Nikolai Obukhov was a Russian composer born in the province of Kursk, in 1892. His musical education firstly took place at the Moscow Conservatory, where for two years he studied piano and counterpoint, before then enrolling in St. Petersburg Conservatoire in 1913 under the tutelage of Maksimilian Steinberg and Nicolas Tcherepnin, both former students of Rimsky-Korsakov, coming from a lineage steeped in traditional Russian nationalist styles. Obukhov showed great originality in diverging from the aesthetic of his teachers by starting from an early age to compose in an experimental style and developing his own dodecaphonic musical language.1
Around this time, the Russian avant-garde generation was enjoying a period of freedom and experimentalism, in an artistic environment characterized by the coexistence of many different currents and aesthetics. Obukhov was, in fact, not only one of the pioneers in exploring twelve-tone systems, along with fellow Russians Nicolas Roslavets, Arthur Lourié and Efim Golyshev, but he was experimenting with notation and electronic instruments as well. Yet, this vanguardist surge was short-lived. Many of these composers were soon to be forgotten, when shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, these kinds of innovations were considered too “decadent”, and in such an unstable period, exile from Russia was a widespread phenomenon. Richard Taruskin points out how drastic this rapidly shifting situation concerning what was political acceptable really was:
In Russia, Scriabin’s luxuriant musical style was much imitated for a while. By 1931, however, only sixteen years after Scriabin’s death, Dmitry Shostakovich, the leader of the younger generation of what by then were called Soviet composers (educated after the Russian Revolution of 1917), frankly called him ‘our bitterest musical enemy.’2
In the case of Obukhov, Alexander Scriabin was not only an influence musically, but most importantly mystically as well. Obukhov was profoundly religious, and the principles of Russian Symbolism, not only embodied by Scriabin, but also by poet Konstantin Balmont and philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, were particularly appealing to him and deeply influenced his vision of art and music.
Already in Obukhov’s early piano works, the first of which were composed in 1913, it is possible to notice Scriabin's middle and late works as a main influence. Obukhov’s dodecaphonic system, also called “absolute harmony”, was characterized by the principle of equality among the twelve tones of the chromatic scale, and by the non-repetition of notes; however, as the name suggests, his dodecaphony was characteristically expressed harmonically, in the use of twelve-tone harmonic complexes. His piano music, mostly miniatures, is composed of crystalline sonorities and non-static but fluid and organic developments, and with a constant build-up of tension. Seeing himself as a continuator of Scriabin, Obukhov can also be considered as the missing link to Messiaen.
Along with his chromatic harmonic language, in 1915 he also finalized his own simplified notation system, where flats and sharps were abolished and where all the tones corresponding to the piano's black keys were replaced by the sign of a cross on the noteheads. He would later theorize this dodecaphonic system in his book Traite d’harmonie tonale, atonale et totale in 1947, for which Arthur Honegger wrote the foreword.
In 1916, some of Obukhov early works were presented publicly for the first time in an evening concert dedicated to young Russian composers, organized by the Russian music journal Musykal’ny Sovremennik, but this would be the only time his music was to be performed in his home country during his lifetime. Soon, like many others, in 1918 at the age of 26, Obukhov, his wife and two children, would leave Russia, fleeing from the political instability and preambles of civil war, eventually arriving in Paris, France in 1919, where they would settle permanently.
It is around the age of 22 years old that Obukhov starts working on his most vast and ambitious work. Having arrived in Paris, Obukhov encountered financial struggles until he sought out Maurice Ravel for advice, to whom he shows his drafts from Le Livre de vie. Having shown some interest in his work, Ravel manages to get Obukhov integrated in a network that would provide him with publishing opportunities and a steady source of income, allowing him to dedicate himself fully to Le Livre de Vie, which he did, until the end of his life, in Paris 1954.
Like many Russians from the avant-garde, Obukhov stills awaits a rediscovery, not only in performance spheres but in scholarly investigations as well. Having lived in France for the majority of his life, and during the most relevant time of his professional career, all of Obukhov’s manuscripts are in Paris in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Many of his music still remains unpublished, but Editions Henry Lemoine have edited two orchestral pieces and a volume of all his piano works.
