Sergei Taneyev
A distant cousin, Alexander Taneyev, was also a composer, whose daughter, Anna Vyrubova, was highly influential at court.
Alexander was drawn closely to the nationalist school of music exemplified by The Five, while Sergei would gravitate toward a more cosmopolitan outlook, as did Tchaikovsky.
[2] Taneyev graduated in 1875, the first student in the history of the Conservatory to win the gold medal both for composition and for performing (piano).
[1] That year he also made his debut as a concert pianist in Moscow playing Brahms's First Piano Concerto,[3] and would become known for his interpretations of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.
He was chosen after Gustav Kross had given a dreadful performance at the concerto's Russian première in St Petersburg three weeks earlier.
The conductor on the later occasion was Nikolai Rubinstein, who had famously lambasted the work less than a year earlier (5 January), but who had by that time come to appreciate its merits.
[5] Taneyev attended Moscow University for a short time and was acquainted with outstanding Russian writers, including Ivan Turgenev and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin.
During his travels in Western Europe in 1876 and 1877, he met Émile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, César Franck, and Camille Saint-Saëns, amongst others.
His pupils included Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Jacob Weinberg, Reinhold Glière, Paul Juon, Julius Conus, and Nikolai Medtner.
The latter developed an attachment to the composer that embarrassed her children and made Tolstoy jealous, although Taneyev himself remained unaware of it.
He was also able to pursue composition more intensely, completing chamber works with a piano part which he could play in concerts as well as some choruses and a substantial number of songs.
Tchaikovsky realized that the opinions of such a man, whose own taste and competence were so high, yet whose self-scrutiny was so exacting, were to be respected, and in consequence came greatly to appreciate criticism from Taneyev.
The postscript to a letter Tchaikovsky wrote to Taneyev about Eugene Onegin and the Fourth Symphony sums up his general frame of mind: "I know you are absolutely sincere and I think a great deal of your judgment.
The music writer and composer Leonid Sabaneyev studied composition with Taneyev as a child and met Tchaikovsky through him.
After all, he himself asked me to give my opinion..."[18] Despite Tchaikovsky's notoriously thin skin when it came to criticism, he could not take any lasting offense at such transparent honesty, especially when Taneyev's assessments could show a great deal of perception.
[19] Even if the manner in which Taneyev presented his comments made them sting all the more, Tchaikovsky was painfully grateful for his fellow-musician's candor.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, recalling a clash Taneyev had with Mily Balakirev during a rehearsal of a concert to commemorate the unveiling of a monument to the pioneering Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, wrote: "At the rehearsal of the concert he publicly declared to Balakirev: 'Mily Alekseyevich!
[21]"Nor was this the only time Taneyev shared strong opinions about the St Petersburg based nationalist music group known as "The Mighty Handful" or "The Five."
He engrossed himself in the music of J. S. Bach, Palestrina, and such Flemish masters as Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, and Orlande de Lassus.
Taneyev used a quotation from Leonardo da Vinci as its inscription: "No branch of study can claim to be considered a true science unless it is capable of being demonstrated mathematically".
[24]Taneyev's rationale for this process stemmed from his belief that truth and moral integrity in music were synonymous with its objectivity and purpose.
[29] Taneyev also saw a synthesis of counterpoint and folk-song as the means of creating large-scale musical structures that would follow Western rules of thematic development in sonata form.
Taneyev, in contrast, thought musical creativity should be both deliberate and intellectual, with preliminary theoretical analysis and preparation of thematic materials.
In his choral works the composer combines the melodic basis of the traditional Russian musical style with remarkable contrapuntal writing.
This work, which the composer entitled a 'musical trilogy' rather than an opera, was closely modeled on the original plays of Aeschylus and was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre on 17 October 1895.
Taneyev wrote a separate concert overture, based on some of the opera's major themes, which was conducted by Tchaikovsky in 1889.
[24] He added that Taneyev's working methods "ought to result in a dry and academic composition, devoid of the shadow of an inspiration; in reality, however, Oresteia proved quite the reverse—for all its strict premeditation, the opera was striking in its wealth of beauty and expressiveness.
Among Taneyev's unpublished works are reportedly various parodies, including "Quartets of Government Officials", "humorous choruses, comic fugues and variations, toy symphonies, a mock ballet for Tchaikovsky's birthday with an absurd scenario, and music which is an ingenious contrapuntal pot-pourri of themes from Tchaikovsky's works".
