Emils Melngailis

Emils Melngailis was a Latvian and Soviet composer, folklorist, music teacher, and professor. He was regarded as an outstanding master of Latvian choral song and as the largest collector of Latvian folk melodies. In 1945 he was named People's Artist of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.

In 1896 and 1897 he studied at the Dresden Conservatory. His interest in the use of folk song in the music of Russian composers led him to abandon his studies in Dresden. From 1898 to 1901 he studied composition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in the class of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

For some time Melngailis collaborated with Saint Petersburg newspapers. In 1904 he went to Tashkent, where he lived and worked as a teacher in a cadet corps. In 1920 he moved to Latvia. He orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov, and this version was staged at the Latvian National Opera in 1924.

He was conductor of the Song Days in Riga from 1911 to 1913. He was also one of the organizers and the chief conductor of the Latvian Song Festivals from 1926 to 1938, and one of the founders of the Association of Latvian Composers in 1923. From 1944 to 1948 he served as chairman of the organizational bureau of the Union of Composers of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1944 to 1954 he was professor at the Latvian Conservatory, now the Jazeps Vitols Latvian Academy of Music.

Melngailis wrote 53 original songs for choir. He organized folk music ensembles and made wide use of folklore-based material, creating about 250 works for choir and more than 200 for various ensembles, often as his own compositions. His output also included a ballet, orchestral music, a string quartet, solo songs, and piano music.

Beginning in 1902, he published about 5,000 folk melodies, including around 4,500 Latvian folk songs that he had collected himself. He was also a strong chess player and took part in the leadership of the Latvian Chess Federation. He received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and the Order of the Three Stars. He was buried in Riga at Forest Cemetery, and streets in Riga and Jelgava were later named after him.

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