Jefim Golyscheff

Yefim (Jef) Golyscheff (born September 8 ^jul. / 20th September  1897 ^greg. In Kherson , Russian Empire ; † 25. September 1970 in Paris , France ) was a Ukrainian composer and painter who temporarily lived in Germany and later to Brazil moved. He is one of the pioneers of twelve-tone music .

life and work

Golyscheff's musical career began early as a violin prodigy, and in 1905 he accompanied the Odessa Symphony Orchestra on a tour as a soloist. At the Petersburg Conservatory he became a student of Leopold Auer . From 1909 he studied at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, where he was awarded the Reger Prize. A string trio composed in 1914 (printed in Berlin in 1925) is based on twelve-tone complexes. The semitones in Golyscheff's only surviving composition are represented by horizontal crosses (similar to the unsigned notation used by contemporary Nikolai Obuchow, which was evidently developed independently of this ). The individual movements also require a dynamic that is to be maintained unchanged over the respective sentence (e.g. BI Mezzo-Forte , II. Fortissimo ).

Encouraged by Ferruccio Busoni , further compositions were created, including 2 operas and the symphonic poem with staged actions " Das eisige Lied " ( premiered in parts by Georg Weller in Berlin in 1920 ). He also took lessons from Wassily Kandinsky (a friend of his father's) and became the creator of anti-works of art, such as a self-portrait made from cigarette boxes, bread and matches. Together with Raoul Hausmann and Richard Huelsenbeck , he founded the Berlin Dada . From January 31, 1921 he had an exhibition in Berlin in the art antiquariat Fränke.

Golyscheff also studied chemistry and physics, worked as a technical consultant for TOBIS sound film and came into contact with Eisenstein and Pudowkin , for whom he wrote a film score in 1931 for " Igdenbu the great hunter ".

Defamed as a Jew and as a “ degenerate artist ”, Golyscheff was forced to flee Germany in 1933; all compositions and pictures were confiscated and lost. First he went to Portugal, then to Barcelona, ​​where he worked as a chemist until the civil war . After Franco's victory in 1938, he fled to France, where he was temporarily interned and joined the Resistance . From 1956 to 1966 Golyscheff lived in São Paulo , took on Brazilian citizenship and again worked as a visual artist and also as a stimulus for the young Brazilian composer group “Música Nova”. From 1966 until his death Golyscheff lived as a painter in Paris.

literature

• Juan Allende-Blin: The Scriabinists or how a generation of composers was left behind . In: Alexander Scriabin and the Scriabinists Ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Rainer Riehn. Music Concepts, Vol. 32/33. edition text + kritik, Munich 1983, pp. 81-102. ISBN 3-88377-149-X
• Detlef Gojowy: New Soviet Music of the 20s , Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1980
• Larry Sitsky (Ed.): Music of the Twentieth-Century Avantgarde: A Biocritical Sourcebook , Greenwood Publ. Group, 2002, ISBN 9780313296895
• The New Grove, 2nd edition