Alyabyev, Alexander (EN)

Alyabyev Alexander Aleksandrovich, *15(4) August 1787 Tobolsk (Siberia), †6 March (22 February) 1851 Moscow, Russian composer. He lived in St. Petersburg from 1796, where his father was a senior official at the tsar’s court. In 1801, Alyabyev started working at the Mining Office and continued this job after moving to Moscow in 1804.

There is no detailed data about Alyabyev’s studies; it is only known that he studied in 1803 under J.H. Müller in St. Petersburg. Later, in 1810–11, he published his first compositions in Moscow: French Romance for voice and piano, 2 waltzes and Polonaise in E-flat major for piano, dedicated to J. Field. He joined the army in 1812 and took part in the Napoleonic Wars. However, in 1823, he abandoned military service, settled in Moscow and devoted himself to composing. In 1825, he was wrongly accused of involuntary manslaughter, tried and imprisoned, and as a result, in 1827, sentenced to exile, during which he first lived in Tobolsk (1828–32), then in the Caucasus (1833) and finally in Orenburg (1833–34). For several years, he lived in the Moscow Governorate, then, in 1842, he found himself in exile again in Kolomna. In 1843, he was granted permission to return to Moscow, where he spent the last years of his life.

Views on Alyabyev’s work changed, especially after B. Dobrokhotov’s monograph was published in print (1966), which fully took into account the composer’s archive discovered after the last war. Alyabyev, known mainly as an author of the well-known Nightingale and vocal romances of a salon type, was undoubtedly a versatile composer: he made a valuable contribution to Russian symphonic and chamber music and was a pioneer in the field of secular choral music in Russia.

However, songs and operas were the main domain of Alyabyev’s work. There is an evolution visible in his vocal lyricism from simple, sentimental form (4 romances to lyrics by V. Zhukovsky, ca. 1818) through works representing the type of the so-called Russian song (Solovey, lyrics by A. Delvig, Moscow 1827, instrumental arrangement by Glinka, Liszt, H. Vieuxtemps, and others), to songs composed at the exile – with a deeper musical expression, expanded in terms of form (ballad, monologue), harmonic and textural means (for example Irtysh, Grave, Wieczernyj zwon) – and songs from the last period of creativity with an accusatory social message (Niszczaja, Izba, Kabak, Deriewiensky storozh), which precede similar works by A. Dargomyzhsky and M. Mussorgsky.

He began his opera work first with the so-called opera-vaudevilles, similar in type to F. Boieldieu’s comic operas, then turned towards romantic opera (Edwin and Oskar, Volshebnaya Noch, Buria). In his last works (The Mermaid and the Fisherman, Ammalat-Bek), the composer created the foundations of lyrical drama, later developed by A. Dargomyzhsky.

Alabyev’s credit undoubtedly goes to the discovery of Caucasian and Central Asian folklore for Russian music. He used it in vocal works (2 Circassian Songs, Georgian Song, Kabardian Song), piano works (Caucasian Mazurkas, Asian Songs with French Frame, Moscow 1834) and in the opera Ammalat-Bek. He left records of collected Tatar, Bashkir, and Turkmen songs; in addition, with M. Maksimovich, he published one of the first collections of this kind: Voices of Ukrainian Songs in an arrangement for voice and piano (Moscow 1834, 2^nd ed. 1961).

Literature: G.N. Timofiejew Aleksandr Aleksandrowicz Alabjew. Oczerki żyzni i tworczestwa, Moscow 1912; B.S. Sztejnpress Stranicy iz żyzni A.A. Alabjewa, Moscow 1956; B.S. Sztejnpress Aleksandr Aleksandrowicz Alabjew w izgnanii, Moscow 1959; B.W. Dobrochotow Aleksandr Aleksandrowicz Alabjew. Kamiemo-instrumientalnoje tworczestwo, Moscow 1948; B.W. Dobrochotow Aleksandr Alabjew. Tworczeskij put’, Moscow 1966; W.J. Trainin Aleksandr Aleksandrowicz Alabjew, Leningrad 1969; M. Owczinnikow Tworcy russkogo romansa, Moscow 1988.