Authority control databases
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Revol Bunin Револь Самуилович Бунин | |
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| Born | 6 April 1924 Moscow, USSR |
| Died | 3 July 1976 (aged 52) Moscow, USSR |
| Genres | classical music |
| Occupation(s) | composer |
| Labels | Melodiya, others |
Revol Samuilovich Bunin (Russian: Ре́воль Саму́илович Бу́нин; 6 April 1924, in Moscow – 3 July 1976, in Moscow) was a Soviet composer.
Bunin's father, Samuil Markovich, was a bolshevik, a member of the Communist Party from before the 1917 revolution and worked as a professor of social economics at one of the Moscow Institutes. Bunin was named "Revol" after the October Revolution.
Volik (as he was known) was six when he started to write music and he started by writing scores. In the 1930s in Soviet Union score paper was hard to find, so young Bunin would draw lines on plain paper for his compositions. He wrote marches, waltzes, minuets, and polkas.
Bunin's mother was always very ill, and died when he was 14, leaving his upbringing entirely in the hands of his father. When Bunin's mother was dying, she asked him to play the piano for her. He played Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Mussorgsky through the night. Next morning he had his first attack of asthma, a disease that would in the end kill him.
In 1938 Revol started his composition studies at the Music School of the Moscow Conservatory under Ilya Litinsky. During his third year of studies he was admitted to the Conservatory and continued under Vissarion Shebalin, who was, at the time, the Conservatory's director. In 1941, he was summoned first to work at the military factory in Moscow and then was drafted to an active duty. So that he could continue to attend his classes, given his musical gift, he was stationed near Moscow. He was decommissioned on the grounds of ill health in March 1943.
In June 1943 Shostakovich started to teach at the Moscow Conservatory and Bunin was the first student he selected to be his pupil. In his article "With great appreciation", published posthumously in the magazine Soviet Music in September 1976, Bunin wrote "... We were more and more conquered by Shostakovich's works. Secretly, I was dreaming of becoming his student. Finally, this happy day came on 7 June 1943, in classroom number 31... At the piano a friendly man, dressed in a gray-colored modest suit, wearing horn-rimmed spectacles. He looked very young, nothing like the old eminent scholars of the Conservatory. He asked me in detail how old I was, when I had started to compose, who were my teachers, whether I had studied polyphony and so on; he subjected me to a small exam – I had to read a Haydn symphony score, tell him what was the difference between a passacaglia and a chaconne, give examples, known to me, of a mirror reprise in symphonic allegro, and give examples for the use of French horns and trumpets in a rare formation (H, Fis). Shostakovich was interested to know if I read a lot and if I liked Chekhov and Leskov...”
For a while, Bunin was Shostakovich's only student. He graduated from the Conservatory in 1945 with honors. Shebalin could not forgive Bunin's defection to Shostakovich's class from his own and did not allow his name to be added to the "Golden Board" of exemplary students.
In 1947, Bunin moved to Leningrad, where he taught music arrangement at the Leningrad Conservatory and assisted Shostakovich as a co-professor of composition. In the same year, his 2nd Symphony was premiered in Leningrad, under the direction of Yevgeny Mravinsky.
In 1948, he moved back to Moscow and worked as an editor for the State Music Publishing House.
After a government decree set stringent regulations on music and art in the Soviet Union, Shostakovich was dismissed from his post of Professor at the Conservatory. Consequently, his assistant, Bunin, also lost his position and became, for a while, a persona non grata. He had to make his living by writing scores for other composers. His music won the Stalin Prize on several occasions, but Bunin’s name did not appear, nor was it mentioned to the selection committee.
Revol Bunin died on 3 July 1976 in Moscow. He was mourned by his wife, Larisa, his friends and many students. He had no children. He was never awarded State honors, for he refused to join the Communist Party, in contrast to many of his colleagues.
Bunin wrote music scores for 48 motion pictures, cartoons, and documentaries. He left 45 major compositions, including nine symphonies, numerous sonatas, quartets, trios, an opera, romances, and several concertos for both piano and violin. His Viola Concerto was composed in 1953 and dedicated to his close friend, violist Rudolf Barshai, who would later found and direct the Moscow Chamber Orchestra.