Ivan Dzerzhinsky

Ivan Ivanovich Dzerzhinsky (Russian: Иван Иванович Дзержинский; 9 April 1909 (O. S 27 March)–18 January 1978) was a Russian composer. The work for which he best known, his opera Quiet Flows the Don (Tikhiy Don), was more successful for its political potential than for any musical distinction.

Born in Tambov, Dzerzhinsky had an extended formal background in music. He studied piano with Boleslav Yavorsky at the First Music Tekhnikum in Moscow between 1925 and 1929. Afterwards he spent 1930–31 at the Gnesin School as a composition student of Mikhail Gnesin. Two years at the Leningrad Central Music Tekhnikum followed. There he studied composition first with Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov, then with Pyotr Borisovich Ryazanov. He then proceeded to the Leningrad Conservatory for two years of study with Boris Asafiev.

From 1936 Dzerzhinsky held important administrative positions in the Union of Soviet Composers as well as in party politics. In 1948 he was appointed to the central committee of the union. At various times after 1946, he acted as a deputy to the Leningrad City Soviet. He died in Leningrad in 1978.

Unlike Popov, Ryazanov and Asafiev, who were considered progressive in their musical outlook, Dzerzhinsky from the outset wrote works that were considered traditional. His First Piano Concerto, early songs and piano pieces were influenced by Grieg, Rachmaninoff and early Ravel. In the early 1930s he was influenced by Shostakovich's music, particularly in his Second Piano Concerto, which he wrote in 1934. (This piece was criticized officially much later.)

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