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(Book by Nabokov, Nicolas)
Book by Nabokov, Nicolas
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Nicolas Nabokov was born on April 17, 1903 in Novogrudok, Russia (now Belarus). He was the son of Dmitri Dmitrievich Nabokov and Lydia von Falz-Fein. His influential family included an uncle who had served as a liberal member of the Russian Duma and the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who was a first cousin.
Nabokov received his early education at the Imperial Lyceum in St. Petersburg (1911). After studying under Vladimir Ivanovich Rebikov in St. Petersburg and Yalta (1913 - 1920), he attended the Stuttgart Conservatory (1920 - 1922) and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1922 - 1923), where he studied under Paul Juon and Ferruccio Busoni. He earned the degree of license ès letters in 1926 from the Sorbonne in Paris.
In 1933 Nabokov traveled to the United States, where on invitation from the Barnes Foundation, he delivered a series of lectures on European music. Remaining in the United States, Nabokov became professor of music history, music theory, and composition, and chair of the department of music at Wells College in Aurora, New York, a position he held from 1936 to 1941. He taught at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland from 1941 to 1944 and was professor of composition at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore from 1943 to 1945 and from 1947 to 1951.
He had become an American citizen in 1939.
In 1947 he was editor in chief of the Russian Broadcast Unit of the Voice of America.
He later served as secretary-general of the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1951 to 1963 and adviser for internal cultural affairs to the mayor of West Berlin and the Berlin Senate from 1963 to 1978.
Nabokov served as composer-in-residence and adviser on arts at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in Colorado from 1969 to 1978. He lectured on aesthetics at the State University of New York in Buffalo from 1970 to 1971 and at New York University from 1972 to 1973. He also taught at the American Academy in Rome and at the City University of New York.
Nabokov contributed to modern cultural consciousness through his many efforts as an organizer and supervisor of music festivals throughout the world. He is best known for his work on behalf of the internationalization of world music. He organized "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (Paris, 1952), "Music in Our Time" (Rome, 1954), and "East-West Music Encounter" (Tokyo, 1961). He was artistic director of the Berlin Music Festival from 1963 to 1968 and served as adviser to the Festival of Israel. Later he was appointed to establish a regular festival in Iran called the Teheran Biennale. Nabokov's compositional style incorporated Russian folk melodies and rhythms that were blended with compositional procedures of a generally universal character. He communicated many of his views on music in such publications as Old Friends and New Music (1951), a book of essays and memoirs; Igor Stravinsky (1964); and Bag zh: Memoirs of a Russian Cosmopolitan (1975).
His output included two operas; three symphonies; flute and piano concertos; vocal, choral, and orchestral concert pieces; and five ballets. His compositions include his first major work for chorus, an oratorio entitled Job (1933), which comprises fifteenth- and sixteenth-century monophonies of a dramatic character. Nabokov's ballets include Ode; or, Meditation at Night on the Majesty of God, as Revealed by Aurora Borealis, which was produced by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1928, and Union Pacific, produced in Philadelphia in 1934. Ode, based on a poem by the eighteenth-century Russian poet and scientist Lomonosov, is eclectic in style, containing arias, duets, choruses, and instrumental interludes and focusing on both the poetry and the deism of eighteenth-century Russia. To accentuate such themes, he highlighted simple elements, using an economy of music materials in a manner similar to that of Mikhail Glinka. Union Pacific emphasizes folk elements through the combination of American popular and folk tunes and takes as its subject the history of the transcontinental railroad. Perhaps his best-known ballet score was Don Quixote, which he composed for George Balanchine and the New York City Ballet in 1965.
In his later years Nabokov divided his time between New York and Paris; he died in New York City.
Nabokov was adviser for cultural affairs for the United States military government in Germany from 1945 to 1947, serving as deputy chief of film, theatre, and music control for Germany. He was coordinator of interallied negotiations for information media and special adviser to Ambassador Robert D. Murphy on Cultural and Russian Matters. He was decorated with the Grand Cross Order of Merit of West Germany and the Chevalier Legion of Honor of France.
(Book by Nabokov, Nicolas)
On March 23, 1970, he married Dominique Cibiel; they had no children.
