Koval, Marian (Viktorovich)
Koval, Marian (Viktorovich)
Koval, Marian (Viktorovich), Russian composer; b. Pristan Voznesenya, Olonets district, Aug. 17, 1907; d. Moscow, Feb. 15, 1971. Following training in Nizhny-Novgorod and Petrograd, he studied composition with Gnessin and Miaskovsky at the Moscow Cons. (1925–30). Inspired by the revolutionary ideas of a new collective society, he organized with others a group named Procoll (“Productive Collective”), dedicated to the propaganda of music in its sociological aspects; was also a member of the Russian Assn. of Proletarian Musicians from 1929 until it was disbanded by the Soviet government in 1931 as being counterproductive. He became known mainly through his choruses and songs on socialist subjects; all of his music is derived from modalities of Russian folk songs and those of the ethnic group of the Urals, to which he belonged. He wrote the operas Emelian Pugatchev (Moscow, Nov. 25, 1939) and Sevastopoltzy (Perm, Nov. 28, 1946), the cantatas: The People’s Sacred War (1941), Valery Tchkalov (1942), and The Kremlin Stars (1947), The Wolf and 7 Little Goats, children’s opera (1939), 2 cycles of songs about Lenin, etc.
Bibliography
G. Polyanovsky, M. K. (Moscow, 1968).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire