Yuri Arbatsky

Yuri Arbatsky (around 1950)

Yuri Arbatsky ( Russian Юрий Иванович Арбатский ; born April 15, 1911 in Moscow , †  September 3, 1963 in New Hartford ) was a stateless composer and folklorist .

Life

Arbatsky was the son of a tsarist councilor and university professor, a member of the Mari people , who emigrated with his family to Germany via Prague after the Russian Revolution. Arbatsky went to Berlin and then to Dresden, where he laid the foundation for his musical training with Rachmaninoff . Rachmaninoff made it possible for the 19-year-old to begin studying music at the Leipzig Conservatory after graduating from high school . At the same time Arbatsky completed a medical degree, which he graduated with a doctorate in 1933, as well as a degree in theology.

Then Arbatsky went as folk music researchers to Yugoslavia . He worked as a choir director until 1935, then went to Belgrade as cathedral organist and archdeacon . From 1938 to 1942 he worked as the director of the radio choir. In 1942 he was called to Prague, where he worked as a research assistant at today's Karl Ferdinand University . In 1944 he acquired the academic degree of Dr. phil. His dissertation The Macedonian Tupan Game was banned in Germany. Translated into English, it was published in 1953 by the Newberry Library in Chicago under the title Beating the Tupan in the Central Balkans . It is based on three years of training on the Tupan cylinder drum by an Albanian folk musician.

After the Second World War, Arbatsky lived in Regensburg for several years and traveled as a pianist and guest lecturer to Western Europe and the USA, where he was a church musician in Chicago from 1950 to 1953. Then he was commissioned by the Newberry Library , followed by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation , to prepare his folkloric research in the Balkans for publication.

In 1957 Arbatsky became an American citizen. He began to study Russian medicine. 1961 to 1963 he was an associate professor of Slavic Studies at Syracuse University . Arbatsky spoke 18 languages ​​and was considered a linguistic genius. He died of a heart attack at the age of 52.

Works

• Organ chorals (EKG 176, 320, 383)
• Duets for flute and clarinet
• Leiturgia for organ
• Maoz Cur for piano op.1
• Partita on " Jesus, my confidence " for organ
• Passacaglia for organ
• The 92nd Psalm for Choir and Organ
• Regensburg Sonata
• Sonata for oboe solo
• Sonata for oboe and clarinet
• Sonata for oboe, bassoon and violoncello
• Sonata for organ
• Sonata for violoncello solo
• Suite for piano
• Sursum Corda for organ
• The Berlin Symphony for organ and strings
• Trio sonata "Now we ask the Holy Spirit"
• Variations on a Fragment of Hebrew Polyphony for Harpsichord or Piano
• Preludes to American hymns

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Riemann Musiklexikon, Mainz 1959
2. ^ Daily Press, Utica (New York), September 4, 1963