Ella Adayevskaya
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Ella Georgiyevna Adayevskaya (née Schultz) (February 10/22, 1846–July 26, 1926) was a Russian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. Adayevskaya was a pseudonym; the composer derived it from the notes A, D, and A, played by the kettledrum in Mikhail Glinka's opera Ruslan and Ludmila.
Life
A native of St. Petersburg, Adayevskaya began taking piano lessons with Adolf Henselt at the age of eight. From 1862 until 1866 she continued her studies with Anton Rubenstein and Alexander Dreyschock at the St. Petersburg Conservatory; later, she concertized in Russia and throughout Europe. She also studied composition with N. I. Zaremba and A. S. Famintsïn, and in about 1870 began writing music for the Imperial Chapel Choir. Two operas soon followed. The first, titled variously Neprigozhaya (The Homely Girl) and Doch' boyarina (The Boyar's Daughter), was a one-act piece produced in 1873. The more ambitious Zarya svobodï (The Dawn of Freedom) followed in 1877; this four-act work was dedicated by the composer to tsar Alexander II, but was rejected by the censor because it depicted a scene of a peasant uprising. Adayevskaya wrote one more opera, the comic Solomonida Saburova, but this remained in manuscript. In 1881, she composed her Greek Sonata for clarinet and piano. This piece, which used quarter tones, was inspired by the composer's study of the music of ancient Greece, the Greek Orthodox Church and Slavonic folk music.
Sometime around 1891 Adayevskaya moved to Venice, moving again, to Germany, in 1911; during this last move she was accompanied by her friend the Baroness von Loë. Together they joined the more liberal-minded artistic circle formed around the poet Carmen Sylvia. Adayevskaya's musical pursuits eventually came to be dominated by folk music research, which resulted in a substantial output of publications on the subject.
Adayevksaya died in Bonn in 1926.
Works
Operas
- Neprigozhaya (The Homely Girl)/Doch' boyarina (The Boyar's Daughter), 1873
- Zarya svobodï (The Dawn of Freedom), 1877
- Solomonida Saburova, unperformed
Vocal music
Yolka (The Fir Tree), cantata, c. 1870; also other choral works, songsChamber music
Svabednï khor (Wedding Chorus) overture, c. 1870 Greek Sonata for clarinet and piano, 1881 piano piecesReference
Brown, Malcolm Hamrick. "Adayevskaya (née Schultz), Ella Georgiyevna." The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel, eds. New York; London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995. p. 506.
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