Boris Mokrousov

Boris Andreyevich Mokrousov was a Soviet composer. He was born on February 27, 1909, in Kanavino, then a settlement in Nizhny Novgorod Governorate of the Russian Empire, in the family of Andrei Aleksandrovich Mokrousov and Maria Ivanovna Mokrousova, née Bashmachnikova.

He learned to play music through school amateur performances, mastering the balalaika, mandolin, and guitar, and at the age of thirteen teaching himself the piano by ear. He began composing melodies while still a schoolboy. From 1924 he earned extra money as a cinema accompanist at the railway workers' club. From 1925 to 1929 he studied at the Nizhny Novgorod Music College, and then entered the workers' faculty of the Moscow Conservatory named after Pyotr Tchaikovsky, graduating from its composition department in 1936.

Two years later Mokrousov wrote the song “My Beloved Lives in Kazan,” which brought him recognition. In 1939 he served by conscription in the model orchestra of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. At the end of 1941, for the documentary film “The Rout of the German Troops Near Moscow,” he wrote “Song of the Defenders of Moscow.” In 1943 he created the song-ballad “The Precious Stone.”

Mokrousov's talent appeared especially vividly in lyrical songs distinguished by warmth, sincerity, and refined taste. Among the high points of his song lyricism are “At the Porch,” “Autumn Leaves,” “Sormovo Lyrical Song,” “When Spring Comes, I Do Not Know,” “I Will Not Boast, My Dear,” and “You and I Were Not Friends.” As a rule, he first composed the melody and only afterward did a poet write the words to it. He collaborated with well-known song poets including Mikhail Isakovsky, Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, Lev Oshanin Lisyansky, Labkovsky, and Gleizarov, and many gifted songs were created in artistic partnership with Alexei Fatyanov.

In the 1940s and 1950s Mokrousov's songs were extraordinarily popular. His works were performed by Nadezhda Obukhova, Sergei Lemeshev, Leonid Utyosov, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Shmelev, Nechayev, Vladimir Troshin, Arkady Raikin, Georg Ots, and later even Mikhail Krug and Boris Grebenshchikov. Outside the former USSR they were sung by Tapio Rautavaara in Finland and Yves Montand in France. His songs were heard not only in Russian but also in French, Italian, Polish, Estonian, Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and other languages.

In 1956 he wrote the song “Vologda,” although it gained broad popularity only in 1976 when it was performed by the ensemble Pesnyary, for whom it became a signature piece. His last work was the music for the film “The Elusive Avengers.” Death prevented him from writing the score for the next installment, “The New Adventures of the Elusive Avengers,” although the opening and closing “Song of the Elusive Avengers” was included there as well. From 1953 until 1968 the composer lived and worked in the building at 1/15 Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in Moscow.

Mokrousov was also the author of the opera “Chapay” and the popular operetta “The Rose of the Winds.” He wrote music for films including “Wedding with a Dowry,” “Spring on Zarechnaya Street,” “Unknown Coordinates,” and “The Elusive Avengers.” Among his songs are “Leaden Showers Are Beating,” “The Forest Path Winds into the Distance,” “The Steppe Blossoms with Forests,” “When Spring Comes, I Do Not Know,” “When a Distant Friend Sings,” “Distant Campfires Burn,” “My Beloved Lives in Kazan,” “We Are People of Great Flight,” “You and I Were Not Friends,” “Make a Date Soon,” “Song of the Lovestruck Firefighter,” “Song of the Front-Line Drivers,” “Song of the Defenders of Moscow,” “Pioneer Hiking Song,” “Russia Is Our Motherland,” “Sormovo Lyrical Song,” “I Will Not Boast, My Dear,” “The Flowers in the Garden Are Lovely in Spring,” “Wide Are You, Native Russia,” and “I Gaze Beyond the Little River.” In instrumental music he wrote a concerto for trombone and orchestra, an “Anti-Fascist Symphony,” piano pieces, and other works.

He was awarded the Stalin Prize, second class, in 1948 for the songs “The Precious Stone,” “About the Native Land,” “The Lonely Accordion,” and “The Flowers in the Garden Are Lovely in Spring,” and he became an Honored Artist of the Chuvash ASSR in 1962. Mokrousov died of a heart attack in a hospital in Moscow on March 27, 1968, and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery. His memory has been preserved in commemorative plaques in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod, a street in the Sormovo District of Nizhny Novgorod named after him, and a star laid in his honor at the Square of Stars near the State Central Concert Hall “Rossiya” in 2005.

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