Grigori Frid

Grigori Frid began his musical studies first in Irkutsk and finished them in 1935 at the Moscow Conservatory in the composition class of Heinrich Litinski and Vissarion Shebalin. From 1936 to 1939 he taught music theory there, and from 1947 to 1961 he taught composition at the conservatory's music school. Since its foundation in 1965 he organized and directed the Moscow "Music Club", where seminars and concerts were held regularly.

Frid’s compositional engagement with the music of the 20th century was influenced by the works of Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Berg. In his work, serial and tonal procedures stand side by side, often combined with leitmotif and cluster techniques. Frid’s preference for dark colours and elegiac moods is striking. In his chamber operas, with which he became world-famous, he treats the spiritual hardships of his main characters as well as moral questions of humanity with great sensitivity.
Grigori Frid died in Moscow on September 22, 2012.

The biography may be reprinted free of charge in programme booklets with the following credit: Reprinted with kind permission of the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes/Sikorski.