Alexeï Stanchinsky (1888–1914)
A young Russian composer who died at twenty-six, whose piano pieces, between Scriabin and modernism, explore canons, old modes and irregular metres.
Alexei Stanchinsky studied in Moscow, notably composition and counterpoint with Sergei Taneyev, a great master of learned writing. His contemporaries saw him as one of the most promising talents of his generation.
His life was short and troubled: he suffered from serious mental illness and died in 1914, aged twenty-six. His output, almost entirely for piano, fills only a few pages: sketches, preludes, preludes in canon form, sonatas.
His language starts from Scriabin but looks ahead: tight counterpoint, old modes (such as the Lydian mode), asymmetrical metres of five or seven beats, influences of Russian folk song. Some hear in it anticipations of Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
For pianists his short pieces are a fine discovery: they require great clarity of voices and an understanding of modes beyond major and minor.
Piano sheet music (1)
- Prelude in Lydian Mode · level 6