Leonid Hrabovsky [Grabovsky], composer.

Leonid Hrabovsky . Ukrainian. Born in Kiev, 28 January 1935. Educated at University of Kiev, 1951-6; Kiev Conservatory (composition under Lev Revutzky and Boris Lyatoshinsky), 1954-9, diploma, 1959, postgraduate studies 1959-62. Teacher, Kiev Conservatory, 1961-3, 1966-8; freelance composer, 1969-81; settled in Moscow, 1982; translator, researcher, editor of journal Sovietskaya Muzyka, from 1982. Settled in New York, 1990. Mailing address: 1405 71st Street, #A-2, Brooklyn, NY 11228-1747, U.S.A.

Publishers: Muzyka, Moscow; Muzychna Ukraina, Kiev; Hans Sikorsky, Hamburg.

SYMPHONIES/ORCHESTRAL: Symphonic Frescoes on a Theme of Boris Prorokov Op. 10, 1961. Four Inventions (transcription of Op. 11a for chamber orchestra), 1965. Small Chamber Music No.1 (chamber strings, 15 players), 1966. Homoeomorphy IV, 1970 Small Chamber Music No.2 (oboe, harp, 12 strings), 1971. Meditation and Pathetic Recitative (string orchestra), 1972. Five Character Pieces (transcription of Op. 11b for orchestra), 1975. On St. John's Eve (symphony legend after Gogol), 1976

CHAMBER/INSTRUMENTAL: Sonata Op.8 (unaccompanied violin), 1959. Four Two-Part Inventions Op.11a (piano), 1962. Five Character Pieces Op.11b (piano), 1962 Trio (violin, double bass, piano), 1964. Microstructures (unaccompanied oboe), 1964. Constants (solo violin, 4 pianos, 6 percussion groups), 1964 Homoeomorphies I-III (piano; III, 2 pianos), 1968-9. Ornaments (oboe, harp or guitar, viola; variable duration), 1969. Bucolic Strophes (organ), 1976. Concorsuono (unaccompanied French horn), 1977. Concerto misterioso (flute, clarinet, bassoon, antique cymbals, harpsichord, harp, violin, viola, cello), 1977. Fuer Elise (piano), 1988. Hlas I (unaccompanied cello), 1990. Hlas II (obituary for Dmitri Shostakovich, unaccompanied bass-clarinet), 1994.

VOCAL/CHORAL: Four Ukrainian Songs Op.6 (mixed chorus, orchestra; folk texts) 1959. Five Poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky Op/9 (baritone, piano) 1962 Two A Cappela Choruses (Mayakovsky, Asseyev) 1964.. Pastels (female voice, violin, viola, cello, double bass; Tychyna) 1964, revised 1975. >From Japanese Haiku (tenor, piccolo, basson, xylophone) 1964, revised 1975. La Mer/The Sea (speaker, chorus, organ, orchestra; St John Perse) 1966-70. Marginalia on Heissenbuettel (speaker, 2 trumpets, trombone, percussion) 1967, revised 1975. Kogda (soprano, violin, clarinet, piano with additional percussion, strings ad lib.; Khlebnikov) 1987. Temnere mortem for 4-part mixed chamber chorus a cappella (Skovoroda), 1991 I Bude Tak/And It Will Be (soprano, violin, clarinet, piano/CASIO-100 Tonebank synthesizer with additional percussion), 1993.

OPERA: The Bear (chamber opera after Chekhov; piano score) 1963. The Marriage Proposal (chamber opera after Chekhov; piano score) 1964.

POPULAR MUSIC FOR GUITAR
The Night Blues
Tango & Foxtrot
Homages (7 Pieces)
3 Pieces in an Old Style

PUBLICATIONS: By Hrabovsky: "On My Teacher", memoir on Boris Liatoshinsky) in Sovetskaya Muzyka, 2, 1969; "Splendor And A Bit of Misery", in Sovietskaya Muzyka, 10, 1988; "Zauber der ukrainischen Musik", in Die Musik, 1, 1989.
On Hrabovsky: Grigori Golovinski, "Bold and Original", in Sovietskaya Muzyka, 10, 1962; Yuli Malyshev, "Symphonic Frescoes by L.H." in "Ukrainian Musicology", Kiev, 1968; "Die Avantgarde von Kiew. Eine Retrospektive auf halbem Weg" in Melos, 4, 1976; Gannelore Gerlach, "Portrat -- L.H.", in MuG, 12, 1977.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Gerald McBurney :

Leonid Hrabovsky is one of a number of interesting and influental composers to emerge in Kiev during the 1950s under the tutelage of the distinguished composer-teacher Boris Lyatoshinsky. Others in the same group include the ultra-modernist Vitaly Hodziatsky and the now neo-Slavophile Valentin Silvestrov. These Kievan composers, by comparison with their Moscow counterparts, have been developing until recently a much stronger and more Western inclination towards rigour and system in their compositional techniques and their various aesthetic stances. Perhaps this reflects something of the way in which the Ukraine has always felt itself more a part of Europe than Russia ever has. And out of these, Hrabovsky is undoubtedly the one who has thought most deeply about ambiguity underlying the geographical and historical position of all Soviet composers of his generation. He is rare among these composers for the depth of his knowledge and understanding of 20th-century music in the West; indeed his articles over the last few years Sovietskaya muzyka have proved him to be probably the most informed and cultivated critic in that country at the moment. At the same time, as his music itself makes clear, he has thought deply about the peculiar roots of the native tradition, which he sees as not just Russian but Slavic and Siberian. Hrabovsky's earliest mature compositions show him grapping in an individual manner with the expressive problems left behind in the aftermath of Darmstadt. It is obvious from these works that the rigours of serial thought held tremendous appeal for him, but that at the same time he harboured colouristic and rhetorical ambitions of a different kind, probably owing more to Viennese expressionism. The culmination of his early period and, indeed, one of this composer's very finest works is his large-scale setting of texts by St. John Perse for speaker, chorus, organ and orchestra, La Mer or L'amer (much of Perse's meaning depends on this particular word play). This work was performed with some success in Western Europe, but, as so often, success abroad led to difficulties at home. In the later 1960s Hrabovsky began to move towards a position which he himself describes as minimalist ("I believe" he says"that I wrote the first Soviet minimalist music"). Actually tghis overworked term gives little hint of the range and subtlety of the music he was to produce in this style. Chief among his pieces belonging to this period are the Concerto misterioso and the great cycle of works he has called Homoeomorphies. The wealth of invention in this music and the frequent sense (to borrow from his own title) of mystery both stem from a quality which was already present in his earlier works and which has continued to be important to this day: an overriding concern with numbers and numerical proportions as a means towards fundamental unity. It is perhaps this quality that best illustrates Hrabovsky's sense of himself as balanced between Europe nad Asia. For while part of this composer's concern with numbers can certainly be traced to a European tradition running back through Stockhausen, Debussy and Bach to the Middle Ages, the way in which Hrabovsky makes his numbers expressive, the way in which he defines the kind of underlying unity that he is seeking in his music, owes most, by intention and effect, to the spiritual and ritual traditions of Asia and in particular to the Shamanic influences that, according to Hrabovsky, Igor Stravinsky was among the first to exploit. In more recent years unhappy circumstances have, for a time, prevented Hrabovsky from writing at all. But within the last five or six years he has at last begun composing again, reemerging with a language of compressed violence and extreme refinement of sound, a language that unites the leading strenghts of both his earlier periods. -- Gerard McBurney