ABSTRACT
A composer’s style often reveals the tradition in which he has been reared-a definite artistic trend, school or a composer whose ideas are to be ‘continued’ in the works of their follower. Thus, in Scriabin’s dazzling innovations you may discern the Chopinesque style of his earlier compositions. It is quite different with Denisov, like with many other avant-garde artists. The formation period of his style involved intensive searchings for his own place in an intricate mixture of modern musical trends. When he graduated from the conservatoire he was equipped not with an individual style but rather an unstable compromise between expressing his own personality and writing “comme il faut”. A powerful urge for authenticity and self-expression promptly wiped off anything alien and superficial. Denisov has consciously broken with the old techniques and the alien perception of music and thereby came into his own.
