This site is dedicated to music education and history. It contains a collection of articles on history of the music and art, biographies of composers, educators, performers, authors and other intellectuals, reviews of music and art-related products and businesses. The main contributors to this site are Marina Ritzarev and Sergei Abir.
Marina Ritzarev, D. phil. habil., is an Russo-Israeli musicologist, professor, author, editor and translator. After studying in St. Petersburg, her career included working in Moscow, doing research in eighteenth-century Russian music, contemporary Russian music, work at the Music department of the Russian State Library, at the Archives department of the Central Museum of Musical Culture and serving as a Deputy Director in the Centre of Information at the USSR Composers’ Union. Since 1992 she worked at the Department of Music at Bar-Ilan University on a fellowship granted by the Israeli Ministry of Absorption to immigrant scholars. In 1997-2000 worked also at the Israeli Music Archive at Tel-Aviv University. Multicultural experience, studies in ethnomusicology and the merging of Russian and Western musicological traditions enhanced new perspectives in her research. Subsequently, she developed a theory of the vernacular in music and also contributed to the field of music signification. She served twice as a President of the Israeli Musicological Society. Marina authored eight books, several translations, articles, and reviews. Nominated “Musicologist of the Year” by Russian newspaper “Music review”, 2016. Read more…
Sergei Abir (Ritsarev-Abir, born in Moscow, 1944) is a Russo-Israeli composer, arranger, conductor, teacher and musicologist (PhD, 1975). Educated in Moscow conservatory in the 1960s, he absorbed its great professional tradition rooting in Russian classic school. Abir is one of the closest disciples of the major Moscow teacher of instrumentation Yury Fortunatov. Working in such institutions as Faculty of Military Conductors at the Moscow conservatory (1970-1979), at Gnessin’s Pedagogical College and Institute (1979-1990) and at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv (1991-2002) he further disseminates this tradition all over the world through his students and his own creative work. Universal musician, Abir is the composer of several works, among which are two instrumental concertos (2008,2009), suites and Klezmer’s Smile, caprice on traditional tunes for Clarinet, Mandolin and Chamber Orchestra (2011). He is also the author of two books (Eighteenth-century French symphony and Christoph-Willibald Gluck – both published in Moscow, 1977, 1987). With all this, Abir is an arranger by vocation. Sacrificing his artistic ego, he draws inspiration from his own credo that can be defined as creation of hitherto unknown work by the great composer. Generous in orchestral devices and textural development, he emphasizes “getting into composer’s head” and understanding of the artistic context over exact repetition of the details contained in the original, while staying tactful toward composers’ styles. This relates equally to such of his major projects as orchestra versions of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons (2012) and Schumann’s A Woman’s Love and Life (for voice and Chamber Orchestra, 2011) and arrangements of songs, thus contributing his artistry to popular genre too. His recent work has been performed in Israel, around the Europe and the USA. Read more…