Maria Semyonovna Zavalishina facts for kids

Maria Semyonovna Zavalishina (Мария Семеновна Завалишина), born on December 26, 1903, was a talented Soviet composer and teacher. She created many different kinds of music, including pieces for plays, films, and even special works for children.

Meet Maria Zavalishina: A Soviet Composer

Maria Zavalishina was born in Saint Petersburg, a big city in Russia. From a young age, she loved music. She decided to study how to create music, which is called composition.

Her Journey in Music

Maria went to the Leningrad Musical College and finished her studies in 1929. After graduating, she started working in different musical roles. From 1929 to 1934, she was in charge of the music department at the Northern Siberian Dramatic Theatre. Imagine being responsible for all the music in a theater!

Later, from 1938 to 1941, she worked as an inspector for the Art Department in Odessa, a city in Ukraine. She also continued her own studies in composition at the Conservatory of Odessa in 1939.

During a difficult time, from 1941 to 1944, Maria founded and led a music school in Sovetsk, a town in Russia. This shows how dedicated she was to teaching music to others. After that, she joined the Artistic Committee of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (which is now the Republic of Moldova) from 1944 to 1955. She also taught at the Odessa Conservatory from 1945 to 1951. In 1951, she became a deputy artistic director for an orchestra, helping to guide their musical performances.

Maria Zavalishina was very busy! She composed music for more than 80 plays and films. This is called "incidental music" because it's written to go along with a performance or movie.

Her Musical Works

Maria Zavalishina wrote many different types of music. She created pieces for orchestras, solo instruments, and even songs for people to sing.

Music for Instruments

Maria wrote music for various instruments. She composed pieces for the piano, including a "Children's Album" (1952) and "Ten Children's Pieces" (1961), which were likely fun for young musicians to play. She also wrote a "Suite" in 1937 and "Pro Zaiku," a set of six pieces in 1964.

She created "chamber music," which is music for a small group of instruments. For example, she wrote a "Melody" and "Romance" for violin and piano in 1938. She also composed pieces for cello and piano, like "Melody," "Nocturne," and "Little Waltz" in 1963. Other works included "Elegy" and "Romance" for horn and piano (1962), and a "Happy Piece" for oboe and piano (1964).

For a full orchestra, she composed "Igrushki," which means "Toys," a Children's Suite in 1939.

Music for the Stage and Screen

Maria Zavalishina was very active in writing music for performances. She wrote incidental music for over 80 plays and films, helping to set the mood and tell the story.

She also composed an opera called "Esli Druzya" in 1966. Operas are big musical plays where the story is told mostly through singing.

For children, she wrote an operetta called "Kol I Druzie in Three Acts For Children" in 1978. Operettas are like lighter, more fun operas, often with spoken parts.

Songs and Choral Music

Maria also wrote many vocal pieces, which means music for singers. She made arrangements of various folk and children's songs, adapting them for new performances. She also composed songs with piano accompaniment, setting words by famous poets like Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin. Some of her choral works, like "Idut Kommunisty" (1951) and "Lipka" (1950), were written for a chorus to sing without instruments, which is called "a capella."