Tcherepnin, Alexander (EN)

Tcherepnin Alexander Nikolayevich, *8 January 1899 Saint Petersburg, †29 September 1977 Paris, Nikolai’s son, a Russian composer and pianist. Surrounded by professionals and music lovers from childhood, he began composing long before undertaking any systematic musical studies (Tcherepnin’s childhood piano works were published in Paris in the 1920s, including the collection Bagatelles). Of particular importance to the development of Tcherepnin’s musical abilities were his parents’ contacts with Prokofiev; the cult of this composer prevailing in the family home left its mark on Tcherepnin’s work. Tcherepnin began his systematic musical education with L. Kashperova; his studies at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, begun in 1917, were interrupted after a few months by the outbreak of the October Revolution. Tcherepnin then moved with his father to Tbilisi, where he continued his studies (including with T. Ter-Stepanova) and where he soon made his debut as a pianist. In 1921, he left Russia and settled in Paris. Here he resumed his musical studies with I. Philippe (piano) and P. Vidal (composition). In 1922, with a recital in London, he began a piano career that would last until his later years; he usually performed his own compositions. Tcherepnin’s European fame as a composer dates back to the 1923 production of the ballet Ajanta’s Frescoes at London’s Covent Garden Theatre, featuring Anna Pavlova. In 1927, the première of Tcherepnin’s First Symphony caused a stir in Paris. Between 1934 and 1937, Tcherepnin travelled twice to China and Japan, where he was active, among other things, as a teacher and organiser of musical life; he founded a company publishing works by young Japanese and Chinese composers; it was also during this time that he met the Chinese pianist Lee Hsien Ming, whom he subsequently married. From 1949 to 1969, he was a professor of composition and piano at DePaul University in Chicago, where he settled in 1950. In 1958, he became a US citizen. In 1967, he performed in Moscow, Leningrad, and Tbilisi. From 1969, he alternated between Paris and New York, continuing to give concerts.

Tcherepnin’s earliest works, primarily for piano (Sonata No. 1, Concerto No. 1), bear clear traces of the influence of early Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff. In the 1920s, Tcherepnin’s name was associated with the composing group known as the École de Paris (alongside B. Martinů, M. Mihalovici, T. Harsányi, and A. Honegger, among others). These connections were reflected in the subordination of Tcherepnin’s music to an aesthetic of moderation and simplicity, clarity and brevity of expression. At the same time, Tcherepnin departed from the neoclassical model of sound represented by this group, as exemplified by his Symphony No. 1 (1927), the second movement of which is written exclusively for percussion and string instruments, struck on the resonant body with a bow shaft. It was also during this period that Tcherepnin’s individual style began to take shape, supported by original concepts in the organisation of sound material and polyphonic texture. The nine-note scale he constructed (C, D-flat, E-flat, E, F, G, A-flat, A, B) also became a source of new ideas for building harmonies and their sequences; interesting harmonic solutions to this specifically modal concept can be observed especially in his late scores. Tcherepnin also created the “interpunct” technique (“punctus inter punctum”), in which another pair of contrapuntal lines is inserted between two contrapuntally related voices placed in distant registers. This technique enabled the use of unconventionally complex rhythmic solutions, reminiscent of fourteenth-century taleae. In tonality, Tcherepnin often combined elements of the major-minor system with elements of the pentatonic scale, which can be attributed to the fact that an important place in his work was occupied by inspiration from the music and poetry of the East, especially from China, Japan, Georgia and Arab countries, revealed, among others, in The Lost Flute, the opera The Farmer and the Nymph and in the Piano Concerto No. 4.

Literature: Aleksandr Tcherepnin, A Short Autobiography, “Tempo” no. 130, 1979, Rasskazyvaet A. Cherepnin, ed. G. Khaimovskii, “Sovetskaya Muzyka” XXXI, 1967, no. 8, W. Reich, A. Tcherepnin, Bonn 1959, 2nd ed. 1970, N. Slonimsky, Alexander Tcherepnin, Septuagenarian, “Tempo” no. 87, 1968/69, E. A. Arias, A. Tcherepnin: A Bio-Bibliography, “Bio-Bibliography in Music” VIII, Westport (Connecticut), 1989, S. Alzestadt, Fortepiannye kontserty A. N. Cherepnina. Cherty stilei, St. Petersburg, 1994, G. Wuellner, The Piano Etudes of A. Tcherepnin, “The Journal of the American Liszt Society” 1994, no. 35