Tumanov, Alexander. A Life in Music from the Soviet Union to Canada. Memoirs of a Madrigal Ensemble Singer. Editor & Translator Vladimir Tumanov. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2019. 448pp.
The musical career of Alexander Tumanov extends from Stalinist and Soviet Russia through contemporary Canada, and as such provides an inspiring portrait of one person’s devotion to his art under trying circumstances. Tumanov was a founding member of Moscow’s Madrigal Ensemble of early music, which introduced Renaissance and Baroque music to the Soviet Union. The Ensemble enjoyed tremendous popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, despite occasional official disapproval by the Soviet bureaucracy. At times the compositions of the group’s founder, Andrei Volkonsky, were banned. Volkonsky eventually emigrated to escape the oppressive conditions, followed soon after, in 1974, by Tumanov, and the Madrigal Ensemble continued in a changed form under new leaders. The story of the author's subsequent life and career in Canada provides a poignant point of contrast with his Soviet period — at the musical, academic, and political levels. This book is a valuable resource for those interested in the history of music and intellectual life in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century and is the first published book on the Madrigal Ensemble.
Fanfare Magazine 43:2 (Nov/Dec 2019)
"Like so many émigrés, Alexander Tumanov built a new life for himself and his family in a new country, and his story is one of dramatic vicissitudes. The first part of the book chronicles Tumanov’s childhood in the Soviet Union during World War II and the years following, including his early musical education. He paints a vivid portrait of the depravations endured by Soviet citizens, not just during the war but also more generally. [...]"
James V. Maiello, University of Manitoba.
BBC Music Magazine, October 2019.
This revelatory memoir covers a chapter in Soviet musical life too little known in the West. The pioneering early music ensemble Madrigal enjoyed huge success before being curtailed by the Soviet authorities. Indeed, after the USSR crushed the Prague Spring in 1968, the defiant Prague officials allowed only Madrigal and David Oistrakh to represent the USSR at their city’s next festival. The baritone Alexander Tumanov, a founding member, vividly recalls his own eventful life prior to 1964 when he was recruited to Madrigal by the charismatic, highly gifted yet erratic André Volkonsky.
By then silenced as a composer, Volkonsky saw early music as a refreshing alternative to the stultifying effects of Socialist Realism. Tumanov pays touching yet candid tribute to his colleagues in Madrigal, who under Volkonsky’s inspiring leadership enjoyed the most important chapter of their careers. Sadly, state-promoted anti-Semitism ultimately drove Tumanov and his family to Canada. Yet anyone interested in life and music under the Soviet regime will be intrigued and informed by this lucid yet remarkably good-humoured memoir.
Daniel Jaffé
Tumanov, Alexander. The Life and Artistry of Maria Olenina-D’Alheim. Translated from Russian by C. Barnes. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 2000. 359 pp.
"Most biographies describe history, but a rare few collapse it [sic] and Alexander Tumanov's is one. The subject of this facinating study, Maria Alekseevna Olenina-d'Alheim, b 1869, [who] studied voice in St. Ptersburg ... and [became] the most gifted performer of [Mussorgsky's] songs, at the age ninety-four was interviewed by Tumanov in Moscow. Tumanov was given access to her unpublished archive. His decision to stitch together a chronicle of her life out of her memoirs, correspondence, and others' reminscences was a wise one, and Christopher Barnes' translation catches perfectly the naivety [sic] and passionate stubbornness of [Olenina's] text." Caryl Emerson, University of Toronto Quarterly winter 2001/2002, Letters in Canada, vol 71:1
"As Alexander Tumanov shows in this insightful biography, Olenina-d'Alheim played a pivotal role in introducing the works of the so-called 'Mighty Handfull' at a time when they were virturally unknown outside Russia. Her interpretations of Mussorgsky in particular were electrifying and contributed to the composer being seen, like Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, as the epitome of the Russian character. Tumanov... punctuates narrative with quotations from interviews, memoirs, and correspondence with many of the leading musicians, composers, writers, and critics of her day. The book is also generously illustrated." Desmond Maley, CBRA
"It is not every day that one encounters a book that opens up a new field of interest, but such is Alexander Tumanov's deeply informative and admirably documented biography, The Life and Artistry of Maria Olenina-d'Alheim. Its subject is the singer who, more than any other person, was responsible for making Modest Mussorgsky's music known to the Western world. The book is a masterly survey of a little-explored facet of Russian musical culture, meticulously researched and documented by the author, and Christopher Barnes has provided an excellent, idiomatic English translation." Gerald R. Seaman, Notes, Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, June 2001
Alexander Tumanov has brought "to life the picture of a rebellious, talented artist of unbending principle, whose renown and service to Russian music in Europe in the pre-WWI era are rivaled only by her own growing obstinacy, [and] the quixotic nature of her political views . . . " Professor Caryl Emerson, Princeton University
"A performer who sacrificed her own creative life in order that the world should hear of the composer Mussorgsky. A great artist in her own right recognized by the best musicians of her age." Professor Efim Etkind, Sorbonne University
"Alexander Tumanov, who in the 1960's not only talked extensively with Olenina-d'Alheim but also sent some young singers to her for what were to be her final master classes, made use of those recorded conversations as well as of every other kind of archival material, including the singer's autobiographical manuscripts and letters. Confining his own text to short introductory and transitory passages, Tumanov lets speak mostly the singer herself, friends, and critics. His book first appeared in Russian in 1995.Now that an English translation is available, there is some hope that she will again become known to a wider public." Christoph Flamm, The Russian Review
"Olenina-d'Alheim is presented as a forgotten, creative, rebellious artist who had a major impact on the performance world. Extensive notes and index add a scholarly touch to this intriguing book about an early-20th-century singing artist. For graduate students, researchers, and faculty with an interest in Russian song literature and its impact on the West." R. Miller, Oberlin College, CHOICE
Available at - Amazon.ca
Available at - University of Alberta Press
Туманов, Александр Н. "Она и музыка, и слово..." Москва: Музыка, 1995 г. 392 с.
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Tumanov - Novy Mir 1995.pdf Size : 2964.661 Kb Type : pdf |
M. Olenina d'Alheim ca. 1969-70
Туманов, Александр. «Жизнь в музыке от Москвы до Канады: воспоминания солиста ансамбля "Мадригал"» Петербург: Алетейя, 2015 г. 312 с.
Education
MA Philology: Kharkov University, 1953
MA Music: Gnessin College of Music, 1963
PhD: University of Toronto, 1987
Thesis: A Comparative Analysis of Musico-Linguistic-Literacy Relations: Structural and Pedagogical Aspects.
Other Writings
"On the Use of Vocal Music in Language/Literature Teaching: A Structural Analysis of the Verbal Text and Music of B. Okudzhava's Ballad 'A Paper Soldier'." Russian Language Journal 147-149 (1990): 29-60.
"Merchant, Entrepreneur, and Profit in Russian Literature: The Russian Artistic Intelligenstia and Money." Ed. Anthony Purdy. Literature and Money. Amsterdam-Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993: 15-43.
"Edmonton's Elderly Soviet Immigrants." Ed. Tova Yedlin. Central and East European Ethnicity in Adaptation and Preservation. Edmonton, Alberta: Central and Eastern European Studies Society of Alberta, 1985: 43-62.
*with Robert L. Busch
"Music in L2 Pedagogy: A Comparative Analysis of Music and Language." Russian Language Journal 40 (136-137) 1986: 35-54.
"Music and Literary Text in S. Shostakovich's The Nose." Eds. Ziva Ben-Portal and Gerald Gilespie. The Force of Vision ICLA '91 Tokyo: Proceedings of the XIIIth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association. Tokyo: ICLA, 1993-94.
"В надежде славы и добра: Е. Эткинд." Ефим Эткинд: здесь и там. Санкт Петербург: Академический проект, 2004 г.: 564-573.
Шаги времени: автобиографические воспоминания Александра Туманова
Шаги времени: глава V - Мой университет. Заметки по еврейской истории 1 (136) 2011 г.
Articles in Sovetskaia Muzyka magazine
Статьи в журнале Советская музыка
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Tumanov A - Советская Музыка 06-1964.pdf Size : 6266.045 Kb Type : pdf |
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Tumanov A - Советская Музыка 03-1965.pdf Size : 1549.132 Kb Type : pdf |
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Tumanov A - Советская Музыка 05-1965.pdf Size : 3521.943 Kb Type : pdf |
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Tumanov A - Советская Музыка 10-1965.pdf Size : 1481.762 Kb Type : pdf |
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Tumanov A - Советская Музыка 02-1967.pdf Size : 4216.341 Kb Type : pdf |