Arsenij Avraamov

Arseny Mikhaylovich Avraamov (born Krasnokutsky [Краснокутский], 10 or 22 April 1886, Maly Nesvetay, Russia - 19 May 1944, Moscow, USSR) was a Russian composer and theorist.

He studied theory at the music school attached to the Moscow Philharmonic Society with I.N. Protopopov and A.M. Koreshchenko (1908-11) and took private composition lessons with Sergey Taneyev. From 1910 he was active as a music critic under the pseudonym Ars and, having refused to fight in World War I, fled abroad in 1914 and worked, among other occupations, as a stoker and as a circus artist. Returning to Russia in 1917 he was appointed arts commissar of the RSFSR branch of Narkompros (1917-18) and took part in the formation of the Proletkul′t organization.

1923 found him working in Dagestan but in 1926 he returned to Moscow where he became involved in a number of activities: he participated in the creation of the first Russian films with sound (1929-34), he led a sound laboratory in the Cinematic Institute of Scientific Research (1932-3) and he lectured at the Moscow Conservatory on the history and theory of sound systems (1934). While living in Nal′chik (1935-41) he collected folk music of the peoples of the north Caucasus and wrote some compositions based on these materials. He later conducted the Russian Folk Chorus (1941-43).

During the early Soviet era many artists attempted to integrate technology and creativity; Avraamov's work typifies this trend. He invented a graphic-sonic art which was produced by drawing directly onto magnetic tape. He also sought to overcome equal temperament and tonality by his creation of an ‘ultrachromatic’ 48-tone system. This method was proposed in a thesis entitled Universal′naya sistema tonov (‘The Universal System of Tones’) and was realized in his demonstrations which took place in 1927 in Berlin, Frankfurt and Stuttgart.

Avraamov is considered a precursor of the musique concrète movement with his Simfoniya gudkov (‘Symphony of Factory Sirens’) which was performed in Azerbaijan in 1923 and later in Moscow.