25_1926June_large_edited.jpg|The concert poster of 3 June 1926. ==External links==