ABSTRACT
Nikolai Roslavets (1881–1944) was one of the most significant composers of the early twentieth century. In the wake of the October Revolution, he was at the forefront of Moscow’s avant-garde musical scene. He was loosely associated with the Russian Futurists and had invented a new compositional system, in which a synthetic chord, a group of six to eight pitch classes, guided the symmetric distances of various chord-paths. Furthermore, Roslavets’s early compositional period is marked by experimentation within this new system, from which are produced a number of piano miniatures (1914–19). However, it is his middle period (1919–31) that expresses much revolt and further development away from his initial symmetric system. This middle period features three volumes of vocal works that are mainly set to the poetry of his contemporary Symbolist poets.
This chapter offers an analytical approach to the song cycle Three Poems of Zinaida Gippius (1919). This work is significant in several ways: (1) it marks a turning point in the composer’s compositional oeuvre; (2) it triggers the beginning of Roslavets’s new interest in vocal music; and (3) it significantly departs from his early compositional system with synthetic chords, allowing more non-chord tones and fewer symmetric chord-paths. This revolt from his earlier system unites Roslavets with contemporary poets, echoing his own deep dissatisfactions with the communist regime, transcending his strict compositional system as he liberates his own synthetic chords from their symmetric chord-paths.
