Maksimilian Shteinberg

(also Maximilian Steinberg). Born June 22 (July 4), 1883, in Vilnius; died Dec. 6, 1946, in Leningrad. Soviet composer. Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR (1934); People’s Artist of the Uzbek SSR (1944); doctor of the arts (1943).

In 1908, Shteinberg graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he had studied composition under N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov. He composed five symphonies, the ballets Metamorphoses (after Ovid, 1913) and Tyl Ulenspiegel (after C. de Coster, 1936), symphonic works, and works for voice and orchestra. In several works he drew on the musical folklore of peoples of the USSR, notably in the Symphony No. 4 (Turksib Symphony, 1933), based on Kazakh and Kirghiz folk themes, and the Symphony No. 5 (1942), a rhapsody on Uzbek themes. Shteinberg was also known as a conductor.

In 1908, Shteinberg began teaching at the St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) Conservatory, where he became a professor in 1915. He served as dean of the faculty of composition from 1917 to 1931 and head of the division of conducting from 1931 to 1934; in 1939 he was named head of the subdepartment of composition. Among his students were M. Ashrafi, E. G. Brusilovskii, S. A. Chernetskii, Iu. A. Shaporin, D. D. Shostakovich, and V. V. Shcherbachev. He completed Rimsky-Korsakov’s Foundations of Orchestration.

Shteinberg was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and a medal.