Arthur Lourié


Arthur-Vincent Lourié, born Naum Izrailevich Luria, later changed his name to Artur Sergeyevich Luriye was a significant Russian composer. Lourié played an important role in the earliest stages of the organization of Soviet music after the 1917 Revolution but later went into exile. His music reflects his close connections with contemporary writers and artists, and also his close relationship with Igor Stravinsky.

Russian career

Born into a prosperous Jewish family, he converted to Catholicism while still in Russia. An admirer of van Gogh, from whom he derived the name 'Vincent', Lourié was partly self-taught, but also studied piano with Barinova and composition with Glazunov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1913. He became friendly with the Futurist poets and particularly Anna Akhmatova, whose poetry he was among the first to set. He was also acquainted with Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Kulbin, Fyodor Sologub and Alexander Blok; and was deeply influenced by contemporary art. His early piano pieces, from 1908 onward, take on from the late works of Scriabin but evolve new kinds of discourse, arriving in 1914 at an early form of dodecaphony and in 1915 at the Formes en l'air, dedicated to Picasso, a rather Cubist conception using an innovative form of notation in which different systems are placed spatially on the page in independent blocks, with blanks instead of bars' rest. At this stage of his career he seems a parallel figure to Nikolai Roslavets, though Lourié's aesthetic appears more 'decadent'. Essentially he was the first Russian Futurist in music, and in 1914 was the co-signatory, with the painter Georgy Yakulov and the poet Benedikt Livshitz, of the Petersburg Futurist Manifesto, 'We and the West', proclaiming principles common to all three arts.

Into exile

After the Revolution of 1917 Lourié served under Lunacharsky as head of the music division of the Commissariat of Popular Enlightenment. For a while he shared a house with Serge Sudeikin and his wife Vera Sudeikina. Though his sympathies were initially Leftist he became increasingly disenchanted with the new order in Russia. In 1921 he went on an official visit to Berlin, where he befriended Busoni, and from which he failed to return. His works were thereafter proscribed in the USSR. In 1922 he settled in Paris, where he became friends with the philosopher Jacques Maritain and was introduced to Stravinsky by Vera Sudeykina. Maritain championed his work early on, viewing the young Lourié not only as an important composer, but as a composer with an important capacity to express Catholic theology and philosophy in music. Lourié dedicated a number of his works to Maritain, including the Gigue from 4 Pièces Pour Piano. From 1924 to 1931 he was one of Stravinsky's most important champions, often becoming part of the Stravinsky household as he wrote articles about his fellow composer and preparing piano reductions of his works. He and the Stravinskys eventually parted company over a feud with Vera, and Stravinsky seldom afterwards mentioned his existence. In his works of the Paris years Lourié's early radicalism turns to an astringent form of neoclassicism and Russophile nostalgia; a dialogue with Stravinsky's works of the same period is evident, even to the extent that Stravinsky may have taken ideas from the younger composer: Lourié's A Little Chamber Music seems to prophesy Stravinsky's Apollon musagète, his Concerto spirituale for chorus, piano and orchestra the latter's Symphony of Psalms. Certainly in his later works Stravinsky adopted Lourié's style of notation with blank space instead of empty bars. Lourié also composed two symphonies and an opera, The Feast in a Time of Plague. A man of very wide culture, who cultivated the image of a dandy and aesthete, he set poems of Sappho, Pushkin, Heine, Verlaine, Blok, Mayakovsky, Dante, classical Latin and medieval French poets. He was also a talented painter.

American years

When the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, Lourié fled to the USA, assisted by Serge Koussevitzky. He settled in New York. He wrote some film scores but gained almost no performances for his more serious works, though he continued to compose. He spent over ten years writing an opera after Pushkin's The Moor of Peter the Great called The Blackamoor of Peter the Great, so far unperformed, though a lapidary orchestral suite has been recorded. He also composed a setting of sections from T. S. Eliot's Little Gidding for tenor and instruments : this could be seen as another instance of pre-Stravinsky-ing Stravinsky, who set one of the same texts as the anthem The Dove Descending in 1962.

Works

This list is based on that of the Arthur Lourié Society.
TitleYearMedium
Délie/Madrigal funèbreVoice, piano
5 Préludes fragiles, Op. 11908–1910Piano
2 Estampes, Op. 21910Piano
Intermède enfantine, Op. 31910–1911Piano
3 Études, Op. 41910–1911Piano
Mazurkas, Op. 71911–1912Piano
Doroenka/Fusspfad1912Voice, piano
Verlaine1912–1919Voice, piano
Prélude, op. 12/21912Quarter-tone keyboard
2 Poèmes, Op. 81912Piano
Salomé-Liturgie, Op. 11 bis1912–1913Piano
2 Poèmes, op. 51912Voice, piano
4 Poèmes, Op. 101912–1913Piano
Spleen empoisonnée1913
Masques, Op. 131913Piano
Menuet1914Piano
Chetki 1914High voice, piano
Quasi Valse1914Voice, piano
Grecheskie Pesni1914Voice, piano
Synthèse, Op. 161914Piano
String Quartet No. 119152 violins, viola, cello
Corona Carminum Sacrorum 1915–1917Voice, piano
Suite japonais1915Soprano, piano
Triolety/Triolets1915Voice, piano
Pleurs de la Vierge, Op. 261915Voice, violin, viola, cello
5 Rondeaux de Christine de Pisan1915Women‘ voices, harp, cembalo or piano
Formes en l'air1915Piano
Dvevnoi uzor 1915Piano
Rodestvo Bogorodicy/Naissance de la Vierge 1915Voice, piano
Tri svetlych tsaria 1916Voice, piano
Pastorale de la Volga1916Oboe, bassoon, 2 violas and cello
Oshibka baryshni smerti, Op. 401917Piano
3rd Sonatina, Tret'ia sonatina dlia roialia1917Piano
Rondel de Stéphane de Mallarmé1917Voice, piano
Upmann/Smoking Sketch, Kuritel'naia shutka1917Piano
Azbuka/Dve pesenki dlia detei 1917Voice, piano
Roial'v detskoi/Piano Gosse/Klavier im Kinderzimmer1917Piano
Nash Marsh 1918Piano und speaker
Bolotnyi popik/Das Sumpfäffchen1919Voice, piano
Golos Muzy/Voix de la Muse/Voice of the muse1919Women's chorus
V kumirniu zolotogo sna 1919Chorus a capella
Chetyre Narodnye Pesni Ninei Bretany/4 Chants populaires de Basse Bretagne1920Voice, piano
Uzkaia lira/die schmale Leier/La Lyre étroite1920–1941Voice, piano
Elisium/Vosem' stichtvoreniia Pushkina1920–1921Voice, piano
Shagi Komandora/The Commander’s Stride1920Voice, piano
Lament from Dante's Vita Nouva1921Women's chorus, strings
Canzone de la Vita Nuova de Dante1921Women's chorus a cappella
Pesni o Rossii: Korshun1921Chorus
Dvě kolybelnyia/2 Berceuses1921Voice, piano
Prochitanie/Chant des Gueuses/The Beggar Woman1922Soprano, contralto, English horn
Chant funèbre sur la mort d'un poète/Pogrebal'nyi plach na smert' poeta/Funeral Song on the Death of a Poet1922Chorus
String Quartet No. 2 'A little Chamber Music'1923–19242 violins, viola, cello
Nos 1923Opera
String Quartet No. 3 'Suite'1924–19262 violins, viola, cello
Toccata1924Piano
Regina Coeli1924Contralto, trumpet, oboe
Sonata1924Violin, double bass
Capriccio sur un thème de J. S. Bach / For pipe smokers1924Voice, piano
2 chants1926Voice, piano
Sonnet de Dante1926Voice, 2 violins, viola, cello
Valse1926Piano
Petite suite en fa1926Piano
Obriadovaia / Svadebni Prichet 1926Voice, piano
Improperium 19262 violins, baryton, double bass
Marche1927Piano
Sonnet de Dante1927Voice, piano
Gigue1927Piano
Intermezzo1928Piano
Nocturne1928Piano
Sonate liturgique1928Chorus, piano und chamber ensemble
Deuxième Tzigane 1928Voice, piano
Concerto Spirituale1928–1929Piano, 3 choruses, brass, 10 double basses, timbales and organ
Divertissement1929Violin, viola
Le Festin durant la Peste/Das Festmahl während der Pest/Pir vo vremia chumy 1929–1931Orchestra, chamber chorus and 2 soloists
Sinfonia Dialectica: Anno Domini MCMXXX/Symphonie 19301930Orchester
Procession19342 women's voices, piano
Tu es Petrus 1935Chorus a capella
Berceuse de la chevrette1936Piano
Naissance de la Beauté19366 sopranos, piano, clarinet, bassoon, crotales
Symphony No. 2 'Kormtchaïa'1936–1939Orchestra
La Flûte à travers le Violon1935Flute, violin
Allegretto1936Flute, violin
Dithyrambes1938Flute
A Christo crucificado ante el mar1938Baritone, mezzo-soprano, piano
Phoenix Park Nocturne1938Piano
Symphony No. 2 'Kormtchaïa' 1939Orchestra
A Hamlet Sonata1941–19442 violins, viola, cello
2 Poems1941Voice, oboe, Klarinette, bassoon and strings
Toskà - Vospominaniia 1941Voice, harp
De Ordinatio Angelorum1942Chorus, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba
2 Études sur un sonnet de Mallarmé1945–1962Voice, flute, piano
Little Gidding1945Tenor, flute, oboe, clarinet in A, basson, piano, cymbals, and strings
Concerto da camera1946–1947Violin solo, string orchestra
Paysage de sons1948–1958Voice, piano
Ave atque vale/Drei Dionysos-Dithyramben 1948Voice, piano
Epilogue19482 violins, viola, cello, double bass
Arap Petra Velikogo/Der Mohr Peter des Grossen 1949–1961
Anathema/Motette1951Tenor, baritone, bass, men's chorus, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones
Postcommunion19525 women's voice a capella
The Mime1956Clarinet
Sunrise1956Flute
The Flute of Pan1957Flute
Iva/Die Weide1958Voice, piano
Ernste Stunde1958Voice, piano
Zaklinaniia/Beschwörungen 1-41959Voice, piano
Ten' /Madrigal1962Voice, piano
Sibylla dicit 1964Women's voices, 4 instruments, cymbals
Funeral Games in Honor of Chronos19643 flutes, piano, crotales

Selected Recordings