Georgy Mushel

Georgy Aleksandrovich Mushel was born on 29 July 1909 in Tambov. From 1921 he studied piano at a music school, and in 1930 he finished a music technical school in the class of S. M. Starikov.

In 1931 he entered the composition faculty of the Moscow Conservatory. He first studied with N. Ya. Myaskovsky and completed the course in 1936 under M. F. Gnesin and A. N. Aleksandrov, working on piano with L. N. Oborin. His graduation works were a First Piano Concerto and a Prelude and Fugue.

In 1936, the year he graduated, Central Asia's first institution of higher musical education opened in Tashkent, and Mushel was invited there. He absorbed the Uzbek musical heritage alongside masters such as Mulla Tuychi Tashmukhamedov, Shorahim Shoumarov, Tokhtasin Jalilov and Yunus Rajabi, and with Rajabi and Jalilov worked on music-drama productions including “Farhad and Shirin”, “Muqanna” and “Muqimiy”.

In 1937 he prepared, with Viktor Uspensky, the second version of “Farhad and Shirin”; later he wrote an opera of the same name (1940, revised 1955). His output includes the ballets “The Ballerina” (1952) and “The Kashmir Legend” (1961), three symphonies (the first in 1938), several piano concertos, a cantata, chamber and organ music, and the cycle “24 Preludes and Fugues” (1975). He also painted.

From 1944 he taught composition at the Tashkent Conservatory, becoming an associate professor in 1969 and a professor in 1976. He was named Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR in 1944 and received the medal “For Distinguished Labour” in 1959.

Georgy Mushel died in Tashkent on 25 December 1989 and is buried in the Dombrobod cemetery. Since 1994 a contest for young musicians has been held in Tashkent in his name.