Oulibicheff, Alexander Dmitrievich
Oulibicheff, Alexander Dmitrievich
Oulibicheff, Alexander Dmitrievich, Russian government official and writer on music; b. Dresden, April 13, 1794; d. Lukino, near Nizhny-Novgorod, Feb. 5, 1858. He studied violin at home in Dresden, where his father was Russian ambassador, and then was educated in Germany. When the family returned to Russia in 1810, he was employed in the Ministry of Finance (1812), and later in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1816–30). He was the ed. of the periodical Journal de St. Petersbourg (1812–30); retired to his estate at Lukino in 1841. Oulibicheff’s greatest admiration was for Mozart, which resulted in his magnum opus, Nouvelle biographie de Mozart, suivie d’un aperçu sur l’histoire générale de la musique et de l’analyse des principales oeuvres de Mozart (3 vols., Moscow, 1843; second Ger. tr., Stuttgart, 1859; Russian tr., Moscow, 1890). By way of praising Mozart, he inserted deprecating remarks on Beethoven’s later style; when he was taken to task for this lack of appreciation (by Lenz and others), he publ. Beethoven, ses critiques et ses glossateurs (Leipzig and Paris, 1857), in which he emphatically reiterated his sharp criticism of Beethoven’s harmonic and formal procedures.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire