Anatoly Novikov
Anatoly Novikov (full name Anatoly Grigoryevich Novikov; October 30 [October 18, Old Style], 1896 – September 24, 1984) was a Soviet composer, film composer, choral conductor, and music teacher. He was born in Skopin, then in Ryazan Governorate of the Russian Empire.
Novikov received his initial musical education at the Ryazan Teachers' Seminary from 1912 to 1916 and at the Moscow People's Conservatory in 1916–1917, where he studied with Vasily Paskhalov and Alexander Krein. From 1921 to 1927 he studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory with Reinhold Glière.
From 1918 to 1920, he conducted the choir of Skopin's Department of Public Education. He subsequently taught music at an agricultural technical school in Moscow and led amateur artistic activity at the club of the Frunze Military Academy. During the 1920s and 1930s he directed amateur, including army, choirs; he also taught music theory at vocal courses of the State Institute of Musical Science and at the October Revolution Music Technical School.
Novikov served as artistic director of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions Song and Dance Ensemble from 1939 to 1943, and of the All-Union Radio Song Ensemble from 1948 to 1951. He began composing in 1917 and wrote more than 600 songs to texts by Soviet poets. Among his best-known songs are “Dark-Skinned Moldavian Girl,” written in 1940 and first performed in 1944, “Oh, the Roads...,” and “Russia.”
His output also included musical comedies, among them The Left-Hander (1957), When You Are with Me (1961), The Beauty Queen (1964), Special Assignment (1965), The Black Birch (1969), and Vasily Tyorkin (1971). He collected and edited about 500 Russian folk songs in 1936–1937, publishing them in the three-volume Russian Folk Songs. His other works included choral cantatas and suites, song cycles, a rhapsody for wind orchestra, music for dramatic productions and radio compositions, and scores for several films.
Novikov was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1970 and received two second-class Stalin Prizes, in 1946 and 1948. He died in Moscow and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery. Memorial plaques commemorate him in Skopin and at the former Alexandrov Teachers' Seminary in Ryazan, where he studied.