Ussachevsky, Vladimir

(Alexis), innovative Russian-born American composer; b. Hailar, Manchuria, Nov. 3, 1911; d. N.Y., Jan. 2, 1990. Ussachevsky's parents settled in Manchuria shortly after the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. His father was an officer of the Russian army, and his mother was a professional pianist.

In 1930 Ussachevsky moved to the U.S. and settled in California, where he took private piano lessons with Clarence Mader. From 1931 to 1933 he attended Pasadena Junior College, and in 1933 he received a scholarship to study at Pomona College, earning his B.A. degree in 1935. He then enrolled in the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., in the composition classes of Howard Hanson, Bernard Rogers, and Edward Royce, earning his M.A. degree in 1936 and his Ph.D. three years later. He also had some instruction with Burrill Phillips.

In 1942, as an American citizen, Ussachevsky was drafted into the U.S. Army. Thanks to his fluency in Russian, his knowledge of English and French, and the ability to communicate in rudimentary Chinese, he was engaged in the Intelligence Division. He subsequently served as a research analyst at the War Department in Washington, D.C.

Ussachevsky then pursued postdoctoral work with OTTO LUENING at Columbia University, joining its faculty in 1947 and serving as a professor of music there from 1964 to 1980. In 1959 Ussachevsky was one of the founders of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. He was active as a lecturer at various exhibitions of electronic sounds, and also traveled frequently to Russia and in China to present his music. He held two Guggenheim fellowships (1957, 1960), and in 1973 was elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters. After leaving Columbia, he was a faculty member at the University of Utah until 1985.

Ussachevsky's early works were influenced by Russian church music, in the tradition of PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY and SERGEI RACHMANINOFF. A distinct change came in 1951, when he became interested in ELECTRONIC MUSIC. TO this period belong his works Transposition, Reverberation, Experiment, Composition and Underwater Valse, which make use of electronic sound. In 1952 LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI conducted in N.Y. the first performance of Ussachevsky's Sonic Contours, in which a piano part was metamorphosed with the aid of various electronic devices. About that time he began a fruitful partnership with Luening, with whom he composed Incantation for TAPE RECORDER, which was broadcast in 1953.

Luening and Ussachevsky then conceived the idea of combining electronic tape sounds with conventional instruments played by musicians. The result was Rhapsodic Variations, first performed in N.Y. in 1954. The work anticipated by a few months the composition of the important SCORE Déserts by EDGARD VARÈ SE, which effectively combined electronic sound with other instruments.

The next work by Ussachevsky and Luening was A Poem in Cycles and Bells for tape recorder and orchestra, first performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1954. In 1956 Ussachevsky and Luening provided taped background for Shakespeare's King Lear, produced by Orson Welles, at the N.Y. City Center, and for Margaret Webster's production of Back to Methuselah for the N.Y. Theater Guild in 1958.

In 1960 LEONARD BERNSTEIN conducted the N.Y. Philharmonic in a commissioned work by Ussachevsky and Luening entitled Concerted Piece for tape recorder and orchestra. They also provided the electronic score for the documentary The Incredible Voyage, broadcast over the CBS television network in 1965. Among works that Ussachevsky wrote for electronic sound on his own were A Piece for tape recorder in 1956 and Studies in Sound, Plus in 1959.

In 1968 Ussachevsky began experimenting with a computer-assisted SYNTHESIZER. One of the works resulting from these experiments, Conflict (1971), is intended to represent the mystical struggle between two ancient deities.

In addition to purely electronic works and his collaborations with Luening, Ussachevsky composed several works for tape and ACOUSTIC instruments and/or voice. Among his incidental works for tape are To Catch a Thief (sound effects for the film; 1954), The Boy Who Saw Through (film; 1959), No Exit (film; 1962), and Mourning Becomes Electra (sound effects for the opera by M.D. Levy). He also composed conventional orchestral, chamber, and vocal pieces.