Glière, Reinhold

Glière, Reinhold, b 11 January 1875 in Kyiv, d 23 June 1956 in Moscow. Conductor, composer, and teacher of Belgian Jewish descent. A graduate of the Kyiv School of Music and the Moscow Conservatory, he was a professor (1913–20) and director (from 1914) of the Kyiv Conservatory. Among Glière's pupils were the composers Lev Revutsky, Borys Liatoshynsky, and Pylyp Kozytsky. He edited and orchestrated Mykola Lysenko's operettas Natalka Poltavka (Natalka from Poltava) and Chornomortsi (Black Sea Cossacks), Kyrylo Stetsenko's Haidamaky (Haidamakas) and the cantata Shevchenkovi (To Shevchenko), and rewrote the orchestration for Semen Hulak-Artemovsky's Zaporozhets’ za Dunaiem (Zaporozhian Cossack beyond the Danube). He composed over 500 works in a variety of genres, including the symphony Illia Muromets’ (1909–11) dedicated to the hero of the Kyiv bylyna cycle, the symphonic tableau Zaporozhtsi (Zaporozhian Cossacks, 1921) inspired by Ilia Repin's painting, the symphonic poem Zapovit (Testament, 1939–41) dedicated to Taras Shevchenko, and the ballet Taras Bul’ba (1951–2).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]