Evgeny Messner

Evgeny Iosifovich (Osipovich) Messner was a Russian Soviet composer and music pedagogue born on July 20, 1897, in Moscow. He began his musical education in childhood, studying piano, music theory, and harmony under the violinist M. I. Press and the pianist and composer Vl. P. Belyaev. After graduating from gymnasium in 1917, he attended the philological department of the history faculty at Moscow University for two years. Between 1919 and 1922, he served as a scribe in the Red Army, followed by a brief period working as a cinema illustrator.

He resumed his formal musical training at the Gnessin Musical Technicum from 1923 to 1926, where his teachers included Mikhail Gnessin and Reinhold Glière. In 1930, he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory, having studied in the composition class of Nikolai Myaskovsky.

Messner dedicated much of his life to teaching. He taught at the Gnessin Music School from 1932 to 1944 and held positions at the Moscow Conservatory from 1934 to 1938 and again from 1944 to 1957. Beginning in 1948, he taught at the Central Music School, and in 1951 he became an associate professor at the Moscow Conservatory. His students included distinguished composers such as A. A. Baltin, N. N. Sidelnikov, Tiberiu Olah, Wu Zuqiang, and Sembiin Gonchiksumlaa.

In his creative work, Messner focused primarily on symphonic, chamber vocal, and instrumental compositions. A number of his works were created using the folklore of various peoples. Evgeny Messner died in Moscow on December 1, 1967, and was buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in the family plot of Georgy Lvovich Catoire.

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