Lev Ab
Lev Yefimovich Ab (13/25 April 1893 – 27 January 1942) was a Soviet composer, pianist, organist, conductor, choirmaster, and music teacher. He was born in Oryol and died in Leningrad.
From 1912, Ab studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with V. P. Kalafati (harmony, counterpoint, and fugue), Jāzeps Vītols (musical form), and M. M. Chernov (orchestration). He completed organ studies with J. Gandshin in 1917, conducting studies with N. N. Cherepnin in 1918, and composition studies with A. M. Zhitomirsky in 1922.
In 1911–12, he worked as an accompanist and choirmaster for a Ukrainian drama company in Oryol. From 1916 to 1918, he was organist at the Musical Drama Theatre in Petrograd. He served as organist and choirmaster at the Petrograd Small State Academic Theatre from 1922 to 1924.
In 1924, Ab joined the Azerbaijani Conservatory in Baku, where he became an associate professor in 1927 and a professor of composition and music theory from 1929 to 1931. He taught harmony, form analysis, orchestration, score reading, and analysis of contemporary scores, and led orchestral and choral classes. With N. I. Speransky, he organized the conservatory’s Opera Studio and conducted it from 1928 to 1931. From 1932 to 1936, he was choirmaster and conductor at the Leningrad Academic Maly Opera Theatre. He was named a professor in 1939.
Ab wrote symphonic, piano, and vocal works and arrangements of folk songs; nearly all his compositions were unpublished. His music was performed during his lifetime in Oryol, Baku, Tbilisi, and Leningrad. He also collected and transcribed folk melodies, including about 130 Russian melodies and around 15 Turkic (Azerbaijani) melodies. He died in Leningrad and was buried at Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.