Eduard Nikolaevich Artemyev (30 November 1937 - 29 December 2022) was a Russian electronic and film score composer. He became interested in electronic music in the 1960s, when the genre had just begun. He subsequently went on to become one of Russia's most renowned composers.
Works to which Artemyev has composed music:
- A Quiet Day at the End of the War (1970, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)
- Solaris (1972, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
- At Home Among Strangers (1974, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)
- The Mirror (1975, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
- Slave of Love (1976, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)
- Stalker (1979, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
- Siberiade (1979, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky)
- When Do Whales Leave? (1981, dir. Anatoly Nitochkin)
- Moon Rainbow (1983, dir. Vladimir Karpichev and Andrei Yermash)
- TASS Is Authorized To Declare (1984 TV miniseries, dir. Vladimir Fokin)
- Courier (1987, dir. Karen Shakhnazarov)
- Homer and Eddie (1988, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky)
- Autostop (1990, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)
- The Inner Circle (1991, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky)
- Double Jeopardy (1992, dir. Lawrence Schiller)
- Burnt by the Sun (1994, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)
- The Barber of Siberia (1994, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)
- Doctor Zhivago (2006, remake by Alexander Proshkin)
- The Nutcracker in 3D (2010, dir. Andrei Konchalovsky)
- Sunstroke (2014, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)
Tropes relating to Artemyev's music:
- Associated Composer: For Andrei Konchalovsky, Nikita Mikhalkov, and Andrei Tarkovsky. Especially for Mikhalkov.
- Ambient: All three of Artemyev's soundtrack commissions for Andrei Tarkovsky qualify as such. The music for Solaris in particular consists largely of minimalist drones rendered on the ANS synthesizer
, an early photoelectric analog synthesizer, while the music from Stalker features a blend of natural sounds, railroad noises, processed traditional instruments, and synth drones which all interact to the point where they become indistinguishable from each other. - Cult Soundtrack: Artemyev was one of those composers whose entire filmography had a cult following, but his soundtrack commissions for Andrei Tarkovsky especially qualified.
- Electronic Music: Artemyev first became interested in the genre in the early 1960s, and soon went on to become one of Russia's greatest masters thereof.
- Ethereal Choir: Artemyev's score for Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror has a lot of this going on, contributing greatly to the film's abstract, stream of consciousness-like tone.
- Rearrange the Song: Rearranged Bach's "Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ" into the theme from Solaris. Later on his own theme for Siberiade was rearranged by PPK into the trance hit "Resurrection".
- Recycled Soundtrack: "Fire" from Artemyev's 1984 album Moods was later re-used as the Nazgul theme in the 1991 Soviet Lord of the Rings adaptation The Keepers. Because of this, it is sometimes referred to by fans as the "Ringwraith Rave".
