Ivan Wyschnegradsky - Music Career

Music Career

The …first public performance of Wyschnegradsky's Andante religioso and funebre was performed at the theatre Pavlovsk under the direction of Aslanov, in the presence of César Cui. At the end of the concert, Cui congratulated him "for his moderation".

In 1916, Wyschnegradsky composed The Day of the Brahma, which will become later The Day of the Existence, for narrator, full orchestra and mixed chorus ad libitum. In 1917, the day before the revolution, Wyschnegradsky …completed his law studies. In November, his father died. Ivan adhered to the ideals of the Russian Revolution and composed The Red Gospel, opus 8. In 1919, he elaborated on his first project on the notation of twelfth-tones.

The following year, Wyschnegradsky and his family moved to Paris. The Pleyel house manufactured a pneumatic-transmission piano for him which did not satisfy him entirely (1921). Wyschnegrasky wished to build a true quarter-tone piano and thought that he can do it only in Germany. He ordered from Straube a Möllendorf-type quarter-tone harmonium. In 1922 and 1923, he went to several revivals in Germany where he meets R. Stein, A. Haba, J. Mager and W. Möllendorf. The following year, he married Hélène Benois who gave him a son, Dimitri (1924, now Dimitri Vichney), but the union was broken in 1926, and they divorced.

He ordered a quarter-tone piano from Foerster (1927). The Vandelle quartet performed the Prelude and Fugue, opus 15. In 1929, the piano made by Foerster arrived in Paris. He met Lucille Markov (Gayden), his future wife. He also published the Manual of Quarter-tone Harmony (1932). In 1934, he composed Twenty-four preludes in all the tones of the chromatic scale diatonicized with thirteen sounds, for two pianos in quarter tones (1934).

On January 25, 1937, he attended the fir…st concert devoted entirely to his music. He met Olivier Messiaen, and later Henri Dutilleux and Claude Ballif. He recorded the slow movement of the Symphony Thus spoke Zarathustra for four pianos in quarter tones.

In 1942, Wyschnegradsky was arrested by the Germans and transferred to Compiègne, where he remained two months. His wife, of American nationality, was also arrested and transferred to Vittel.

On November 11, 1945, Gisèle Peyron and Mady Sauvageot, sopranos, Lili Fabrègue, viola, Yvette Grimaud, Yvonne Loriod, Pierre Boulez and Serge Nigg, pianos gave a concert of works of Wyschnegradsky. Contracting tuberculosis, he rested at the sanatorium of St. Martin-du-Tertre. In 1947, André Souris gave the première in Belgium of the Symphony Thus spoke Zarathustra for four pianos in Brussels. In 1951, Pierre Boulez, Yvette Grimaud, Claude Helffer and Ina Marika gave a performance of the Second symphonic fragment, opus 24 in Paris. The Revue Musicale published a special issue on Ivan Wyschnegradsky and Nicolas Obouhow.

In 1977, Martine Joste organized a concert at Radio France. In Canada, Bruce Mather did the same. In 1978, Alexandre Myrat, at the head of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, performs the Day of Existence. Ivan Wyschnegradsky is invited by the DAAD as composer-in-residence at Berlin. He cannot go there for reasons of health. Radio-France commissions from him a String trio.

Wyschnegradsky died on September 29, 1979, at 86 years old.