Arthur Lourié

Artur Sergeyevich Lurye (; born Naum Izrailevich Lurya; ; 14 May 1892 – 12 October 1966), better known as Arthur-Vincent Lourié, was a Russian composer, writer, administrator, and musical agent. Lourié played an important role in the earliest stages of the organization of Soviet music after the 1917 Revolution but later went into exile. His music reflects his close connections with contemporary writers and artists, and also his close relationship with Igor Stravinsky. Russian career Born into a prosperous Jewish family in Propoysk, he converted to Catholicism while still in Russia. An admirer of van Gogh, from whom he derived the name ‘Vincent’, Lourié was partly self-taught, but also studied piano with Maria Barinova and composition with Glazunov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1913. He became friendly with the Futurist poets and particularly Anna Akhmatova, whose poetry he was among the first to set. He was also acquainted with Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Kulbin, Fyodor Sologub and Alexander Blok; and was deeply influenced by contemporary art. His early piano pieces, from 1908 onward, take on from the late works of Scriabin but evolve new kinds of discourse,