Home Potato The message of the Greeks' complaint is short. The meaning of the Greeks Alexander Tikhonovich in a brief biographical encyclopedia. Interesting facts of Alexander Grechaninov

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The message of the Greeks' complaint is short. The meaning of the Greeks Alexander Tikhonovich in a brief biographical encyclopedia. Interesting facts of Alexander Grechaninov

Grechaninov Alexander Tikhonovich is an outstanding composer. Born in 1864 in a merchant family in Moscow. Having reached the 5th grade, Grechaninov left the gymnasium and entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1881. He studied piano with N.D. Kashkin and graduated from pedagogical courses in the class of V.I. Safonova (1890); he studied counterpoint for a short time with G.A. Laroche, then N.A. Hubert. In 1890, Grechaninov moved to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in the composition theory class of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov, presenting the examination cantata "Samson". Grechaninov studied with S.I. Taneyev in Moscow. Grechaninov made his debut (1894) with a notebook of five romances (published by Belyaev), and his opus 2, a bow quartet (G-dur), was then awarded at the competition of the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society. After graduating from the conservatory, Grechaninov remained in St. Petersburg and took up teaching musical activities. Grechaninov's works are notable for their technical and artistic completeness. In the works of the early period one can feel the influence of Tchaikovsky. He had a great influence on Grechaninov and Rimsky-Korsakov, in texture and in many techniques. Both influences clearly appear in the epic opera Dobrynya Nikitich (1895 - 1901). In the early 1900s, Grechaninov took a more independent path, but at the end of these years another influence appeared in his work - the French modernists (Debussy and others). These influences, however, do not obscure Grechaninov's own individuality. By their nature, his compositions are in close connection with Russian folk songwriting. His thought is always definite, clear, the presentation is distinguished by simplicity, the absence of confusion, pretentiousness, the development is logical, natural, although the author does not show any particular imagination and ingenuity in development. The style of his compositions is mostly homophonic. The author almost does not resort to contrapuntal complexities. Most clearly, his talent manifested itself in vocal music and in it in the field of chamber miniature, in which he often achieves the subtle beauty of grace and grace. Particularly distinguished are the series of his "children's songs" close to folk ones: "Ai Dudu" (6 songs, 1903), "Cockerel" (collection of Russian folk songs, 20¦, 1906), "Snowflakes" (10 songs, 1907). Grechaninov said a new word in the field of church music. Often he takes directly folk themes in chants. Another feature of his chants is their figurativeness, programming in strict accordance with the text. Some of his chants, such as, for example, "A wave of the sea" arrangement (8-voice) and the original "I Believe", where he applied the ancient technique of performing the creed in monasteries - the recitative reading of one canonarch, which is echoed by the choir - became widely known. He owns: 2 complete (13 ¦) liturgies of St. I. Chrysostom (1897, 1902), "All-Night Vigil" (10 ¦), "Passion Week" (13 ¦) and individual hymns. Grechaninov expressed his views on church music in the article: "On the spirit of church hymns" ("Moskovskie Vedomosti"). Both of his symphonies (¦ 1 - h-moll, 1894, and ¦ 2 Pastorale-a-moll, 1902 - 09) lack originality, depth of ideas, breadth of scope, organic form of interest in development, which does not exclude the general beauty of music and the interest of individual details. Grechaninov wrote 59 opus "s, 8 compositions without the meaning of opus" s and 6 unpublished compositions. Among these works are: "Elegy" (in memory of Tchaikovsky) for orchestra (manuscript, 1897), 2 bow quartets (¦ 1 - G-dur and ¦ 2 - B-dur in the manuscript), trio for piano, violin and cello (C -moll, 1903), "Sister Beatrice" legendary opera after Maeterlinck, music for Alexei Tolstoy's tragedy "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" (only "The Song of the Guslar" was printed) and for his tragedy "The Death of Ivan the Terrible", music for "The Snow Maiden" Ostrovsky, "Elochkin's Dream" - a Christmas play for children (1911), secular choirs, "In memory of those who died for freedom", "Funeral Hymn" for the choir, "Mother Russia" (Nekrasov) for performance on February 19, cantata "In Memory of February 19, 1861 G." for 4 voices, choir and orchestra to words by P. Zuev, solo vocal quartets, vocal pieces with orchestra accompaniment, string quartet ("Dead Leaves"), cello concerto, pieces for piano, violin and piano. Gr. Timofeev.

Brief biographical encyclopedia. 2012

short biography

Alexander Grechaninov was born in Kaluga, into a merchant family. Very soon his parents moved to Moscow, where he spent all his childhood and youth. Having studied at the gymnasium for only five classes, Grechaninov pretty soon quit classes and did not study anywhere for the next five years. He began to study music very late. In his autobiography, written at the age of seventy, Alexander Grechaninov recalled that he first saw the “real” piano at the age of fourteen, and until that time he knew only the orchestra and the guitar from musical instruments. The first tune he could timidly pick up on the piano "with one finger" was a litany.

“My parents were musical by nature. Mother sang not healthy folk songs, but sentimental philistine romances like "Above the silver river, on the golden sand" or "Under the evening rainy autumn". My father had a better repertoire. He often, when he was at home, liked to sing church songs, "deacon", as his mother put it. On Saturdays, all-night vigil, on Sundays, early mass were obligatory not only for them, but also for us children, when we began to grow up. I sang in the gymnasium church choir and was even a soloist. Then I began to sing in the church on the kliros (there was an amateur choir in our parish). Then another deacon-gymnasist appeared at home, and my father and I sang church songs already in two voices ... "

- (Alexander Grechaninov, "My Life")

In this short initial phrase from the composer's memoirs, almost all of his future creative life is laid down in a concentrated form. Only as a young man of seventeen, in 1881, Grechaninov entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied for another nine years. In the piano class - with Nikolai Kashkin, in the class of counterpoint - first with Laroche and Hubert, and then with Sergei Taneev, who, noticing a young student's penchant for writing, also gave him private lessons in free composition (for which he never took money ). It was during his studies in the class of Taneyev that Grechaninov composed about a dozen of his first romances, two or three of which later became very widely known and gradually made him a name and fame. More than others, the “Lullaby” to the verses of Lermontov turned out to be popular, it firmly entered the everyday life of concert and home music making, and therefore was remembered for a very long time, so even after more than half a century during the celebration 90th anniversary Grechaninov, in many articles he was called "the composer of the famous Lullaby".

“In general, he began to study music late; at the age of seventeen, he only began to feel attracted to her for the first time, and in both conservatories he was an “overdone” about ten years older than his peers in the classes. He impressed me as a very shy, timid and in general "not from that circle", from which the conservative youth usually formed. But even then I noticed that he did not suffer from modesty and had a very high opinion of his talent. Music was not easy for him, through great efforts, and therefore he appreciated in himself what that, despite the obstacles, he nevertheless mastered it.He was a very stubborn and extremely hardworking person, sometimes not devoid of pedantry and "meticulousness."

-

Like many other composers who emigrated from Soviet Russia, Grechaninov's work was taken out of the cultural and concert context for many years. Moreover, this was facilitated by the clearly Orthodox and Christian orientation of most of his work.

“The art of the Russian diaspora… Forever a bitter and sore subject. ... How long did recognition go to such outstanding Russian composers as Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Grechaninov, Medtner, Cherepnin in their own country? .. "

- (Viktor Ekimovsky, "Automonography")

Music archive

Only 59 published opuses belong to the hand of Alexander Grechaninov, as well as 8 compositions without numbers assigned to them during publication and 6 more compositions not published. However, it is difficult to say that this list is complete. Grechaninov's creative legacy is dominated by vocal and choral music. His style is mostly homophonic, devoid of complex texture and counterpoints. He wrote more than a hundred romances, dozens of a cappella choir cycles. Of particular note are the collections and cycles of his children's songs, in terms of material and intonation extremely close to folk, for example, a cycle of six songs "Ai Dudu" (1903), a collection of twenty Russian folk songs "A cock sat on the gate" (1906) and a cycle of "Snowflakes" (ten songs 1907 of the year). In this part of Grechaninov's work, he is often called the direct successor of Lyadov's methods and traditions. Among the most famous secular choral works by Grechaninov are "Funeral Hymn", "Mother Russia" (to the verses of Nekrasov) and the choir "In Memory of those who died for freedom".

"... In general, it must be admitted that the general public was won mainly, if not exclusively, by his "song creativity" - romances, which gained him incomparable popularity. To a lesser extent - his spiritual compositions, which is explained not so much by their qualities as by those spiritual censorship conditions in which Orthodox church music creativity stands in. As for his major works, symphonies and operas, they were much less fortunate, and somehow they did not please either the musicians or the general public. area Grechaninov turned out to be just old-fashioned, yesterday's art. He was the last of the Russian composers, who managed to gather a late autumn harvest from the already fading trunk of the “great era of Russian music”, the era of Tchaikovsky and the Mighty Handful.

- (Leonid Sabaneev, "About Grechaninov")

Theatrical works also occupy a considerable place among Grechaninov’s works: the operas Dobrynya Nikitich (staged in Moscow, at the Bolshoi Theater in 1903), Sister Beatrice based on the plot of Maeterlinck (Moscow, Zimin Theater, 1912) and The Marriage (based on Gogol, staged in Paris,). The composer wrote his last opera when he was already for eighty years.

Grechaninov also wrote several children's operas: "Yolochkin Dream" (1911), "Teremok" (1921), music for the dramatic performances by A. K. Tolstoy "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" (Moscow, 1898) and "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" (1899) , and also - to "The Snow Maiden" by A. N. Ostrovsky (1900). Throughout his life, Grechaninov wrote 5 symphonies (1894-1937), "Elegy" in memory of Tchaikovsky, which remained unpublished (1897), several other orchestral compositions, among which the most famous is "Demesne Liturgy" for string orchestra, 4 quartets, a number of piano pieces, and also performed many arrangements of folk songs for chamber and choral music.

“In the field of church music, he is even an innovator and, moreover, inclined towards the idea of “reconciliation of Christian churches”, a kind of “integral ecumenism”. He wrote with equal passion and purely Orthodox spiritual compositions, and in this writing there was great courage and even innovation, unusual in this area, which is one of the most immobile in the art of music. He also wrote sacred works of a free style, with the participation of the organ - an instrument that he loved very much ("Demesnaya Liturgy") and which is still does not participate in Russian church music. He also wrote "Latin" masses and "spiritual choirs" with English text. He devoted a lot of his work to this style of composition - in total, the number of his "spiritual and church" compositions is 16 ... "

- (Leonid Sabaneev, "Alexander Tikhonovich Grechaninov - on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth")

The spiritual choirs of Grechaninov, in which he sought to combine the ancient style of (znamenny) choral singing with folk songwriting (including direct folklore borrowings) and professional academic culture, are currently the most famous. Many of Grechaninov's choirs have firmly entered into church life and concert choral practice, his eight-voice arrangement of "Sea Wave" and "I Believe" of his own composition is especially famous. In addition, Grechaninov owns regularly performed cycles of church hymns (“ Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom" in 1897 and " All-Night Vigil" in 1902), as well as " Passion Week" and many individual choral numbers, among the most famous of them belongs, perhaps, a short prayer " It is worthy to eat".

Of particular note is the fact that during the Parisian period of his emigration, Grechaninov, already a very old man, composed several Catholic masses and motets, and during his New York life, also Protestant choirs with texts in English.

"Fate sent him a long life, which compensated for what he lost by late entering the musical path. He generally had a long life. Calm, quiet, loving nature and children, peacefully religious, without searching either in religion or in music - he embodied a different face of Russia, not the broken and restless face of Dostoevsky, Bely, Scriabin, but a benign calming, enlightened and humble. Usually, behind Dostoevsky's Russia, they forget that there was another Russia, and it is possible that it still exists, and that it is not known which of them is more genuine. I think that quantitatively - after all, Grechaninov's Russia.

- (Leonid Sabaneev, "About Grechaninov")

Alexander Tikhonovich Grechaninov(October 13, Kaluga - January 3, New York) - Russian academic composer, student of Rimsky-Korsakov, best known for his choral works and arrangements of folk songs. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1925).

Stylistically, it is a late successor of the national soil aesthetics of the Mighty Handful. Creativity Grechaninov attributed to the transitional stage in the history of Russian music. His early compositions belong to the romantic tradition, and his later works show the influence of I. F. Stravinsky and S. S. Prokofiev. [ ]

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Alexander Grechaninov was born in Kaluga, into a merchant family. Very soon his parents moved to Moscow, where he spent all his childhood and youth. Having studied at the gymnasium for only five classes, Grechaninov pretty soon quit classes and did not study anywhere for the next five years. He began to study music very late. In his autobiography, written at the age of seventy, Alexander Grechaninov recalled that he first saw the “real” piano at the age of fourteen, and until that time he knew only the orchestra and the guitar from musical instruments. The first tune he could timidly pick up on the piano "with one finger" was a litany.

My parents were musical by nature. Mother sang not healthy folk songs, but sentimental philistine romances like "Above the silver river, on the golden sand" or "Under the evening of rainy autumn". My father had a better repertoire. He often, when he was at home, liked to sing church songs, "deacon", as his mother put it. On Saturdays, all-night vigil, on Sundays, early mass were obligatory not only for them, but also for us children, when we began to grow up. I sang in the gymnasium church choir and was even a soloist. Then I began to sing in the church on the kliros (there was an amateur choir in our parish). Then another deacon-gymnasist appeared at home, and my father and I sang church songs already in two voices ...

- (Alexander Grechaninov, "My Life")

In this short initial phrase from the composer's memoirs, almost all of his future creative life is laid down in a concentrated form. Only as a young man of seventeen, in 1881, Grechaninov entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied for another nine years. In the piano class - with Nikolai Kashkin, in the class of counterpoint - first with Laroche and Hubert, and then with Sergey Taneev, who, having noticed a penchant for writing in a young student, also gave him private lessons in free composition (for which he never took money ). It was during his studies in the class of Taneyev that Grechaninov composed about a dozen of his first romances, two or three of which later became very widely known and gradually made him a name and fame. More than others, the “Lullaby” to the verses of Lermontov turned out to be popular, it firmly entered the everyday life of concert and home music making, and therefore was remembered for a very long time, so even more than half a century later, during the celebration 90th anniversary Grechaninov, in many articles he was called "the composer of the famous Lullaby".

In general, he began to study music late; At the age of seventeen, he only began to feel attracted to her for the first time, and in both conservatories he was an "overdose" ten years older than his classmates. He impressed me as a very shy, timid person and, in general, “not from the circle” from which the conservative youth usually formed. But even then I noticed that he did not suffer from modesty and had a very high opinion of his talent. Music was given to him not easily, through great efforts, and therefore he appreciated in himself that, despite the obstacles, he nevertheless mastered it. He was a very stubborn and extremely industrious person, sometimes not devoid of pedantry and "meticulousness".
-

Nevertheless, a cool attitude towards Scriabin's work and the almost complete absence of personal contact did not prevent Grechaninov, as a deeply Orthodox person, from actively participating in the memorial service and funeral after the sudden death of Scriabin in the spring of 1915.
- (Grechaninov A. T. "My Life". New York, 1954).

After the revolution of 1917, Alexander Grechaninov gave concerts for several years as a conductor and pianist, and also continued to work with children's choirs. However, every year the aging composer found it harder and harder to live among the disorderly and destroyed by the revolution and the civil war of the republic.

“... In the era of the “youth of Soviet power”, it was hard for him. Politically, he was naive as a child. Just as he rejoiced that the empress sang his romances, so at the first "thunders of the revolution" he immediately composed the anthem of free Russia and was just as glad that it was performed with success. The success of his music- that's what interested him. At the time when the infiltration of Russian musicians abroad began - and this began almost simultaneously with the establishment of Soviet power - he somehow got stuck for a while: Rachmaninov, Medtner, Cherepnin and Prokofiev managed to escape earlier. Once, I remember, I met him on the street and asked him why he did not try, like many others, to get a business trip or just travel abroad. He looked at me displeasedly and said - I remember these words well: - Russia is my mother. She is now seriously ill. How can I leave my mother at this moment! I will never leave her.
A week later, I learned that he had gone abroad, having started troubles more than two months ago.
- (Leonid Sabaneev, "About Grechaninov")

In 1925, already at the age of sixty, Alexander Grechaninov emigrated to Europe with his second family. There, for more than ten years, he lived in Paris, and with the outbreak of war, in 1939, he moved to New York.
Like many other composers who emigrated from Soviet Russia, Grechaninov's work was taken out of the cultural and concert context for many years. Moreover, this was facilitated by the clearly Orthodox and Christian orientation of most of his work.

Music archive

Only 59 published opuses belong to the hand of Alexander Grechaninov, as well as 8 compositions without numbers assigned to them during publication and 6 more compositions not published. However, it is difficult to say that this list is complete. Grechaninov's creative legacy is dominated by vocal and choral music. His style is mostly homophonic, devoid of complex texture and counterpoints. He wrote more than a hundred romances, dozens of a cappella choir cycles. Of particular note are the collections and cycles of his children's songs, in terms of material and intonation extremely close to folk, for example, a cycle of six songs "Ai Dudu" (1903), a collection of twenty Russian folk songs "A cock was sitting on the gate" (1906) and a cycle of "Snowflakes" (ten songs 1907 of the year). In this part of Grechaninov's work, he is often called the direct successor of Lyadov's methods and traditions. Among the most famous secular choral works by Grechaninov are "Funeral Anthem", "Mother Russia" (to verses by Nekrasov) and the choir "In Memory of Those Who Died for Freedom".

... In general, it must be admitted that the general public was won mainly, if not exclusively, by his "song creativity" - romances, which gained him incomparable popularity. To a lesser extent - his spiritual compositions, which is explained not so much by their qualities, but by those spiritually censorship conditions in which Orthodox church music creativity stands. As for his major works, symphonies and operas, they were much less fortunate, and somehow they did not please either the musicians or the general public. And for those and for others in this area, Grechaninov turned out to be just an old-fashioned, yesterday's day of art. He was the last of the Russian composers, who managed to gather a late autumn harvest from the already fading trunk of the “great era of Russian music”, the era of Tchaikovsky and the Mighty Handful.
- (Leonid Sabaneev, "About Grechaninov")

Theatrical works also occupy a considerable place among Grechaninov’s works: the operas Dobrynya Nikitich (staged in Moscow, at the Bolshoi Theater in 1903), Sister Beatrice based on the plot of Maeterlinck (Moscow, Zimina Theater, 1912) and Marriage (based on Gogol, staged in Paris, 1950). The composer wrote his last opera when he was already for eighty years.
Grechaninov also wrote several children's operas: "Yolochkin Dream" (), "Teremok" (), music for the dramatic performances of A. K. Tolstoy "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" (Moscow,) and "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" (), and also - to "The Snow Maiden" by A. N. Ostrovsky (). Over the course of his life, Grechaninov wrote 5 symphonies (-), "Elegy" in memory of Tchaikovsky, which remained unpublished (1897), several other orchestral compositions, among which the most famous is "Demesnaya Liturgy" for string orchestra, 4 quartets, a number of piano pieces, and also performed many arrangements of folk songs for chamber and choral music-making.

“In the field of church music, he is even an innovator and, moreover, inclined towards the idea of “reconciliation of Christian churches”, a kind of “integral ecumenism”. He wrote with equal passion and purely Orthodox spiritual compositions, and in this writing there was great courage and even innovation, unusual in this area, which is one of the most immobile in the art of music. He also wrote sacred works of a free style, with the participation of the organ - an instrument that he loved very much ("Demesnaya Liturgy") and which is still does not participate in Russian church music. He also wrote "Latin" masses and "spiritual choirs" with English text. He devoted a lot of his work to this style of composition - in total, the number of his "spiritual and church" compositions is 16 ... "
- (Leonid Sabaneev, "Alexander Tikhonovich Grechaninov - on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth")

The spiritual choirs of Grechaninov, in which he sought to combine the ancient style of (znamenny) choral singing with folk songwriting (including direct folklore borrowings) and professional academic culture, are currently the most famous. Many of Grechaninov's choirs have firmly entered into church life and concert choral practice, his eight-voice arrangement of "Sea Wave" and "I Believe" of his own composition is especially famous. In addition, Grechaninov owns regularly performed cycles of church hymns (“Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” in 1897 and “All-Night Vigil” in 1912), as well as “Passion Week” and many individual choral numbers, among the most famous of them belongs, perhaps, a short prayer

(October 13 (25), 1864, Kaluga - January 3, 1956, New York) - Russian academic composer, student of Rimsky-Korsakov, best known for his choral works and arrangements of folk songs. Stylistically, it is a late successor of the national soil aesthetics of the Mighty Handful.
Biography
Alexander Grechaninov was born in Kaluga into a family of merchants. Very soon his parents moved to Moscow, where he spent all his childhood and youth. After studying at the gymnasium for only five classes, Grechaninov pretty soon quit classes and did not study anywhere for the next five years. He began to study music very late. In his autobiography, written at the age of seventy, Alexander Grechaninov recalled that he first saw the “real” pianos at the age of fourteen, and from musical instruments until then he knew only the orchestra and guitar. The first melody he could timidly pick up on the piano with "one finger" was a litany.
“My parents were musical by nature. Mother sang not healthy folk songs, sentimental petty-bourgeois romances like "Above the silver river, on the golden sand" or "Under the evening rainy autumn". My father had a better repertoire. He often, when he was at home, liked to sing church songs, "deacon", as his mother put it. On Saturdays all-night, on Sundays early dinners were obligatory not only for them, but also for us children, when we began to grow up. I sang in the gymnasium church choir and was even a soloist. Then I began to sing in the nakliros church (there was an amateur choir in our parish). Then another deacon-gymnasist appeared at home, and my father and I sang church songs already in two voices ... "
- (Alexander Grechaninov, "My Life")
In this short initial phrase from the composer's memoirs, almost all of his future creative life is laid down in a concentrated form. Only as a young man of seventeen, in 1881, Grechaninov entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied for another nine years. In the piano class - with Nikolai Kashkin, in the class of counterpoint - first with Larosha and Hubert, and then with Sergei Taneyev, who, noticing a young student's inclination for writing, also gave him private lessons in free composition (for which he never took money). It was during his studies in the class of Taneyev that Grechaninov composed about a dozen of his first romances, two or three of which later became very widely known and gradually made him a name and fame. More than others, the “Lullaby” to Lermontov’s verses turned out to be popular, it firmly entered the everyday life of concert and home music making, and therefore was remembered for a very long time, so even after more than half a century during the celebration 90th anniversary Grechaninov, in many articles he was called "the composer of the famous Lullaby".
In 1890, Grechaninov graduated from the pedagogical courses of the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Vasily Safonov, the then director - and to continue his studies in composition - moved to St. Petersburg, where the school of teaching free composition was much more developed. He entered the class of Rimsky-Korsakov, then the most influential and authoritative composer and teacher. During the three years of his studies, Grechaninov developed an even and friendly relationship with his professor, but warm human contact did not work out, and he also never entered the number of “favorite students”. Feeling sincere admiration for his teacher, Grechaninov was offended by him for his constant "coldness and distance" and regretted his failed friendship with the venerable professor until the end of his life. Perhaps this, in the end, was one of the reasons for returning to Moscow. After graduating from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1893 in the composition class of Rimsky-Korsakov with the examination cantata "Samson", Grechaninov returned to Moscow two years later, where he taught at a music school Gnessin sisters, and later led the children's choir in a private school T. L. Berkman.

Alexander Grechaninov - p Russian composer, student of Rimsky-Korsakov, best known for his choral works and adaptations of folk songs. Stylistically, it is a late successor of the national aesthetics of the Mighty Handful.

Alexander Grechaninov was born in Kaluga, into a merchant family. Very soon his parents moved to Moscow, where he spent all his childhood and youth. Having studied at the gymnasium for only five classes, Grechaninov pretty soon quit classes and did not study anywhere for the next five years. He began to study music very late. In his autobiography, Alexander Grechaninov recalled that he first saw the “real” piano at the age of fourteen, and until that time he knew only the orchestra and the guitar from musical instruments. The first melody he could timidly pick up on the piano with "one finger" was a litany.

“My parents were musical by nature. Mother sang sentimental petty-bourgeois romances like "Over the Silver River, on the Golden Sand" or "In the Evening of Rainy Autumn." My father had a better repertoire. He often, when he was at home, liked to sing church songs, "deacon", as his mother used to say. Vigil on Saturdays, Sundays early mass were obligatory not only for them, but also for us children, when we began to grow up. I sang in the gymnasium church choir and was even a soloist. Then I began to sing in the church on the kliros. Then another deacon-gymnasist appeared at home, and my father and I sang church songs already in two voices ... "
Only as a young man of seventeen, in 1881, Grechaninov entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied for another nine years.

Complaint.

Sergei Taneyev, noticing a penchant for writing in a young student, also gave him private lessons in free writing (for which he never took money). It was during his studies in the class of Taneyev that Grechaninov composed about a dozen of his first romances, two or three of which later became very widely known and gradually made up his name. More than others, the "Lullaby" on the verses of Lermontov turned out to be popular.
In 1890, Grechaninov completed the pedagogical courses of the Moscow Conservatory in the class of Vasily Safonov, then director. And to continue studying composition, he moved to St. Petersburg, where the school of teaching free composition was much more developed. He entered the class of Rimsky-Korsakov, then the most influential and authoritative composer and teacher.
In the early compositions of Grechaninov, the influence of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky, whose works he was strongly fascinated from childhood, is easily detected.
“In general, Grechaninov began to study music late; in both conservatories he was an "overstar" ten years older than his classmates. Music was not easy for him, but through great effort he mastered it. He was a very stubborn and extremely hardworking person, sometimes not without pedantry and “meticulousness,” recall the composer’s relatives.
Nikitich.

“Having tried my hand at chamber and symphonic styles, I began to think about opera. In those days, I was very fond of the ancient Russian epic and decided that I would write an opera based on some epic. He stopped at the epic about Dobryn Nikitich. Repeatedly I saw then V.V. Stasov, who served in the library, and consulted with him regarding plans for the future libretto.
As a result, the opera met with a favorable reception from Rimsky-Korsakov, who praised the good work and wrote to Grechaninov that he "rejoices at the opera and considers it a good contribution to Russian opera music." The opera staged in 1903 at the Bolshoi Theater was received calmly and did not have much resonance due to its too obvious traditionalism.
In addition to opera, he was also interested in spiritual music, he wrote music for children, an area that was still completely unexplored and in which almost nothing had been done. Many of Grechaninov's choirs have firmly entered into church life and concert choral practice.
Rassion Week op.58-07of Thy mystical Sapper.

Since 1910, he began to perform in concerts, mainly accompanying singers who performed his own songs and romances. However, not all of Grechaninov's creative biography went equally smoothly. For example, his second opera, Sister Beatrice, staged in 1912 at a private opera, became notorious. Shortly after the successful premiere, the performance was condemned and banned from performance by spiritual censorship for non-canonical coverage of biblical stories. The formal reason for the ban was the appearance on stage of the singing Blessed Virgin Mary.
Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor.

The charm of Grechaninov's style is in the simplicity of the musical feeling, in the simple and sincere emotions that have not yet been expressed in music, which his predecessors - Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov - did not have time to embody. Among the Moscow musicians of the early twentieth century, Grechaninov occupied the place of a moderate traditionalist, and this moderation was more likely associated with the natural sociability and gentleness of his character.
Grechaninov accepted the February Revolution with the enthusiasm characteristic of most of the Russian intelligentsia. Perhaps it is impossible to say about this subject more vividly and more clearly than he himself did, fifteen years after the events described:
“The news of the February Revolution was received in Moscow with great enthusiasm. The people poured into the streets, everyone has red flowers in their buttonholes, and people enthusiastically embrace, with tears in their eyes from happiness ... I rush home, and in half an hour the music for the anthem was already ready, but the words? The first two lines: "Long live Russia, the Free Country" ... I took from Sologub, I did not like what followed. How to be? I'm calling Balmont. He immediately comes to me, and in a few minutes the text of the anthem is ready. I'm going to the Kuznetsky Most to the publishing house of A. Gutheil.
Wasting no time, he immediately went to the music printer, and by the middle of the next day, the window of A. Gutheil's shop was already decorated with the new "Hymn of Free Russia". All proceeds from the sale go to the released "political prisoners". For a short time, all the theaters were closed, and when they opened, at the very first performance after the resumption of work at the Bolshoi Theater, the anthem under the direction of E. Cooper was performed by the choir and orchestra along with the Marseillaise. The easily perceived melody and beautiful lyrics made the anthem popular not only in Russia, but also abroad. In America, Kurt Schindler translated the text into English, and it quickly gained the same, if not more, popularity than in Russia. She held on for a long time even after there was no longer any freedom in Russia ...
After the revolution of 1917, Alexander Grechaninov performed for several years as a conductor and pianist, and also continued to work with children's choirs. However, every year it became harder and harder for the aging composer to live in a disorderly and ruined by revolution and civil war republic: “Russia is my mother. She is now seriously ill...
As a result, like many other composers, including Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Medtner, Grechaninov emigrated abroad.
In 1925, already a sixty-year-old man, Alexander Grechaninov, together with his second family, left for Europe. There, for more than ten years, he lived in Paris, and with the outbreak of war, in 1939, he moved to New York.
Like the work of many other composers who emigrated from Soviet Russia, Grechaninov's work was taken out of the cultural and concert context for many years. Moreover, this was facilitated by the clearly Orthodox and Christian orientation of most of his works.

Symphony No. 3

The art of the Russian diaspora... Forever a bitter and painful topic... How long did it take for such outstanding Russian composers as Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Grechaninov, Medtner, Cherepnin to be recognized in their own country?
In 1934, Grechaninov wrote a book of memoirs, My Musical Life, published in Paris, and 20 years later in New York.
Alexander Grechaninov is buried at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Cemetery in Jackson (Cassville), New Jersey, USA.
The hand of Alexander Grechaninov owns only 59 published opuses, as well as 8 compositions without numbers assigned to them during publication, and 6 more unpublished compositions. However, it is difficult to say that this list is complete.
Grechaninov's creative legacy is dominated by vocal and choral music. He wrote more than a hundred romances, dozens of cycles of choirs a capella. Especially noteworthy are the collections and cycles of his children's songs, which are extremely close to folk songs in terms of material and intonation.
A significant place among Grechaninov's works is also occupied by theatrical works: the operas Dobrynya Nikitich, Sister Beatrice and The Marriage after Gogol. The composer wrote his last opera when he was over eighty years old.
Grechaninov also wrote several children's operas: "Yolochkin's Dream", "Teremok", music for dramatic performances. Throughout his life, Grechaninov wrote 5 symphonies "Elegy" in memory of Tchaikovsky, several other orchestral compositions.