Биография автора
Izrail’ Nest’ev (1911-1993) studied at the Tbilisi Conservatoire from 1928 to 1932. In 1937, he completed his historical-theoretical studies at Moscow Conservatoire, where he earned a doctorate, too. From 1937 to 1938, he edited the newspaper “Muzyka,” and between 1939 and 1941, he was secretary of the journal “Sovetskaia muzyka”. During World War II, he lost a large part of his family and joined the Bolshevik Party. This did not protect him from the accusation of cosmopolitanism that led to his dismissal from a post at the State Radio. From 1954 to 1957 he returned to “Soviet Music”, and in 1960 he started collaborating with the Art History Institute in Leningrad, where he directed the department of USSR folk music. He wrote on Bartók, Prokof’ev, Chaikovskii, and Puccini, and authored, among numerous other studies, a History of Music of the Peoples of the USSR.