Mieczysław Weinberg

Mieczysław Weinberg (also Moisey or Moishe Vainberg, Moisey Samuilovich Vaynberg; Russian: Моисей Самуилович Вайнберг; Polish: Mojsze [Mieczysław] Wajnberg; 8 December 1919 – 26 February 1996) was a Polish composer of Jewish origin. From 1939 he lived in the Soviet Union and Russia and lost most of his family in the Holocaust.

He left a large body of work that included twenty-two symphonies and seventeen string quartets.

Much confusion has been caused by different renditions of the composer's names. In official Polish documents (i.e. prior to his move to the USSR), his name was spelled as Mojsze Wajnberg, and in the world of Yiddish theater of antebellum Warsaw he was likewise known as Yiddish: משה װײַנבערג‎ (Moishe Weinberg). In the Russian language (i.e. after his move to the Soviet Union), he was and still is known as Russian: Моисей Самуилович Вайнберг (Moisey Samuilovich Vaynberg), which is the Russian-language analogue of the Polish original Mojsze, son of Samuel. Among close friends in Russia, he would also go by his Polish diminutive Mietek (i.e. Mieczysław).

Re-transliteration of his surname from Cyrillic (Вайнберг) back into the Latin alphabet produced a variety of spellings, including 'Weinberg', 'Vainberg', and 'Vaynberg'. The form 'Weinberg' is now being increasingly used as the most frequent English-language rendition of this common Jewish surname, notably in the latest edition of Grove and by Weinberg's biographer, Per Skans.

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