Ivan Alexandrovich Wyschnegradsky ( ; ; September 29, 1979), was a Russian composer primarily known for his microtonal compositions. For most of his life, from 1920 onwards, Wyschnegradsky lived in Paris.
Life Ivan Wyschnegradsky was born in Saint Petersburg on May 4, 1893. His father, Alexander, was a banker, and his mother, Sophie, wrote poems. His grandfather Ivan was a celebrated mathematician who served as the Minister for Finance from 1888 to 1892. After his baccalaureate, Wyschnegradsky entered the School of Mathematics. He studied harmony, composition, and orchestration with Nicolas Sokolov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In 1912, he entered the School of Law.
In November 1916, Wyschnegradsky had a spiritual vision. It inspired the composition of La Journée de l’Existence for narrator with orchestra and chorus. He worked on it for several decades, and it would not be performed until 1978. Most of his later work germinated from this singular experience. He completed his law studies the day before the revolution in 1917. His father died that November.Jedrzejewski, Franck. Ivan Wyschnegradsky. Huygens-Fokker.org. Accessed January 27, 2025.
Wyschnegradsky moved to Paris in 1920.Criton, Pascale. "Vyschnegradsky [Vïshnegradsky], Ivan." Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, 2001. Three years later, he married Hélène Benois, the daughter of Alexandre Benois. It was her second marriage."БЕНУА (в последнем браке Бенуа-Клеман) Елена Александровна", www.artz.ru. Accessed January 28, 2025. Their son Dimitri was born in 1924. He grew up to become an influential blues historian using the pen name Jacques Demêtre.Ghent, Valerie. " Jacques Demêtre: discovering a blues historian in the family", ValGhent.com. December 28, 2013. Accessed 25 June 2020. Wyschnegradsky and Benois divorced in 1926. His second wife was Lucile Markov (Gayden).
In 1942, Wyschnegradsky was arrested by the Germans and transferred to Royallieu-Compiègne internment camp, where he remained for two months. As an American, Lucile was interned at Vittel. After the war, he contracted tuberculosis and lived at the sanatorium of St. Martin-du-Tertre from 1947–50.
Lucile died in 1970. Wyschnegradsky's senescence in his Paris apartment is often described as impoverished and austere. Paul Auster fictionalized his friendship with the composer in his 1986 novel The Locked Room. In the novel, Wyschnegradsky is mentioned by name and given a refrigerator by his much younger friend.Auster, Paul. The New York Trilogy. United Kingdom, Faber & Faber, 2008. 274–6.
Wyschnegradsky died at the age of 86 in Paris on September 29, 1979.
Music career Wyschnegradsky's first performed work was Andante religioso and funèbre in 1912. César Cui attended the concert and congratulated Wyschnegradsky "for his moderation"."Ivan Wyschnegradsky", IRCAM. November 3, 2024. Accessed January 25, 2025. He was enthusiastic about the Russian Revolution and set Vasily Knyazev's The Red Gospel to music.
Wyschnegradsky was deeply influenced by Alexander Scriabin's mysticism and approach to tonality.Vyslouzil, Jiri. "Ivan Vyschnegradskij, kapitolaze zapomenutych hudebnich avantgard", Opus Musicum 2. Brno, 1969. 36–40. Though he did not attend Mikhail Matyushin's Futurist opera Victory over the Sun in 1913, the brief use of quarter-tones in the score had a profound effect on his artistic development. In 1919, Wyschnegradsky provided incidental music for a production of Macbeth at the Bolshoi Drama Theater.Составитель и отвветственныи редактор А.Ю. Ряпосов., and Sostavitelʹ i otvvetstvennyi redaktor A.IU. Riaposov. Премьеры БДТ: Рецензии, Документы, Архивные Материалы. Edited by Aleksandr Riaposov. Астерион, 2021. 41f.
Wyschnegradsky soon became convinced that equal temperament was inadequate for his work and began writing in microtones. All of the composer's early microtonal work was executed on two pianos tuned a quarter-tone apart."Ivan Wyschnegradsky". Huygens-Fokker.org. Accessed January 27, 2025. A primary motivation for his emigration in 1920 was the desire to develop instruments capable of playing microtones. He had every intention of returning to the Soviet Union, but it had changed too much by the time he was ready a few years later.
Wyschnegrasky designed a quarter-tone keyboard with three manuals.Järvi, Elisa. "Kohti uutta neljäsosasävelaskelpianoa" in KARTANOISTA KAIKKIEN SOITTIMEKSI II Pianonsoiton historiaa Suomessa. Taideyliopiston Sibelius-Akatemia, 2019. 175–188. Partially translated at "Quartertone Piano", Uniarts.fi. The quarter tone scale (24-tet: 50 cents) is the most frequent microtonality in his work. Wyschnegradsky also wrote one piece for Julián Carrillo's third-tone piano (18-tet: 66. cents). In pursuit of what he called "ultrachromaticisim", Wyschnegradsky composed in even smaller divisions of the octave such as sixth tones (36-tet: 33. cents) and twelfth tones (72-tet: 16. cents).
Gustave Lyon at Pleyel was sympathetic to Wyschnegradsky's ambitions. The firm manufactured a quarter-tone piano for him in 1921 that relied on the pneumatic Pleyela system in their player pianos.Schloezer, Boris de. "La Musique en quarts de ton", La Revue musicale, vol. 6, no 1. 1er novembre 1924. 71–74. The instrument produced inconsistent tone, making it undesirable for the composer. However, he did make extended use of punching piano rolls to develop the sophistication of his music. There was more quarter-tone interest in Berlin where he went to work with Richard Stein, Alois Hába, Jörg Mager, and Willy von Möllendorff.
In Braunschweig, Hába and Möllendorff were advising Grotrian-Steinweg on a quarter-tone piano. There were many disagreements about the layout for the keyboard. Möllendorf had designed a Straube harmonium with smaller keys for microtones. Wyschnegradsky found it effective enough to purchase one, but he knew keyboards like Möllendorf's and Paul von Jankó's did not afford enough kinetic potential to performers.
Grotrian-Steinweg built a prototype and marketed it in the spring of 1924. The instrument is lost, but the firm still has a portion of the keyboard mechanism in their archive. Hába realized the project with August Förster in 1928 using a keyboard based on Wyschnegradsky's design.
In 1929, one of the Förster upright quarter-tone pianos was delivered to Wyschnegradsky's apartment in Paris where he composed on it for the rest of his life."Quartertone Grand Piano". August-Foerster.de. Accessed January 25, 2025. Even with a suitable quarter-tone instrument, Wyschnegradsky still found performing his music more feasible with separately tuned piano ensembles. Hába disapproved of the technique, preferring quarter-tone music to be performed on quarter-tone instruments. Wyschnegradsky reminded Hába that he designed the quarter-tone keyboard and that when two pianos of the same make are tuned correctly they sound like one instrument.Wyschnegradsky, Ivan. "Réponse à Hába", La Revue musicale, vol. 19, no 180. Janvier, 1938. 76–8.
Though living in Paris, Wyschnegradsky's microtonal work was influential in Russia during the twenties. He maintained a correspondence with Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov (Nikolai's grandson) who organized performances of his work on programs of microtonal music by young Soviet composers.Rimski-Korssakoff (Rimsky-Korsakov), Georgy. "Theorie und praxis der reintonsysteme im Sowjet Russland" in Melos. January, 1928. 15–17. Dmitri Shostakovich often performed on these concerts.Ader, Lidia. “Microtonal Storm and Stress: Georgy Rimsky-Korsakov and Quarter-Tone Music In 1920s Soviet Russia.” Tempo 63.250. October, 2009. 27–44.
In 1932, he published a 24-page brochure about quarter-tones. In 1934, he composed Twenty-four Preludes in All the Tones of the Chromatic Scale Diatonicized with Thirteen Sounds, for two pianos in quarter tones.
As early as November 1918, Wyschnegradsky had begun working on Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra based on Friedrich Nietzsche's sketch for the novel. His original ensemble was a standard orchestra with quarter-tone clarinet, harmonium, and piano. Its finished form was for four pianos, 2 tuned to 435 Hertz and 2 tuned a quarter-tone higher. It was premiered along with several of his other works at the Salle Pleyel on January 25, 1937.Roycroft, Madeline. "Louise Hanson-Dyer’s 78 rpm Oiseau-Lyre recordings of the music of her contemporaries". University of Melbourne. The concert was a success and led to friendships with fellow composers Olivier Messiaen, Henri Dutilleux, and Claude Ballif. In October 1938, Wyschnegradsky directed the recording of the third movement of Zarathoustra.Hill, Jen. "Microtonal piano sounds: a 1930s audio recording and a unique score of Ivan Wyschnegradsky’s Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra in Rare Music", The University of Melbourne. June 23, 2017.
After the war, Wyschnegradsky organized another concert of his work at the Salle Pleyel on November 11, 1945. The performers included several of Messiaen's students such as Yvonne Loriod, Pierre Boulez, and Serge Nigg.Ellenberger, Michel. "Biography", Ivan-wyschnegradsky.fr. Accessed January 26, 2025. In 1951, Pierre Boulez, Yvette Grimaud, Claude Helffer, and Ina Marika gave a performance of the composer's Second Symphonic Fragment in Paris. The Revue Musicale published a special issue on Ivan Wyschnegradsky and Nicolas Obouhow in 1972.
1977 saw special concerts of Wyschnegradsky's music organized at Radio France by Martine Joste and in Canada by Bruce Mather. The composer also improvised on piano for one of Margaret Fisher's performances in Paris that year.Fisher, Margaret. "A Remembrance". Ivan-Wyschnegradsky.fr. Accessed January 28, 2025. In 1978, Alexandre Myrat conducted the premiere of La Journée de l’Existence with the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France. Ivan Wyschnegradsky was invited to the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. He could not go due to ill health. His last commission was from Radio France for a string trio. He died before he could complete it.
Theories Throughout his career, Wyschnegradsky wrote theoretical articles in a variety of languages. He worked on a microtonality treatise for decades. Titled La Loi de la Pansonorité (The Law of Pansonority), it was not published in his lifetime.
"Pansonority" was Wyschnegradsky's way of articulating the mystical experience he had in 1916. He realized that music represented a separation of sounds out of a continuous fabric that exists in the universe. Of this pansonority, Wyschnegradsky wrote in 1927: "...isolated sounds do not exist...the entire musical space is filled with living sonorous matter. This state, absolutely incomprehensible to human reason, may be clearly felt, and sentiment can perceive or "hear" this sonority through a manner of inner intuition. But musical art operates through detached sounds, and because of this it is artificial and anti-continuous. Hence the primordial tragedy of music: the impossibility of attaining its ideal: Pan-sonority. And yet, in spite of this, the entire history of musical art is nothing but an attempt to reach the ideal.Wischnegradsky, Ivan. "Quartertonal music, its possibilities and organic sources [Method of notation. Harmonic implications. Concept of pan-sonority]". Pro-Musica Quarterly, Volume VI No. I. October, 1927. 19-31.
As evidence for pansonority, Wyschnegradsky would point to the inaccurate assignment of note names to overtones. Partials like the 11th, 13th, and 14th are raised by an entire quarter-tone to fit into equal temperament. Since these quarter-tones are naturally occurring in the harmonic series, Wyschnegradsky posits that microintervals are organic and provide a richer tone world.