Vyacheslav Petrovich Artyomov (; born June 29, 1940, in Moscow) is a Russian and Soviet composer. Biography Artyomov was preparing to become a physicist, studying music at the same time. He finished studying at the musical college affiliated to the Moscow Conservatory (composition class of A. Pirumov), then graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1968, where he studied composition with Nikolai Sidelnikov and piano with Tovi Logovinsky. He became a member of the Union of Soviet Composers and Association for Contemporary Music (ACM). He was active as an editor at the Moscow publishers "Musyka" for several years. In 1975, he joined the improvisation group "Astreya", together with the composers Sofia Gubaidulina and Viktor Suslin. 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. His music was performed by M.Rostropovich, G.Rozhdestvensky, D.Kytaenko, V.Fedoseyev, M.Pletnyov, V.Spivakov, T.Currentzis, Virko Baley, D.Alexeev, S.Bunin, F.Kopachevsky, L.Isakadze, T.Grindenko, Yo-Yo Ma, A.Rudin, O.Yanchenko, L. Petrova. Music Artyomov's compositions show his interest in the archaic ("Incantations", "Totem") and Christian motifs ("Requiem", "Ave, Maria") as well as Eastern meditation ("Awakening", "A Symphony of Elegies", "Moonlight Dreams"). As a young composer, he developed a profound interest, successively, in Russian folklore, traditional music of the East, works of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Messiaen, and the Polish avant-garde. But it was Arthur Honegger's Symphonie Liturgique, as well as the works of Edgar Varèse and Sinfonia by Luciano Berio that made the greatest and most lasting impression on him. Artyomov considers music a science – concentration of soul experience – and, side by side with astrophysics, – one of two main fundamental sciences: astrophysics broaden the horizon of knowledge of the universe, and music exposes the profundity and strength of human's spirit, his interconnection with the World's Soul (Anima Mundi). Music is "a mediator between God and man", "a concentrate of spiritual energy, which should awaken man's ethical understanding and purify his soul" (Foundation of the Philosophy of Music). "Artyomov would appear to be just the sort of composer whose appearance is especially timely at this point in the life of his country ... His music and his artistic outlook in general reflect the questing for a new order of spiritual values as well as a new regard for individuality." (Richard Freed. Kennedy Center Stagebill, September 1990) "What we are witnessing