Efim Tkach
Efim Tkach was a Moldavian Soviet musicologist, music critic, publicist, and teacher. He was born in 1926 in Sekiryany, now Sokyriany, or, according to some accounts, in Balti. He grew up in Balti in a prosperous Jewish family; his father, Mark Tkach, was a furrier. During World War II, Tkach and his family were in the Kryzhopol ghetto in Transnistria. After their release in 1944, they returned to Balti.
After secondary school, Tkach studied at the Balti Pedagogical Institute. He graduated in 1953 from the orchestral faculty of the Chisinau Conservatory, where he studied flute. From 1949, he taught at the E. Coca Special Music School in Chisinau. He later worked as a music editor for Moldovan Book, Artistic Literature, and the Moldavian Soviet Encyclopedia, and headed the music department of the Moldavian State Philharmonic. He also taught at the G. Muzicescu Institute of Arts, where he became a professor, and presented regular music education programs in Moldovan on republican radio. In his later years, he hosted a music program in Yiddish on Chisinau radio. He was a member of the Union of Composers of Moldova.
Tkach wrote extensively about Moldovan musical culture, contemporary Moldovan composers, and music theory. His books included A Guide to Elementary Music Theory, co-written with Zinovy Stolyar and published in Russian and Moldovan in 1957, 1961, and 1964; Grozovan, an Opera by David Gershfeld: A Guide (1960); a two-volume Music Guide (1962 and 1966); and Brief Musical Dictionary (1972). Other works included books on Ciprian Porumbescu, Timofei Gurtovoy, Eugen Doga, and Dimitrie Cantemir, as well as Predecessors of Romanian Music (1994). He also translated books by M. Goldenstein and F. Orekhovskaya into Moldovan. With literary scholar Efim Levit and poet Anatoly Guzhel, he compiled and published four volumes of documents concerning the Holocaust in Moldova.
Tkach was married to composer Zlata Tkach from 1949. He died in Chisinau on April 27, 2003.
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