Nikolai Roslavets

Nikolai Andreevich Roslavets (Russian: Никола́й Андре́евич Ро́славец) (4 January 1881 [O.S. 23 December 1880], Surazh, then in Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire, now in Bryansk Oblast, Russia – 23 August 1944, Moscow) was a significant Ukrainian Soviet modernist composer. Roslavets was a convinced modernist and cosmopolitan thinker; his music was officially suppressed from 1930 onwards.

Among his works are five symphonic poems (three of them are lost), two violin concertos, five string quartets, two viola sonatas, two cello sonatas, six violin sonatas, and five piano trios.

There are three autobiographies by Roslavets that differ considerably from one another. In one of them, published 1924, the composer deliberately misrepresented his biography in order to prevent the attacks by the "Proletarian Musician" faction. There are differing accounts of Roslavets' birthplace, some indicating that he was born in Dushatyn to a peasant family, while he actually was born in 1881 into the family of a railway clerk, (of Ukrainian origin, according to Detlef Gojowy) posted in Konotop and Kursk, where Roslavets began to study violin, piano, theory of music and harmony in Arkady Abaza's musical classes. In 1902 Roslavets was accepted as a student at the Moscow Conservatory where he studied violin under Jan Hřímalý, free composition under Sergei Vasilenko, counterpoint, fugue and musical form under Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov and Alexander Ilyinsky. He graduated in 1912, with a silver medal for his cantata Heaven and Earth after Byron's verse drama.

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