Benson’s Private Land

Composer: Sergei Taneyev

Essay:

Taneyev was born to a cultured and literary family of Russian nobility. A distant cousin, Alexander Taneyev, was also a composer, whose daughter, Anna Vyrubova, was highly influential at court. Alexander was drawn closely to the nationalist school of music, while he would gravitate toward a more cosmopolitan outlook.

He began taking piano lessons at age five with a private teacher. His family moved to Moscow in 1865. The following year, the nine-year-old Taneyev entered the Moscow Conservatory. His first piano teacher at the Conservatory was Edward Langer. After a year’s interruption in his studies, Taneyev studied again with Langer. He also joined the theory class of Nikola Hubert and, most importantly, the composition class of Tchaikovsky. In 1871, Taneyev studied piano with the Conservatory’s founder, Nikolai Rubinstein.

Taneyev graduated in 1875, the first student in the history of the Conservatory to win the gold medal both for composition and for performing (piano). He was also the first person ever to be awarded the Conservatory’s Great Gold Medal; the second was Arseny Koreshchenko and the third was Sergei Rachmaninoff.That summer he travelled abroad with Rubinstein. That year he also made his debut as a concert pianist in Moscow playing the first piano concerto in D minor of Johannes Brahms, and would become known for his interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. In March 1876 he toured Russia with violinist Leopold Auer.

Taneyev was also the soloist in the Moscow première of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in 1875. Tchaikovsky was clearly impressed by Taneyev’s performance; he later asked Taneyev to be soloist in the Russian premiere of his Second Piano Concerto. (After Tchaikovsky’s death, Taneyev also completed and premiered his Third Piano Concertoand Andante and Finale.)

Taneyev attended Moscow University for a short time and was acquainted with outstanding Russian writers, including Ivan Turgenev and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. During his travels in Western Europe in 1876 and 1877, he met Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, César Franck and Camille Saint-Saëns amongst others.

When Tchaikovsky resigned from the Moscow Conservatory in 1878, Taneyev was appointed to teach harmony. He would later also teach piano and composition. He served as Director from 1885 to 1889, and continued teaching until 1905. He had great influence as a teacher of composition. His pupils included Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff,Reinhold Glière, Paul Juon, Julius Conus, and Nikolai Medtner. The polyphonic interweaves in the music of Rachmaninoff and Medtner stem directly from Taneyev’s teaching. Scriabin, on the other hand, broke away from Taneyev’s influence.

Taneyev was also a scholar of massive erudition. In addition to music, he studied—for relaxation—natural and social science, history, mathematics, plus the philosophies of Platoand Spinoza.

During the summers of 1895 and 1896, Taneyev stayed at Yasnaya Polyana, the home of Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofia. She developed an attachment to the composer which embarrassed her children and made Tolstoy jealous, though Taneyev himself remained unaware of it.. However this also released her from the distress of the isolation she experienced when Tolstoy grew distant from family concerns and devoted himself to the Christian anarchist-pacifism which shaped his last years. Sofia’s infatuation with Taneyev and his music echoes the story of Tolstoy’s great and penetrating dissection of marital relations in The Kreutzer Sonata.

In 1905, the revolution and its consequent effect on the Moscow Conservatory led Taneyev to resign from the staff there. He resumed his career as a concert pianist, both as soloist and chamber musician. He was also able to pursue composition more intensely, completing chamber works with a piano part which he could play in concerts as well as some choruses and a substantial number of songs. His last completed work was the cantata At the Reading of a Psalm, completed at the beginning of 1915.

Taneyev contracted pneumonia after attending the funeral of Scriabin. While he was recovering, he succumbed to a heart attack.

A museum dedicated to Taneyev is located in Dyudkovo, where he died. There is also a section dedicated to Taneyev at the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin.