ALEXANDER TCHEREPNIN 1899 - 1977

Alexander Nikolayevich Tcherepnin (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Черепни́н; 21 January 1899 – 29 September 1977) was a Russian-born composer and pianist. His father, Nikolai Tcherepnin (pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov) was also a composer, as were his sons, Serge Tcherepnin and Ivan Tcherepnin and two of his grandsons (sons of Ivan), Sergei and Stefan. His son Serge was involved in the roots of electronic music and instruments. His mother was a member of the artistic Benois family, a niece of Alexandre Benois. His early works were fairly original and some of his pieces have enduring popularity. Wikipedia Bio

His output includes three operas, four symphonies, a divertimento (which is a symphony in all but name), six piano concertos, works for ballet, choral music, alto saxophone solo, and a large amount of solo piano music. His Symphony No. 1 (1927) is remarkable for including the first symphonic movement ever written completely for unpitched percussion; this preceded by four years Edgard Varèse's Ionisation of 1931 (Benjamin Folkman, cited in Wender 1999, 6). One of two symphonies left incomplete at his death would have been for percussion alone (Arias 2001). Tcherepnin invented his own harmonic languages. The most famous of his synthetic scales, derived by combining minor and major hexachords, has nine notes and consists of three conjunct semitone-tone-semitone tetrachords. This came to be known as the "Tcherepnin scale" (Slonimsky 1968, 19–20), and may be classified with Messiaen's modes of limited transposition.
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