Vyacheslav Paskhalov
Vyacheslav Paskhalov was a Russian Soviet musicologist, ethnographer, composer, publicist, music historian, teacher, and museum and library worker. He was born in Moscow on May 14, 1878, into a noble family. His father was the composer Viktor Paskhalov, and his uncle was the writer Klavdy Paskhalov. He grew up in Saratov and began studying with the composer V. S. Kalinnikov in 1894. In 1896, he graduated from Moscow University’s Faculty of History and Philology, where he studied folk literature. He later studied composition with G. E. Konyus and A. N. Koreschenko at the Moscow Philharmonic Society’s Music and Drama School, graduating in 1910.
Before 1900, Paskhalov worked at the Synodal Printing House in Moscow. From 1900 he served at the Dashkov Ethnographic Museum and its library, then worked in the Department of Manuscripts and Early Printed Slavic Books at the Rumyantsev Museum until 1921. From 1910, he also acted as head of the museum’s manuscript department. He catalogued music archives, including those of Vladimir Odoevsky, Mikhail Venevitinov, Dmitry Razumovsky, and Kalinnikov, compiled a systematic catalogue of music books and scores, and organized the museum’s music library. In 1921, he established and headed a dedicated music research department at the library. He also worked at the Lenin Library, where he headed the music department from 1918 to 1928.
Paskhalov researched and promoted folk music. He worked with Alexander Kastalsky in music and ethnographic organizations, and from 1921 was a full member and chair of the ethnographic section of the State Institute of Musical Science. He taught at the Moscow People’s Conservatory from 1916 to 1917 and at the Moscow Conservatory from 1927 to 1929, first as an associate professor and then as a professor, teaching musical ethnography. He received a doctorate in art history in 1944 and was named Honored Artist of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1950.
His compositions include the orchestral works Island of the Sirens (1923), Crimean Suite (1931), and Ethnographic Suite (1933), as well as a string quartet (1938), romances, songs, and arrangements of Russian folk songs. His publications include studies of Kalinnikov, Chopin and Polish folk song, and the musical structure of folk songs. He died in Leningrad on December 16, 1951.