In 1982 in a concert held at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory within the programme of the cycle "From the History of Soviet Music" the symphony orchestra directed by the outstanding conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky played the Cello Concerto by the unknown composer Vladimir Tarnopolsky, who had just graduated from the Conservatory. Gennady Rozhdestvensky had selected his concerto out of many other compositions submitted for his judgment, as the most spectacular and talented opus. The performance was preceded by the conductor's short witty commentary to present a new name to the audience: "I wouldn't deliberately speak about the structure of this composition which abounds in many interesting finds both in the cello part and in its orchestral accompaniment, and the value of these findings is primarily due to the fact that these are neither hidden deep in the texture, nor draped in any subtleties but openly and, I would even say, visually demonstrated to the listeners. This lively music brims over with youthful ardor and congenial expressiveness"¹.

It was a stroke of luck for the young composer to have his work, written during his postgraduate years, played in the best Moscow concert hall under the baton of a prestigious conductor before the mass audience. This performance gave a start to the creative career of the composer whose inimitable style took shape within the next decade.

Vladimir Tarnopolsky was born in 1955 in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk where he studied at a local music college. It was Edison Denisov who came to play a major-part in his musical career. While still a college student in Dnepropetrovsk he wrote a letter to Edison Denisov who regarded the young musician with great favor. In the early seventies Tarnopolsky came to Moscow from Dnepropetrovsk to show Denisov his compositions. He got qualified consultations and the invaluable advice upon following which he was able to attain his artistic aspirations. In 1973 he entered the composition department at the Moscow Conservatory².

Here is an excerpt from Edison Denisov's letter addressed to Vladimir Tarnopolsky: "Dear Volodya, I heartily congratulate you on your entering the Conservatory. I was sure that you would pass all the exams, though I still worried" (August 16, 1973). Denisov advised him to apply for the composition class of Nikolai Sidelnikov, a notable composer and pedagogue, belonging to Denisov's generation: "At least, he would't interfere with your self-development, for some teachers just spoil one's soul, and it is dangerous." Tarnopolsky followed his advice, though Nikolai Sidelnikov appeared to be his opposite as regards his individuality. But, as the composer believes, this fact precisely proved to be essential for the development of his creative abilities. It was thanks to Sidelnikov that Tarnopolsky kept away from imitating Edison Denisov who was very popular among the budding avant-gardist musicians, often quite captivated by his style.

Vladimir Tarnopolsky studied composition with other teachers. First of all, he attended Edison Denisov's classes in instrumentation. These were no ordinary lessons in score reading and instrumentation, for the students got there the truly professional approach to their future craft, and technical proficiency: "Denisov has given me the most accurate lessons in composition in my life. He was devoid of any didactics. He just set his students on the right way. His appraisals were tactful and to the point. He merely indicated some details while his pupils were to recreate the entity. I regard Edison Denisov as the best master in orchestration. He helped to grasp the orchestral style of a composer and tried to reconstruct his ideas most artistically"³. By the way, the young composer failed to fully avoid the influence evoked by Edison Denisov's strong personality, which made itself evident in some of his opuses written during his Conservatory years. Thus, his Three Romances for soprano and piano, Alexander Blok's Italian Poems, even in their title reminded of Edison Denisov's Italian Songs (also set to Blok's verses), while his Girls' Songs for female chorus set to the folk Russian texts came as a response to Denisov's folkloric Wails. Denisov's quests for novel instrumental combinations found their reflection in Tarnopolsky's composition The Reed-Pipe Singing for soprano, flute, harp and viola, another setting of Alexander Blok.

According to Vladimir Tarnopolsky himself, he got invaluable information pertaining to the composition techniques from the lectures in musical theory — harmony, polyphony and musical form — delivered by Professor Yuri Kholopov, an eminent music scholar. On a par with Edison Denisov and Nikolai Sidelnikov, he invariably mentions Yuri Kholopov among his teachers. It is a noteworthy fact that his first published composition appeared in Yuri Kholopov's book Tasks in Harmony⁴, a set of home assignments for students majoring in composition. One of these tasks was to write a piece in the twelve-tone technique. The Piano Scherzo, written by Tarnopolsky in 1976 as his home assignment in harmony, was cited by Yuri Kholopov as a sample in the Supplement to his book. It was to remain for a long time the composer's sole published work.

In 1978 Vladimir Tarnopolsky graduated with honors from the Moscow Conservatory, presenting the Symphonic Prologue as his diploma work. And his completion of the postgraduate courses in 1980 coincided with the appearance of his neo-expressionistic Cello Concerto, representing a modification of the conventional sonata form on the basis of the basic chord technique.

Vladimir Tarnopolsky's musical style is distinguished by the well-thought-out elaboration of details, clear understanding of the tasks undertaken, an accurate idea of the entity, and the associative musical material. He may be called a composer, who thinks structurally. When he just starts working on a composition, the key point for him is to find a structure, which would convey his musical idea in the most adequate way, bearing its message in itself. Of no less importance for him is the stylistic and concrete substance of musical material. Most of his compositions (including those purely instrumental) carry no general genre definitions such as a quartet or sonata, but the concrete titles, among them Cassandra, Jesu, deine tiefen Wunden, Eindruck-Ausdruck, and The Echoes of a Past Day. These titles imply no literary programme in an instrumental composition, but being quite concrete, they virtually exclude any arbitrary interpretation on the part of the listeners. This distinctive trait of Vladimir Tarnopolsky's compositional thinking led to his frequent employment of the collage and stylization techniques in his music

A vivid example of a whole collage form is his Music in Memory of Dmitry Shostakovich. The idea of this composition for recitalist, chamber orchestra and two tape recorders belongs to Gennady Rozhdestvensky, who was the first to perform it in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, acting himself as a recitalist. In its genre it is a collage melodeclamation. The verses devoted to Dmitry Shostakovich by four Soviet poets (Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Matusovsky, Alexander Mezhirov and James Patterson) are recited against the background of the quotations from Shostakovich's music, as well as from the works by the other great symphonists Tarnopolsky reveres — Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler.

In this case the choice of a collage form is explained by its memorial genre. The musical texture is interwoven of short melodic structural units, i.e. quotations (more than 110!), in which the composer has revealed their deep-going tonal interrelationship: in particular, Shostakovich favorite personal motto-theme "DSCH" turned out to be "calling for" the closing cadence in the form of the destiny theme from Wagner's Valkyrie whereas the theme from the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 could be "discerned" in the invasion episode of Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. Vladimir Tarnopolsky defines this composition as "an experiment in musical hermeneutics" implying his striving to retain "the letter and spirit" of Shostakovich's music in a novel compositional context through lending it a fresh interpretation.

His composition Upon Reading Mussorgsky's Draft Notebooks has been written in the traditions of the Russian choral concerto. Its dramatic pattern is based on the division of two layers: choral and orchestral. The chorus sings "Lord, make me to know mine end" (Psalm 39:4) in the spirit of the Orthodox service while the orchestra plays Mussorgsky's music from his draft notebooks, which has been orchestrated by Vladimir Tarnopolsky. Some of these drafts by the great Russian composer known for his innovative approach to harmony are conspicuously differing in their style from the music inherent in the latter half of the last century. Their stylistic uncertainty and extratemporal character allow Vladimir Tarnopolsky to avoid stylization of Mussorgsky's orchestration, treating these drafts in a later style. Thus, some of them have been orchestrated in the pointillistic manner а la Webern, and others in the multivoice heterophonic texture (in the vein of Lutoslawski). The composition ends with Mussorgsky's unfinished romance "Cruel Death", also in Vladimir Tarnopolsky's orchestration. This romance unites two layers — choral and orchestral — in their joint final cadence.

In general, many compositions written by Vladimir Tanopolsky have been associated with the name of Gennady Rozhdestvensky, among them In Memory of Dmitry Shostakovich, Upon Reading Mussorgsky's Draft Notebooks, and his opera Three Graces. As for his composition Wahnfried for six Wagner tubas, percussion, solo violin, piano and chorus. It quotes Richard Wagner's couplet engraved on the pediment of his villa at Wahnfried, which is sung by the invisible mixed chorus (backstage or taped).

Tarnopolsky's two operas similar in their genre and message reveal the composer's brilliant treatment of "playing with styles". Striving neither to provide a conventional operatic performance nor to lend the avant-gardist touch to this genre, he is just composing a parody of the opera, producing an opera-farce.

Three Graces is an opera-parody in three scenes to the libretto by Carl Maria von Weber based on his autobiographical novel Weber: The Life of an Artist. Weber's libretto makes a parody of the operatic stereotypes. The action involves three graceful ladies: Grace One — the Italian opera buffa. Grace Two — the French lyrical opera, and Grace Three — the German romantic opera.

Vladimir Tarnopolsky's opera is parodying everything: the plot, vocal and orchestral casts, forms, melodic turns, genres, and the structure of an entity (a separate number, a scene). All is imbued with the composer's satirical treatment. The music stylized after one of the European operas is suddenly invaded by the deliberately inopportune harmonic devices borrowed from another style, such as semitonal shifts, cross relations, and parallel clusters. The opera contains the quotations from Weber (his operas Oberon and Der Freischütz), Martin Luther's chorale, and the Baroque passus duriusculus used to express one's torments and death, which has also become one of the operatic cliches.

His second composition for the theatre, the chamber opera-farce Ah, ces russes, written expressly for the festival of Russian music held in 1993 in Evian (France), is stylized after Rossini. The libretto by Irina Maslennikova, a famous Russian singer, in the past — soloist of the Bolshoi Theater, tells about the adventures of new Russian "businessmen" in France. Its stage production was directed by Boris Pokrovsky.

It is a noteworthy fact that Tarnopolsky's both operas were inspired and commissioned by the two outstanding musicians of our time: the first one by Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the second by Mstislav Rostropovich. However the composer is inclined to be quite skeptical in his attitude to these two works calling them "light music" and entertaining operettas in which case he had to confine himself to stylization and employment of foreign musical material. Anyway, irrespective of such critical appraisal of his own work, it does credit to the composer's proficiency, for his operas proved to be most spectacular and inventive.

The compositions written within a decade following his graduation from the Conservatory could be united into a single period in his creative work, which is defined by Vladimir Tarnopolsky as culturological. What does the composer mean by this term? In the first place, he implies that the music written by him during that period sheds a fresh light on the cultural realities and symbols of the past centuries. Symbols play an essential part in it, though these symbols belong not to our times but date back to the other cultural periods. The best compositions written during that period in his life — Choral Prelude, Psalmus poenitentialis and Troïsti muziki — turned out to be further unified by the composer's conception to write four opuses devoted to different world religions — Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy.

His Choral Prelude was written for the Ensemble of the Instrumental Soloists of the Bolshoi Theater and dedicated to its art director — Alexander Ivashkin. The visual imagery of its music is associated with Passions of Jesus Christ inherent in the old-time chorales: derision, castigation, betrayal, imprisonment, humiliations, tortures, and execution. The Prelude is based on the 16th-century Protestant chorale Jesu, deine tiefen Wunden. The traditional idea underlying the genre of choral prelude of commenting upon the chorale's text with a view to producing the expressive effect of castigation has found its instrumental theatrical manifestation in this case. Protestantism is often associated with naturalistic expression of feelings, which acquires its theatrical aspect making the first layer in this composition. In the course of their playing two percussionists move from the backstage towards the conductor depicting castigation in various forms (by beating on their hands and on the instruments). The conductor himself eventually becomes an "object" of castigation (he is to be "hammered in"), stopping dead in the posture of the crucified Jesus Christ. The theatrical element is explained here by the need to carry through the idea of musical commentary to its logical end.

The second, antagonistic, layer is represented by the string trio (Trinity). Trinity means unity. Hence the violin and the cello are carrying on a mirror canon around the note F-sharp (up to the culmination point, then a simple canon; the viola has a free voice). The third layer is presented by the wind instruments engaged mainly in playing the chorale.

On the whole, the form of Vladimir Tarnopolsky's Choral Prelude is based on the crescendo principle, with its dynamics developing through a gradual ascending "growth" to a sharp rupture at the end.

The elevated repentance as the epitome of Catholicism is embodied in Tarnopolsky's Choral Concerto with solo violin, Psalmus poenitentialis (Psalm of Repentance) set to the text of Psalm 31 (in Latin). The composer offers a fresh interpretation of the old-time genre, drawing on the canonical type of responsorio. Canons are extended onto different levels: from separate elements of musical texture to the entire form. The following three principal layers are identified in this psalm: the first one pertains to the recurrences in its movements (each next movement repeats the material from the previous one); the second layer involves the responsive development in two extended movements of the form (the first movement recurs as a response in the second movement), and the third, minor, layer presents the canons and imitations of the musical material as it were, based on the psalmody-like vocabulary.

In this case the pitch centred at the note E-flat serves as an element of culturological symbolism. Vladimir Tarnopolsky views it as a special symbol of St. Trinity (three flats).

This psalm was performed in London and Oxford in 1990 by the "Schola Cantorum of Oxford" Choir.

The Piano Trio entitled Troïsti muziki⁵ stands apart in Vladimir Tarnopolsky's creative work. Written in a free folk improvisatory manner, this trio in its style combines in equal measure folklore and minimal music, i.e. what is quite alien to the composer in general. The piano is prepared a la cymbals with the help of pencils placed on its strings, with the string players seeming to be engaged in amateur music-making. In his remarks to this piece the composer writes: "The pressure of the bow onto the string should be so light as to make it possible to discern overtones along with the clear-cut tones." His instructions stipulate that the musicians are to play on the bridge, sul ponticello arising as if by chance, with the musician's finger suddenly slipping into the wrong octave; all such devices are taken into consideration: "The score provides for all the details as regards the musical material. Nevertheless, the musicians should give an impression as if they were grouping for their way; this composition is just a draft, opus non finita". It starts with a long tuning up of the strings, imperceptibly becoming part of the music, then recurring again. By the end of this trio the violin is changed for the viola and tuned up once again.

Symbolism inherent in the culturological period of Vladimir Tarnopolsky's creative work manifests itself in this case in the fact that the entire trio is sustained in G minor. The note "G" (sol) is the key sound here; incidentally, in the Russian language the word "sol" has one more meaning, which is fully explicit in the frequently used expression "the salt of the earth."

In the finale the instrumentalists along with their playing sing in simple voices "Hymn to Christian Poverty" by Grigorij Skovoroda, the Ukrainian 18th-century philosopher and poet. The profound symbolic message of this hymn lies in that poverty is one of the key philosophical concepts in the Orthodox teaching: "Oh poverty, the heaven gift! You are cherished by any sacred and honest person"⁶.

Vladimir Tarnopolsky's "culturological decade" also includes his vocal instrumental cycle Brooklyn Bridge or My Discovery of America for soprano, tenor and instrumental ensemble set to the texts of Vladimir Mayakovsky's poetic cycle written during the poet's stay in the USA. In this case the composer has also resorted to some traditional symbols, though borrowed not from the time-hallowed philosophical or religious concepts of life but from the more recent realities. The underlying idea is to reveal something common between the Soviet, Russian and American ways of life. This idea is embodied, among other things, through a constant mixture of two languages – English and Russian, and the use of slang (its fourth part, "American Russians," depicts the Russian emigrants, their milieu and daily talks). The first section ("Brooklyn Bridge") incorporates the U.S. anthem and the national anthem of the former U.S.S.R. delivered in turn and clinging to one another, for example, the beginning of the Soviet anthem is followed by a cadence from the American anthem, and then both played in counterpoint. The composer sarcastically combines some elements of jazz (a symbol of the USA) and the free-and-easy Russian tavern songs, the bayan playing, a chorus of instrumentalists (in the second section, "Prohibition"), and a typewriter used here as a musical instrument.

This composition was written expressly for the "Making Music Together" Festival in Boston to be presented as concluding item at its closing concert, which partly explains its somewhat spectacular style.

The culturological period in Vladimir Tarnopolsky's creative work ended in the early 1990s, as the composer himself believes, with his trio The Echoes of a Past Day for clarinet, cello and piano, though it still carried some culturological moments. It is a kind of musical fantasia on the themes of James Joyce. The trio closes with the last phrases borrowed from his world-famous psychological novel Ulysses, whispered by the instrumentalists. The trio's ending delivered in a whisper is the key to the entire composition, coming as an outcome of the ideas propounded by Joyce. Whispering is not a theatrical device, it is used here to produce a sonoristic effect, for fifty percent of the composition has been built up on noises and subtle reverberations.

Moreover, the key idea of James Joyce is the stream of consciousness. Before just falling asleep in his heroine's mind there arise some isolated events from her past and remembrances of her lover. Tarnopolsky's Trio also represents a kind of such stream of consciousness. To quote the composer, "I was striving to exclude as much as possible my self-control and a priori reasoning and to engage the mechanism of the subconscious." In this respect of great interest is the closing section when the musi-cians, passing on to mere imitation of their music-making (the clarinetist plays without the mouthpiece, the cellist upon having reversed his instrument plays on the back side of its body and the finger board, and the pianist closes the lid of his instrument and goes on playing on it), at the same time start uttering last phrases from Joyce's novel: I put my arms around him and his heart was going like mad and.... Yes I said Yes I will Yes ...

During his work on this trio Tarnopolsky was touring Western Europe (Germany and Great Britain included). And the associations arising spontaneously in his musical subconscious were highly important to him. Those associations found their manifestation in some words and set expressions that came to be interwoven into the musical texture in the process of its development to become the substantive symbols and emerging in the stream of musical consciousness, outlining the reference points in the train of the composer's thought. Thus, beginning with Fig. 16 the players, in a march-like rhythm, repeat two words rechts-links. At first they recite the text with their lips half opened in a low register, and the last words are pronounced in a high register. To all appearances, the march rechts-links turned out to symbolize a German order. Before Fig. 28 the players unexpectedly ask the perpetual Russian question "What is to be done?" For the tonal development of the Trio major importance also attaches to the descending minor seconds, gradually arising from the obscure and shapeless sonoristic block of the exposition and then growing into the initial phrasing of Beethoven's piano piece To Elise (by the way, Tarnopolsky dedicated his Trio to the cellist Elise Wilson).

Tarnopolsky is convinced that his Trio The Echoes of a Past Day has concluded a major stage in his creative career. In contrast to the earlier period in his life when he felt confined in the linguistic aspects (in addition to the subject-matter) to the cultures he tackled in his music, afterwards he has been trying to depart from the linguistic cliches, retaining only the symbols indispensable for giving tangible and definite form to his musical ideas.

Cassandra for chamber ensemble is a composition of exceptional importance for Vladimir Tarnopolsky, for it proved to become a landmark and usher in a new period in his creative work. The character of this piece may be defined as the heartrending and touching state of a tragic prophecy. According to the composer himself, in it he was aspiring to produce something unyielding to any formal traits, something more intuitive than his earlier written opuses.

Cassandra and The Echoes of a Past Day are illustrative of two opposite trends that could be observed in Vladimir Tarnopolsky's artistic thinking in recent years. These trends involve two types of material, forms and techniques, and even in a broader context, two types of music.

The first trend involves the independent, so to speak, natural development of musical material in a way similar to organic outgrowth. The most revealing example is the development of the basic chord in Cassandra, which passes through many qualitative estates: at first it is just taking shape, then undergoes a prolonged arpeggio treatment, coming in Fig. 11 to the chordal exposition as it were, and ultimately it dies down. From the point of development principles, it represents variations on a single chord. The composer characterizes his first trend in the following words: "wanted to slacken the reins, let this material go on its own, developing anywhere, detaching itself and disseminating, all of this in the purely physiological sense producing an acoustic magma through its recurrences and transformation."

The second trend is based on the opposite idea: the musical material is not spreading about on its own to find its channel, but some conceptualistic ideas seem to be pressing on it (meaning some concrete impulses, rather a general conception). In The Echoes of a Past Day the musical impulses seem to arise not from within the material but exclusively in the composer's mind. Tarnopolsky calls this method "a psychogram calling primarily for the use of the collage technique."

The above two trends find their embodiment in different types of musical texture. On the one hand, Tarnopolsky's strong point lies in harmony, its richness, colorfulness and full sonority. And in Cassandra, too, the composer elaborates on polyphonic chordal blocks. On the other hand, his soundscape comes to embrace all kinds of rustles, reverberations and some elements of concrete sounds. At the same time the musical and extramusical factors are not juxtaposed but merge together to create a common scale of musical development, as it is explicitly done in his trio The Echoes of a Past Day.

Naturally enough, the composer's creative quests are not confined to the above delineated trends, for his works are quite diverse in their style. However so far his preference for the trend outlined in Cassandra is quite obvious, which found its manifestation in Amorettofor soprano and chamber ensemble to the verses by Edmund Spenser, and in his piece Eindruck-Ausdruck with its aleatory cadence in the finale.

Rather unusual in this sense is the composition Welt voll Irsinn for recitalist and orchestra to the text by German Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. The composer transfers on a musical stage dramatic realities of Russian social life in 1993 — noise of crowd, shouts of demonstrators, sounds of loudspeakers and etc., finding in absurdist poems, which shout the musicians from the orchestra, direct parallels with our today's situation: "In image and in the purely structural plan I was interested here in making balance between pure accident and complete determination, just as our society balanced between chaos and dictatorship".

Nevertheless, Vladimir Tarnopolsky occasionally reveals some unexpected twists in his style as, for instance, in his piece for instrumental ensemble O, Pärt — op art, a kind of allusion to the music by Arvo Pärt, who left Estonia for permanent residence in the West. It is no accident that the title of this serene and short piece associates the name of this composer with the word-combination "op art" (optical art). On the one hand, Tarnopolsky employs here the minimalist technique, which is so characteristic of Arvo Pärt's style. The entire piece is built up exclusively on the C minor triad stated in the pointillistic manner with a great number of rests in-between the phrases. On the other hand, these three notes are rotated assuming various shapes like it happens in the op-art installations exposing an object under varied angles.

The major events in Vladimir Tarnopolsky's personal life in recent years include his participation in the activities carried out by the Association of Modern Music, which was founded in 1990 and headed since then by Edison Denisov⁷; his teaching of composition and harmony at the Moscow Conservatory; and numerous trips and commission from different performing bodies (Cassandra was written for the Modern Ensemble of Frankfurt, The Echoes of a Past Day for the Chameleon British Trio; he is currently writing a children's composition for recitalist and orchestra on a commis-sions from the Roald Dahl Foundation). On his initiative at the Moscow Conservatory in 1993 the New Music Society, ensemble New Music Studio and annual International music festival Moscow forum were organized.

Vladimir Tarnopolsky's music is quite familiar to the musical communities in Germany, Great Britain, USA, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. His compositions are performed at major music festivals⁸. In 1989, following the Almeida Festival in London, the BBC Russian Agency transmitted a radio programme devoted to Vladimir Tarnopolsky, and this profile made a point of his vivid style not to be lost among the other eminent composers from Moscow. In May 1994, after the perform-ance of his The Breath of Exhausted Time for full symphony orchestra at the 4th Münchener Biennale Vladimir Tarnopolsky was rated as "a discovery of the festival" (Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 13,1994). In this slow and quiet composition in the esoteric style the composer is looking for new approaches to the orchestra (in addition to the traditional instruments, in this case use has been made of the electronic section comprising two synthesizers and two electric guitars), as well as to the problem of musical time. He writes in his foreword: "Music was born from breath. Breath is the first manifestation of life and also its last. On a boundless scale it is involuntarily thought that Time has its breath, huge phases of which we are not capable of comprehending, and today it seems that its important period is exhausted." The image of exhausted time produces a hypnotic effect on the listeners and opens up new prospects in Vladimir Tarnopolsky's creative work.