Vissarion Shebalin
Vissarion Yakovlevich Shebalin was a Soviet composer and music educator, born on May 29 (June 11), 1902, in Omsk, Russian Empire. His father, Yakov Vasilievich Shebalin, was a mathematics teacher who also organized a choir and instrumental ensemble at the Omsk Agricultural College, where the family lived from 1915. Vissarion began his systematic musical education at the age of ten in the piano classes of the Omsk branch of the Russian Musical Society. After graduating from gymnasium in 1919, he briefly studied at the agronomy faculty of the Siberian Institute of Agriculture and Industry.
Shebalin's passion for music prevailed, and in 1921, he wrote his first composition, a Scherzo for a large orchestra, along with several piano pieces. During this period, he was part of the futurist literary and artistic group 'Chervonnaya Troika' (1921–1922). From 1921 to 1923, he studied composition under M. I. Nevitov and piano under B. Medvedev at the Omsk Music College. Recognizing his talent, he moved to Moscow and from 1923 to 1928, studied at the Moscow Conservatory in the composition class of Nikolai Myaskovsky and the piano class of N. N. Kuvshinnikov.
In the 1920s, Shebalin became a member of the Association for Contemporary Music and was part of an informal circle of Moscow musicians centered around his teacher, Myaskovsky, known as the 'Lamm circle'. He also formed a close friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich. Starting in 1928, Shebalin began his long and distinguished teaching career at the Moscow Conservatory. He was appointed its rector in 1942, a position he held until 1948 when he was dismissed following the decree against formalism in music, famously targeting Vano Muradeli's opera 'The Great Friendship'. He later returned to the conservatory and continued to work in the composition department.
Shebalin is remembered as an outstanding educator who taught some of the most prominent composers in the Soviet Union. His students included Tikhon Khrennikov, Oscar Feltsman, Karen Khachaturian, Boris Tchaikovsky, Aleksandra Pakhmutova, Edison Denisov, and Sofia Gubaidulina. As a composer, Shebalin worked in nearly all major genres, creating a significant body of work that included music for dramatic plays, radio productions, and films. His opera 'The Taming of the Shrew' (1957), based on Shakespeare, is particularly noteworthy, as are his unaccompanied choruses set to poems by Russian and Soviet poets.
His symphony 'Lenin' (1931), with text by Vladimir Mayakovsky, was a major event in the musical life of its time. Shebalin's style is often described as serious, intellectual, and somewhat academic, drawing comparisons to his mentor, Myaskovsky. He was known as one of the most cultured and erudite musicians of his generation. Beyond his own compositions, he made significant contributions by completing and orchestrating Modest Mussorgsky's unfinished opera 'The Sorochinskaya Fair', and also worked on Mussorgsky's 'Salammbô'. He restored the score of Mikhail Glinka's 'Symphony on Two Russian Themes' and created his own version of S. S. Gulak-Artemovsky's opera 'A Zaporozhian Beyond the Danube'.
Shebalin received numerous accolades, including the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR (1947) and two Stalin Prizes of the first degree (1943, 1947). He held the academic rank of Professor (1935) and was a Doctor of Arts (1941). Vissarion Shebalin died on May 29, 1963, in Moscow and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Alisa Gube, and their sons, Dmitry, a violist with the Borodin Quartet, and Nikita, a classical philologist, as well as another son, Nikolai, a seismologist.
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