Vissarion Shebalin

Vissarion Yakovlevich Shebalin (Russian: Виссарио́н Я́ковлевич Шебали́н; 11 June [O.S. 29 May] 1902 – 29 May 1963) was a Soviet composer.

Shebalin was born in Omsk, where his parents were school teachers. He studied in the musical college in Omsk, and was also enrolled in the Institute of Agriculture. He was 20 years old when, following the advice of his professor, he went to Moscow to show his first compositions to Reinhold Glière and Nikolai Myaskovsky. Both composers thought very highly of his compositions. Shebalin graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1928. His diploma work was the 1st Symphony, which the author dedicated to his professor Nikolai Myaskovsky. Many years later his fifth and last symphony was dedicated to Myaskovsky's memory.

In the 1920s Shebalin was a member of the Association for Contemporary Music (ACM); he was a participant of the informal circle of Moscow musicians known as "Lamm's group", which gathered in the apartment of Pavel Lamm, a professor from the Moscow Conservatory.

After graduating from Moscow Conservatory, he worked there as a professor, and in 1935 became also a head of the composition class at the Gnessin State Musical College. In the very difficult years of 1942-48 he was a director of the Moscow Conservatory and the art director of the Central Musical School in Moscow. He fell victim to the Zhdanov purge of artists in 1948 and fell into obscurity afterwards. Among his students were Ester Mägi, Veljo Tormis, Lydia Auster, Edison Denisov,Grigory Frid,Tikhon Khrennikov, Karen Khachaturian, Aleksandra Pakhmutova, and others. See: List of music students by teacher: R to S#Vissarion Shebalin. Shebalin was one of the founders of and the chairman of the board (1941–1942) of the Union of Soviet Composers.

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