Hlib Taranov

Hlib Taranov was a Ukrainian Soviet composer and teacher of Jewish origin. He was born in Kyiv on June 15, 1904, and died there on January 25, 1989. He became a professor in 1939, received the title Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1957, and earned a Doctor of Art Studies degree in 1944.

He received his first music lessons under M. Chernov and Reinhold Gliere. From 1918 to 1920 he studied at the Petrograd Conservatory, and from 1920 to 1924 at the Kyiv Conservatory, where he studied composition with Reinhold Gliere and Borys Lyatoshinsky, and conducting with Felix Blumenfeld and Nikolai Malko. In 1925 he graduated from the Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Music and Drama Institute.

From 1925 he taught at the Mykola Lysenko Kyiv Music and Drama Institute and later at the Kyiv Conservatory. In 1939 he became a professor. From 1944 to 1950 he headed the instrumentation department of the Leningrad Conservatory. From 1956 to 1968 he served as deputy chairman of the board of the Union of Composers of the Ukrainian SSR.

Taranov's output was diverse in genre, but symphonic music held the central place in his work. Most of his compositions were programmatic and were marked by topical content and civic themes. He also prepared the edition and orchestration of Mykola Arkas's opera Katerina in 1956, and wrote the music for Lazar Frenkel's film Together with the Fathers, released in 1932.

His selected works include the opera The Battle on the Ice (1943; second version, 1979), nine symphonies, five suites including the Ukrainian Suite (1950), symphonic poems including David Guramishvili (1953), the scherzo-poems The First Spacecraft (1961) and The New Express (1977), a concerto for balalaika and bandura with orchestra (1954), chamber-instrumental ensembles, songs, choruses, and romances on texts by Taras Shevchenko, Alexander Blok, and Mikhail Lermontov. He was also the author of the textbook Course of Score Reading (1939).

Among his honors were the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Badge of Honor, awarded on November 24, 1960. He was buried at Lukyanivka Cemetery in Kyiv.

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