Vladimir Vavilov (composer)

Vladimir Fyodorovich Vavilov (5 May 1925 – 3 November 1973) was a Russian guitarist, lutenist and composer. He was a student of P. Isakov (guitar) and I. Admoni (composition) at the Rimski-Korsakov Music College in St Petersburg. He played an important part in the Early Music Revival in the Soviet Union.

Vavilov was active as a performer on both lute and guitar, as a music editor for a state music publishing house, and more important, as a composer. He routinely ascribed his own works to other composers, usually Renaissance or Baroque (occasionally from later eras), usually with total disregard of a style that should have been appropriate, in the spirit of Fetis, Kreisler, Manuel Ponce, Casadesus and other mystificators of the previous eras. His works achieved enormous circulation, and some of them achieved true folk music status, with several poems set to his melodies.

The most famous of his hoaxes were

• "Сanzona by Francesco da Milano". Poets A. Volkhonsky and A. Khvostenko would later set lyrics on this music, the song called "The City of Gold" song (in Russian "Город Золотой"). The song, in turn, would become a hit in the 1980's when it was performed by Aquarium for the score to the film Assa.
• "Mazurka by Andrey Sychra",
• "Elegy by Mikhail Vyssotsky",
• "Russian Melody (tremolo study) by Mikhail Vyssotsky",
• "Ricercar by Niccolo Nigrino",
• "Impromptu" by Balakirev, and most famous of all,
• "Ave Maria" (Vavilov himself wrote it under Anonymous. A few years after it was first released, Mark Szachin added "by Giulio Caccini" to it). It is often performed to this day, notably by Inessa Galante, Andrea Bocelli, Sumi Jo, Charlotte Church inter alia.^[1][2][3].

Vavilov died in poverty, of pancreatic cancer, a few months before the appearance of "The City of Gold", which became a hit overnight.

References

• Complete bio in Russian (Russian)
• "Vladimir F. Vavilov" in Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedic Dictionary (Russian)
• Free scores by Vladimir Vavilov in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)

1. ^ Сергей Севостьянов, "Страницы жизни Владимира Федоровича Вавилова". Журнал «Нева» № 9 (2005).
2. ^ "Вавилов Владимир Фёдорович", Иллюстрированный биографический энциклопедический словарь.
3. ^ Гейзель Зеев, "История одной Песни" (15 февраля 2005)