Igor Fyodorovich Belza or Boelza (Игорь Фёдорович Бэлза; 8 February 1904 – 5 January 1994) was a Soviet music historian and composer who wrote 4 symphonies, 5 piano sonatas, 2 cello sonatas, a string quartet, and several film scores for Alexander Dovzhenko. He was the father of Svyatoslav Belza, a showman and a TV personality.
Boelza was born in Kielce into a noble Polish family which moved to Kyiv after the outbreak of the First World War. He studied at the Kyiv Conservatory with Boris Lyatoshynsky. Belza delivered lectures in the Kyiv State University until the German invasion of Ukraine forced him to move to Moscow and join the staff of the Moscow Conservatory.
Boelza authored a slate of books about Mozart (1941), Alexander Borodin (1944), Antonín Dvořák (1949), Reinhold Glière (1955), Maria Szymanowska (1956), Vítězslav Novák (1957), Frédéric Chopin (1960), Michał Kleofas Ogiński (1965), Alexander Scriabin (1982) and Karol Szymanowski (1984). He received a Doctorate, honoris causa, from the Charles University of Prague, in 1967.
References
- G. Wisniewski. Igor Belza. Poznan, 1996.
- Бэлза Игорь Федорович, biography in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Publications
- Igor Boelza. Handbook of Soviet Musicians. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1943 / 1971. ISBN 9780781202015.
- 1904 births
- 1994 deaths
- 20th-century classical musicians
- 20th-century composers
- 20th-century Russian historians
- 20th-century Russian male musicians
- 20th-century Russian male writers
- People from Kielce
- People from Kielce Governorate
- Kyiv Conservatory alumni
- Academic staff of Kyiv Conservatory
- Academic staff of Moscow Conservatory
- Officers of the Order of Polonia Restituta
- Recipients of the Decoration of Honor Meritorious for Polish Culture
- Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour
- Russian male film score composers
- Russian music historians
- Russian film score composers
- Russian literary historians
- Russian musicologists
- Soviet film score composers
- Soviet literary historians
- Soviet male writers
- Soviet musicologists
- Burials at Vagankovo Cemetery
- 20th-century musicologists