Edison Vasilievich Denisov (April 6, 1929, Tomsk, Russia — November 24, 1996, Paris, France) was a russian composer of the so called “Underground” – “Anti-Collectivist,” “alternative” or “nonconformist” division in the soviet music.

Denisov was born in Tomsk, Siberia into the family of radio-physicist, who gave him the very unusual first name Edison, in honour of the great American inventor. He studied mathematics before deciding to spend his life composing. This decision was enthusiastically supported by Dmitri Shostakovich, who gave him instructions in composition.

In 1951-56 Denisov studied at the Moscow Conservatory — composition with Vissarion Shebalin, orchestration with Nikolai Rakov, analysis with Viktor Zuckerman and piano with Vladimir Belov. In 1956-59 he composed an opera Ivan-Soldat (Soldier Ivan) in three acts on a subject from Russian folk fairy tales.

He began his own study of scores, which were difficult to obtain in the USSR at that time, including music ranging from Mahler and Debussy to Boulez and Stockhausen. He wrote a series of articles giving a detailed analysis of different aspects of contemporary compositional techniques and at same time actively experimented as a composer trying to find his own way.

After graduating from the Moscow Conservatory he taught there orchestration and later composition. Among his pupils there were composers: Mark Minkov, Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova, Vladimir Tarnopolsky, Sergei Pavlenko, Ivan Sokolov, Bozhidar Spassov, Evgeni Kostitsyn, Juan Gutierrez, Yuri Kasparov, John Wolf Brennan, Olga Raeva, Anton Safronov, Alexandra Filonenko, Vadim Karasikov, Dmitri Kapyrin, Alexander Shchetinsky, etc.

In 1979 he was blacklisted as one of the "Khrennikov's Seven" at the Sixth Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers for unapproved participation in some festivals of Soviet music in the West.

Denisov became a leader of the ACM - Association for Contemporary Music reestablished in Moscow in 1990. Later Denisov moved to France, where after an accident and long illness he died in a Paris hospital in 1996.

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