Yuliy Meytus

1903 — 1997

Born: Yelisavetgrad • Died: Kyiv

Yuliy Meytus was a Ukrainian composer. He was born on 28 January 1903 in Yelisavetgrad, now Kropyvnytskyi, in a Jewish family, and died on 2 April 1997 in Kyiv, where he was buried at Baikove Cemetery.

In 1919 he graduated from a music school, where he studied piano with Heinrich Neuhaus. In 1931 he graduated from the Kharkiv Music and Drama Institute, studying composition with S. S. Bohatyriov.

During the Second World War he lived in evacuation in the Turkmen SSR. From 1954 he was a member of the CPSU. In 1973 he was awarded the title People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR.

Meytus was the author of eighteen operas as well as symphonic and vocal works and music for films. Among his operas are The Young Guard (1947), Stolen Happiness (1960), Brothers Ulyanov (1967), Yaroslav the Wise (1973), Richard Sorge (1976), and Ivan the Terrible (1983).

His orchestral works include Suite No. 1 on Ukrainian themes (1928), Suite No. 2 On the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station (1929), Suite No. 3 dedicated to the liberation of Western Ukraine (1939), Suite No. 4 dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution (1942), Suite No. 5 on Ukrainian themes (1944), the Turkmen Symphony (1946), the poem Roads of Glory (1945), the poem In Memory of Aydogdy Tahirov (1948), and the overture To the Reunification of Ukraine with Russia (1954).

He also wrote music for films, including Night Cabman (1928), Outpost at Devil's Ford (1936), The Old Fortress (1938), Seventeen-Year-Olds (1940), Combat Film Collection No. 9 (1942), The Magic Crystal (1945), Concert of Masters of Ukrainian Art (1952), In the Steppes of Ukraine (1952), Bogatyr Goes to Marto (1954), Special Assignment (1957), and The End of Chirva-Kozyr (1957).

Among his distinctions were the Stalin Prize, second class, in 1951 for the opera The Young Guard, the Shevchenko State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR in 1991 for a cycle of romances on poems by Soviet poets and a choral cycle on poems by A. T. Tvardovsky, the title Honoured Art Worker of the Turkmen SSR in 1944, Honoured Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR in 1948, and People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1973. A museum dedicated to him exists in Kropyvnytskyi.