Alexander Shenshin Explained

Alexander Alexeyevich Shenshin (Russian: Александр Алексеевич Шеншин; 1890–1944) was a Russian composer.

Shenshin studied music with Boleslav Yavorsky, Alexander Gretchaninov, Reinhold Glière, and Semyon Kruglikov from 1907 to 1915. He received a teacher's appointment to the Moscow Conservatory in 1922, and by 1940 he was a member of the Academy of Arts and the composer of the Moscow Children's Theater.^[1]

Shenshin was a member of the first Presidium of the Moscow Institute of Artistic Culture^[2] and a close friend of its president, Wassily Kandinsky, a noted painter who shared an interest in using scientific methods to further a synthesis of the arts.^[3] Kandinsky praised Shenshin's theoretical work, in particular an analysis of two parts of Liszt's composition Années de Pèlerinage: the "Sposalizio", inspired by Raphael's painting The Marriage of the Virgin, and the "Penseroso", inspired by Michelangelo's statue atop the tomb of Lorenzo II de' Medici, Duke of Urbino. Shenshin counted the notes and bars in the music and translated them into graphic form, and he measured the corresponding painting and sculpture, linking them to the same mathematical formula.^[4]

Works

Piano

• 14 Preludes (1910)^[5]
• 17 Preludes (1910)
• Op.3. 7 Preludes
• Op.10. 9 Preludes
• Op.13. Sonata No.1 (1913)
• Sonata No.2 (1926)

Voice and piano

• Song Cycle after Blok
• Song Cycle after Sologub
• Song Cycle after Lenau (trans. Shervinsky)
• Op.11. Song Cycle after Baudelaire (trans. Shervinsky)
• Op.12. 5 Songs (Shervinsky)
• Op.14–15 Song Cycles after German poets

Chamber ensemble

• Piano Quintet (1911)
• String Quartet (1943)

Orchestral

• Symphonic poem Ийола (1918)
• Summer pictures. Lyric Suite for Symphony Orchestra (for K. D. Balmont, 1929)

Opera

• O-Tao (1925)

Operetta

• Twelfth Night (1939, Moscow Operetta Theater)^[6]

Ballet

• Ancient Dances (Dionysus, 1933, Bolshoi Theatre)
• Tale of Carmen (1935)

Film

• The Ghost That Never Returns (1929)
• Tommy (1931)

Notes and References

1. Book: Vodarsky-Shiraeff, Alexandria . Russian Composers and Musicians . 120 . 1940 . 2007 . Kosta Press . 978-1-4067-6812-1.
2. Book: Rodchenko: the complete work . registration . Selim Omarovich . Khan-Magomedov . Vieri . Quilici . 1987 . 59.
3. Web site: 1922-07-03 . Correspondenz Arnold Schönberg – Wassily Kandinsky . 2009-11-05 . A good friend of mine, the young composer A. Shenshin, who also has a fine theoretical mind, is particularly devoted to you. . https://web.archive.org/web/20091130140924/http://www.schoenberg.at/4_exhibits/asc/Kandinsky/letters_e.htm . 30 November 2009 . dead .
4. Book: Kandinsky, complete writings on art . Wassily . Kandinsky . Wassily Kandinsky . Kenneth C. Lindsay, Peter Vergo . 1994 . Da Capo . 0-306-80570-7 . 474, 584, 712, 824–825.
5. Book: Sitsky, Larry . Music of the repressed Russian avant-garde, 1900-1929 . 338 . 1994 . 0-313-26709-X . Greenwood Press .
6. Book: Yury Vsevolodovich Keldysh . ru:Музыкальная энциклопедия . Russian . Music Encyclopedia . 1982 . 6 . 330 . Moscow. Entry reproduced at: Web site: ru:Шеншин А. А. . http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enc_music/8565/Шеншин . 2009-11-05 . Russian . Shenshin A. A..