Yuri Khanon

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Juri Khanon, Petersburg , 2008

Juri Khanón , ( Russian Юрий Ханон ) actually Juri Felixowitsch Solowjow-Sawojarow ; (Born June 16, 1965 in Leningrad ) is a Russian composer . He is the winner of the Felix Prize for Best Music and the 1988 Russian Nika Prize. Made famous by television and with a series of concerts in Russia, Juri Khanon retired from public life in 1993. In addition, Juri Khanon is known as an artist, writer , pianist and plant breeder .

Life

In 1988 Khanon graduated from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in composition and music theory . He mentions the composers Aleksander Scriabin and Erik Satie as his role models and teachers . He is the grandson of Mikhail Zavoyarov , an artist, eccentric and composer who worked in pre-revolutionary Petrograd .

1988–1991 he wrote the music for three films, gave concerts and appeared on television. His appearances were often accompanied by scandals. The concerts Music of the Dogs ( Moscow , December 1st to 4th, 1988) and Dried Embryos (Leningrad, May 1991) had the greatest response .

In 1992 the biographical opera Der Chagrinknochen (director Igor Besrukow ) was performed and recorded by the St. Petersburg Studio for Documentary Films. The main role was played by the author himself. The English label Olympia produced a CD with some symphonies by Khanon: Five Smallest Orgasms , A Certain Concerto (for piano and orchestra) and his The Middle Symphony . This CD is the only CD published by the author. It is said that Khanon did not approve 15 more CDs (some with him as the artist). After 1992 Khanon stopped all public appearances and publications of his music.

A CD entitled Modern Composers of Saint-Petersburg , which was published a few years ago in the USA without the permission of the composers featured there, contains Khanon's eccentric Wretched Notes (Miserable Score) and a humorless Mozart caricature, Amadeus , which is attributed to Khanon but actually comes from the composer Krasavin. Khanon gradually destroys his compositions himself as planned: “This world is a criminal, it deserves nothing but ashes”.

From 1996-1999 Khanon recorded more than 15 unreleased CDs as a pianist, including three preludes by Scriabin, a CD with the leaden music of Satie and five of his own programs. The best known of the theatrical performances is the one-act ballet The Middle Duet (first part of the Middle Symphony), which was performed in 1998 in the Mariinsky Theater . It was nominated for the Golden Mask award in 2000. One movement (number 1) of the Middle Symphony became known beyond Russian borders as music for the famous ballet miniature Middle Duet . This led to a long-standing legal battle between Khanon and the choreographer Alexei Ratmanski , the Mariinsky Theater and other theaters that allegedly played and used his music illegally. Even the movement, torn out of context, in which an indefinite baroque model (between the famous Albinoni forgery and the slow movements from Bach's instrumental concerti) is tied into an infinite, diverging and yet maintaining loop, makes Khanon one of the leading composers the postmodern , the most virtuoso masters of destruction , alienation, and minimalism .

“… Juri Khanon is a canon and a doctrinal. That doesn't mean that he's just a composer. For Juri Khanon, composing music is the way of expressing a doctrine. That is exactly how literary work and playing represent. Khanon plays the piano works of Erik Satie and Alexander Scriabin . He thinks they are his teachers and calls the others 'just composers'. Yuri Khanon writes a lot of music. There are two types: medium and extreme music . [...] Khanon's figure is extremely interesting and unique for our time. "

- Viktor Ekimowsky : Automonography

The grand master of the grotesque in Leningrad music was Juri Khanon, who brought back to life the radical spirit of the futurists and absurdists of the post-revolutionary years and in particular Daniil Charms . The composer Boris Yoffe writes that Khanon's aesthetic is adequately reflected in the listing of his compositions with their mocking, sometimes absurd titles .

In 1993, Juri Khanon withdrew from public life.

Works

Movies

Juri Khanon worked in cinema from 1988 to 1991. He wrote his first work ( Days of Darkness , film director Alexander Sokurow ) while still a student at the conservatory.

At the first award ceremony (November 1988, West Berlin ) this film received the special prize of the European Film Academy ("Felix") for the best music in the cinema. Despite the great success, Yuri Khanon returned after 1991 "no longer to work in the cinema and for the cinema" .

In the middle of 1987, the director approached Yuri Khanon, then still a student at the Leningrad Conservatory , with the offer to write music for the film with the working title Day of Darkness . This was not the first attempt to work together. A year before that, Sokurow Khanon had suggested composing music for the film Sorrowful Callousness . The collaboration did not take place at the time because Khanon refused to work as a "film image designer".

Sokurov's description of the music he wanted to have on Day of Darkness was rather vague: among other things, "something for the accordion ". He had a certain inner conception of music for this instrument as it should be. In the end, the result - Khanon's music - exceeded all expectations:

The defining musical theme in Days of Darkness is a floating, almost unearthly, waltz-like melody with a strange title (A head taken individually) - led by an accordion - which forms a structuring arc: it sounds at the beginning (musical prologue of the film), in the middle and in the finale of the film.

The emotional and content-related intensity of the music is so great that every visual in combination with this music turns into a quasi independent “ clip ”, wrote the critic Dmitri Gubin. Vocal fragments were performed by the author himself (with a distorted head voice ), which intensified the effect of a glaringly expressionistic alienation of the apocalyptic images created by Sokurov .

All scenes with Khanon's music are very emotional, and it's hard to say which element has the upper hand: the visual or the acoustic. One can compare Khanon's music in this film with a kind of filter or prism through which the viewer perceives Sokurov's images.

The composer's first work in the film was the penultimate one. After 1990, Juri Khanon no longer composed music for films.

Literary works

Frontispiece : Juri Khanon & Aleksander Scriabin , St. Petersburg ( photomontage )

Juri Khanon has been working as an essayist and fiction writer since 1983. His novel from memories Scriabin as countenance (1995) was created as an “elitist” subject of book art. The novel contains personal memories of the author, who was acquainted with the Russian composer Aleksander Scriabin for twenty years . The language and style are light, based on the colloquial and literary language of the first decade of the 20th century .

For the first time in music history no biographer , no musicologist or critic , no writer or philosopher , but a composer writes about the composer. Probably for this very reason all hackneyed literary clichés and puns have been avoided in this book . For the author, even ten years after his death, Scriabin continues to “just live somewhere next door, in the neighborhood, remaining a close, relative and even an inner person”.

In 2010, his extensive book on Erik Satie ( Memories retrospectively ), in which Khanon combined his own texts with Satie's writings translated into Russian to create Satie's fictional memories, caused a restrained discussion. In this book he identifies himself completely with his protagonist and thus creates a new genre between scientific study, analytical essay and mystification . In addition to Satie, Scriabin was only one of his models, Khanon emphasized in his early writings and interviews . Khanon describes himself as a canon , as someone who determines a doctrine , a canon (he has changed his name accordingly). In addition to his music, he writes literary texts: The book Scriabin as a face was published in 1995, recently the book Alphonse, dedicated to Alphonse Allais , which never existed , was published. He also paints pictures.

Passepied from the pause opera «Chagrinkbochen»

ballet

Operas
Lach Symphony (November 2017, premiere: first and last performance)

Orchestral works

“… Although Khanon calls Satie and Skryabin his teachers, it is not the music of these composers that attracts him, but their tendency to link their music to an idea - some would say subordinate. According to Khanon, a composer is an ideologue when it comes to his musical material. Elements of the game (both semantic and phonetic ), paradoxical , the absurd and nonsense (word inversion and invention , pseudo-quotation and limerick ) give Khanon's aesthetic the desire to outrage the listener ... "

- Liudmila Kovnatskaya : Grove's Dictionary of Music & Musicians)

Web links

Commons : Juri Khanon  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ kino-teatr.ru // Encyclopedia Russian Cinema & Theater (Bio)
  2. ↑ imdb.com // European Film Awards nov. 1988
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j oxfordmusiconline.com // Grove's Dictionary of Music & Musicians , 2001.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Boris Yoffe : In the flow of the symphonic. (a journey of discovery through the Soviet symphony). Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2014, ISBN 978-3-95593-059-2 , p. 648.
  5. ↑ russiancinema.ru ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. // Encyclopedia Russian Cinema, Bio @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.russiancinema.ru
  6. ↑ Juri Khanon, Dmitry Gubin . « Panther and hyena kisses » (essay). - « Ogonyok » (weekly magazine). 1991, № 50, p. 21 ( Russian )
  7. ↑ « Scrjabin died, but his work lives », interview with Kirill Shevchenko. - Leningrad: Schlicht ( Russian Смена ), November 13, 1991, ( Russian )
  8. ↑ a b L.Yusipova . «Guys, shoot for voice». - Moscow. Magazine «Satellite Film Viewer» № 9/1989. ISSN  0208-3140 . Pp. 16-17. (Russian)
  9. ^ "Music of the Embryos" (Khanon - Satie), interview with Maxim Maximov. - Leningrad: Plain ( Russian Смена ), May 9, 1991
  10. ↑ youtube.com // Medium Duet (video)
  11. ↑ Средний дуэт. ( Memento of July 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) mariinsky.ru // Mariinsky Theater : Ballets.
  12. ↑ theatre.ru // «Golden Mask», 2000.
  13. ↑ bolshoi.ru ( Memento of the original from August 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. // Bolshoi Theater: ballets. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bolshoi.ru
  14. ^ Nytimes.com // New York Times: "The Middle Duo".
  15. ↑ Viktor Ekimovsky: Automonographia. Edition Muzizdat / Музиздат, Moscow 2008, ISBN 978-5-904082-04-8 , pp. 291-293. (Russian)
  16. ↑ russiancinema.ru ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. // Encyclopedia of Russian Cinema & Theater @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.russiancinema.ru
  17. ↑ europeanfilmacademy.org // European Film Academy-1988.
  18. ↑ film.cmlt.tv // Advertisement: "Days of Eclipse"
  19. ↑ russiancinema.ru ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. // Encyclopedia Russian Cinema: «Save & Protect» @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.russiancinema.ru
  20. ↑ Yuri Khanon . «Close the doors» or Anaestesia Dolorosa ( too redundant explanation ). - Saint Petersburg: Center for Medium Music, 2011. (Russian)
  21. ↑ a b Sergei Uvarow . «The music world of Alexander Sokurow». - «Klassiker XXI» publishing house, Moscow, 2011. - p. 28 (Russian)
  22. ↑ Dmitry Gubin . « Play on days of darkness » (interview). - « Ogonyok » (weekly magazine). 1990, № 26, pp. 26-27 ( Russian )
  23. ↑ liki-rossii.ru // “Scriabin als Antlitz ”, annotation from “Anlitze Russlands”, 1995. (Russian)
  24. ↑ etvnet.ca // Chagrinkbochen an eTV ru
personal data
SURNAME Khanon, Yuri
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ханон, Юрий (Russian spelling); Khanin, Yuri; Khanon, Yuri; Savoiarov, Yuri; Solovjov-Savojarov, Juri Felixowitsch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian composer, pianist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Leningrad , Soviet Union