Born in the government of Chernigov in 1881, died in Moscow in 1944; Nikolai Roslavets was a Russian composer, violinist and writer on music. At the Moscow Conservatory he studied violin and composition with Alexander Ilyinsky and Sergei Vasilenko and graduated with distinction in 1912. At roughly the same time as Arnold Schönberg he developed a system of tone organisation of his own out of synthetic chords, which he applied in chamber music, piano works and songs. In the 1920s he was a leading voice of the Association for Contemporary Music and the editor of journals on music politics; from 1930 his music was pushed aside, he worked for a time in Tashkent and was scarcely present in public until his death. Only since the 1980s has his work been performed again. In the Cybele catalogue his piano music appears on Piano Works around Russian Futurism (Vol. 4, 2016), recorded by Thomas Günther on the Steinway D concert grand.
Nikolaj Roslavets
Composer
