Alexander Tcherepnin: The Saga of a Russian Emigré Composer (review)

Although not as well known as some of his contemporaries, Alexander Nikolaevich Tcherepnin (1899–1977) built an impressive life for himself as a composer, pianist, and teacher. His career spanned almost three quarters of a century, spread over three continents, and brought him into contact with some of the most fascinating creative personalities of the age. Yet as an emigré, Tcherepnin until recently was shunned in his native Russia, and despite spending decades of his creative life in New York and Chicago he has been, for reasons unknown, largely ignored in this country as well. When Ludmila Korabelnikova's book was published in 1999 (Aleksandr Cherepnin: dolgoe stranstvie [Alexander Tcherepnin: A Long Journey, Moscow: Yazyki Russkoi Kul'tury, 1999]), it became the first, groundbreaking Tcherepnin study in Russian. Its translation by Anna Winestein, as the title under review, has the distinction of being the inaugural biography of the composer in the English language. It is fitting, perhaps, that this study was penned by a Russian scholar, for throughout his life Alexander Tcherepnin identified with his home country, from which he was torn by wars and revolutions. The preferred language for this polyglot was evidently Russian, and his musical style, however modern and idiosyncratic, was by his own admission rooted in the tradition of the St. Petersburg compositional school, just as it was true of his models Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Prior to Korabelnikova's work, the most important publications on Tcherepnin have been a bio-bibliography by Enrique Arias (Alexander Tcherepnin: A Bio-Bibliography [New York: Greenwood, 1989]) and a concise German-language biography by the composer's friend Willy Reich (Alexander Tcherepnin [Bonn: Belaieff, 1970]). As non-Russian speakers, both authors were unable to make use of the Russian-language primary sources preserved in the archives and private collections of Moscow, Tbilisi, Paris, Basel, and New York. Access to these materials is essential to illuminating Tcherepnin's life, aesthetic views, and compositional processes, as well as to understanding his status as an emigré and his relationship with the Russian musical diaspora. Korabelnikova's language skills, her training and experience as an archivist, and her personal contacts with the Tcherepnin family put her in a unique position among current scholars to address the issue of Tcherepnin's "Russianness." It is both a central focus and a major strength of the present volume, re-titled in its English version as Alexander Tcherepnin: The Saga of a Russian Emigré Composer.

Korabelnikova's protagonist is unusual even by twentieth-century standards in his obsessively self-reflective nature. The most minute aspects of Tcherepnin's life are covered in a voluminous correspondence with relatives and friends. From his earliest years, he kept detailed diaries, almost all of them preserved; penned multiple autobiographies in varied lengths and languages; and wrote several analytical accounts of his compositional theories that he started to formulate as a teenager, and that informed his work from then on. In keeping with the "historical and documentary" nature of her book (p. 172), the author frequently takes a step back to allow the documentary evidence—letters, diaries, memoirs, and analytical perspectives by the composer and those close to him—to speak for itself. The appendices include a reprint of a short autobiography Tcherepnin wrote in 1964 (previously published as "A Short Auto biography," Tempo 130 [September 1979]: 12–18), and his previously unpublished 1962 English-language theoretical treatise, "Basic Elements of My Musical Language," the manuscript of which was donated by the composer's son Ivan to the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow. A unique feature of the present book is its heavy reliance on the so-called Tcherepnin Compendium—a treasure trove of primary and secondary sources compiled by the composer's widow, his students, colleagues, friends, and the members of the Tcherepnin Society of America...