Yuri Fortunatov

Yuri Alexandrovich Fortunatov was a Soviet and Russian musicologist and one of the largest Russian music teachers of the twentieth century. He was born in Moscow and came from a noble family. His father, Alexander Fortunatov, was a historian of Spain and a professor at Moscow University, and his mother, Elena Fortunatova, was a teacher. His principal scholarly interests were the history of the symphony orchestra and the study of musical instruments.

He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1937 in the composition class of Genrikh Litinsky, and also studied there with Anatoly Alexandrov in composition, Boleslav Yavorsky in music theory, and Konstantin Igumnov in piano. From 1936 to 1939 he taught instrumentation in the Turkmen studio at the Moscow Conservatory. In 1939 he completed postgraduate study in music theory under Viktor Tsukkerman.

In 1939 Fortunatov was called up for military service and sent to the music unit of the Tashkent Infantry School. Alongside his service, by special order of the commander of the Central Asian Military District, he taught composition and musical form at the Tashkent Conservatory. At the same time he collaborated with the Hamza Research Institute of Art Studies, where he studied the musical folklore of Uzbekistan. In Tashkent he became acquainted with the composers Alexei Kozlovsky and Georgy Mushel, whose friendship with him lasted for the rest of his life.

In 1944 he returned to Moscow, where until 1948 he taught instrumentation at the Higher School of Military Conductors. From 1945 until the end of his life he taught at the Moscow Conservatory, giving courses in instrumentation, score reading, and later also the history of orchestral styles; he became professor there in 1986. Among his many students were the composers Yuri Butsko, Alexander Golovin, Nikolai Korndorf, and Veljo Tormis, as well as the musicologists Inna Barsova and Viktor Frayonov. He also taught instrumentation at the House of Culture of the Armenian SSR from 1949 to 1953 and for some time taught instrument studies at the music college attached to the Moscow Conservatory.

As a consultant to the Commission for the Music of the Peoples of the USSR under the Secretariat of the Union of Composers, Fortunatov traveled to the union republics and advised many musicians. He initiated the creation of the All-Union seminar for composers at the Ivanovo creative house. Composers from across the USSR sought his advice, including Georgy Sviridov while writing his Kursk Songs and Rodion Shchedrin, whose The Little Humpbacked Horse was written under Fortunatov's guidance. The most valuable part of his legacy is considered to be his lectures on orchestral styles. In artistic and scholarly circles he enjoyed enormous authority as an expert on the symphony orchestra, the history of musical instruments, and their evolution.

An important subject of his study of Russian music before Glinka was the composer Osip Kozlovsky; Kozlovsky's Requiem and overtures were published with Fortunatov's commentary in the series Monuments of Russian Musical Art in 1997. He orchestrated German Galynin's oratorio The Girl and Death in 1963. He was also one of the first in the USSR to study orchestral works by Olivier Messiaen, Witold Lutoslawski, and Carl Orff. From the composer's sketches he instrumented four numbers from Alexander Borodin's opera Prince Igor and, together with Yevgeny Levashyov, prepared a new edition of the opera.

His scholarly interests also embraced the traditional music of Uzbekistan, including maqom, as well as the music of Moldova and Estonia. He promoted the works of Eduard Tubin and Veljo Tormis; Tormis dedicated his Autumn Landscapes for women's choir to him in 1964. In 1996 the Department of Foreign Music at the Moscow Conservatory held Historical Readings in his honor. Fortunatov was the co-author, with Inna Barsova, of A Practical Guide to Reading Symphonic Scores, published in 1966, and also wrote on Sergei Vasilenko. His lectures on the history of orchestral styles were later published in book form together with memoirs about him.

Fortunatov was named Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1984. He received the Order of Friendship in 1997, as well as the medals For the Victory over Germany and Veteran of Labor. He died in Moscow in 1998 and was buried at Vvedenskoye Cemetery.

Connections

This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.