Vissarion Shebalin

Vissarion Yakovlevich Shebalin (; 11 June 190229 May 1963) was a Soviet composer and music pedagogue. He was Rector of the Moscow Conservatory (1942-1948) and People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1947). Biography Shebalin was born in Omsk, where his parents were school teachers. He studied in the musical college in Omsk, and was also enrolled in the Institute of Agriculture. He was 20 years old when, following the advice of his professor, he went to Moscow to show his first compositions to Reinhold Glière and Nikolai Myaskovsky. Both composers thought very highly of his compositions. Shebalin graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1928. His diploma work was the 1st Symphony, which the author dedicated to his professor Nikolai Myaskovsky. Many years later his fifth and last symphony was dedicated to Myaskovsky’s memory. In the 1920s Shebalin was a member of the Association for Contemporary Music (ACM); he was a participant of the informal circle of Moscow musicians known as “Lamm’s group”, which gathered in the apartment of Pavel Lamm, a professor from the Moscow Conservatory. After graduating from Moscow Conservatory, he worked there as a professor, and in 1935 became also a head of th