The Kazan Conservatory School of Composition: Paths of Development

Abstract

In 2025, the Kazan Conservatory celebrates its 80th anniversary. This article examines the development stage of the music university’s composition school, which played an important role in training the first composers of the national republics of the Russian Federation: Tatarstan, Mari El, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Mordovia, Bashkortostan, Tuva, Komi, Kalmykia, and Altai. In particular, it reveals the outstanding role of Nazib Zhiganov, founder of the Kazan Conservatory, who managed, in the difficult post-war years, to lay a solid foundation for the systematic and exemplary work of the higher education institution. Zhiganov quickly assembled a teaching staff that also included musicians relocated from Leningrad and Moscow, who served as inheritors and bearers of the traditions of these major cultural centres. In the development of the Kazan Conservatory’s composition school, the contributions of Mikhail Yudin, Albert Lehman, and Genrich Litinsky are particularly noted. Together with Zhiganov, they developed a unique concept for the comprehensive training of young composers, taking into account their national character and the preservation of the distinctive features of their musical language. The works of outstanding teachers, who took an active part in creating Tatar music especially that based on developing the expressiveness of traditional pentatonic melodic material, significantly enriched the repertoire of the republic’s musical performing ensembles.

Keywords: Nazib Zhiganov, Mikhail Yudin, Genrich Litinsky, Albert Lehman, Kazan Conservatory, national schools of composition