Mikhail Tits
Mikhail Tits (8 August 1898 – 12 October 1978) was a Soviet Ukrainian composer, musicologist, and teacher. He was born in St. Petersburg and died in Kharkiv.
He graduated from the Kharkiv Music and Drama Institute in 1924 and subsequently taught there. From 1935 he was a professor at the Kharkiv Conservatory, where he headed the Department of Music Theory and Composition from 1943 to 1949 and again from 1951 to 1971. He also performed as a pianist.
Between 1935 and 1937, Tits chaired the board of the organizing committee of the Kharkiv branch of the Union of Composers of the Ukrainian SSR. He wrote articles and studies on music theory.
His operas include Perekop (1939) and Haydamaky (1940–1941), the latter co-written with Yuliy Meitus and Vsevolod Rybalchenko. His orchestral music includes the Poem-Concerto for piano and orchestra (1946).
Tits composed a chamber trilogy comprising Dramatic Poem, Lyric Poem, and Heroic Poem (1937–1940); two piano sonatas, five sonatinas, and a Polyphonic Suite (1956); and two string quartets (1949 and 1956). His output also includes choruses, works for solo performers, folk-song arrangements, and music for dramatic productions.
His instructional publications include A Guide to Harmony (1953), On the Thematic and Compositional Structure of Musical Works (1958–1959), and On Contemporary Problems of Music Theory (1976). His known students included T. Kravtsov, L. Kolodub, and M. Imkhanitsky.