Sergey Skrebkov

Sergey Sergeyevich Skrebkov was a Soviet musicologist and pianist, a specialist in polyphony and in the theory and history of musical styles. He was born on 3 April 1905 in Moscow and died there on 6 February 1967. He became Doctor of Art Studies, professor of the Moscow Conservatory, and in 1966 was named Honored Artist of the RSFSR.

Skrebkov studied at the Gnessin Musical College, graduating in 1928 in piano with Elena F. Gnesina and in composition with Mikhail F. Gnesin and Reinhold Gliere. In 1930 he completed the Music-Scientific Research Department of the Moscow Conservatory and also graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. Among his teachers at different times were Aleksei Losev, Nikolai Zhilyayev, Viktor Ferman, Elena Bekman-Shcherbina, and Nikolai Garbuzov.

In 1929 he married Olga L. Bekman-Skrebkova, the daughter of the pianist Elena A. Bekman-Shcherbina. Their daughter Marina, born in 1932, later became a professor at the Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory. From 1932 Skrebkov worked at the Moscow Conservatory, and in 1944 he took part in the work of the research cabinet led by academician Boris Asafyev.

From 1938 to 1941 he served as head of the music theory department of the Central Correspondence Music-Pedagogical Institute. In 1944-1949 he also worked at the Gnessin State Music-Pedagogical Institute, helping to establish the institute at the request of Elena Gnesina, serving as dean of the historical-theoretical faculty, and supervising diploma and dissertation work. From 1944 to 1952 he simultaneously worked as a researcher and editorial compiler in the music sector of the Institute of Art History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Skrebkov presented papers at conferences in Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and abroad, including Poland, China, France, Italy, England, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. He became a member of the Union of Soviet Composers in 1947 and served on the dissertation defense council of the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students were later Moscow Conservatory professors Viktor Medushevsky, Evgeny Nazaikinsky, and Mark Tarakanov.

His scholarly legacy is closely connected with the study of polyphony, musical form, and style history. His major books include Anthology for Harmonic Analysis (1956, with O. L. Skrebkova), Polyphony and Polyphonic Forms (1962), Textbook of Polyphony (1965), Russian Choral Music of the 17th to Early 18th Centuries (1969), Artistic Principles of Musical Styles (1973), Theory of Imitative Polyphony (1983), and Polyphonic Analysis (2009). He also published articles on sonata form, electric instruments, acoustics, performance practice, Myaskovsky, Bortnyansky, Stravinsky, and Bach.

Skrebkov died in Moscow at the age of 62 and was buried at Donskoye Cemetery. Posthumous collections and memorial publications, including Selected Articles and books devoted to his life and thought, reflect his importance as a scholar and teacher in Soviet musicology.