Manas Leviev

Manas (Menashe) Betyanovich Leviev was born on 25 July 1912 in Namangan into a Bukharan Jewish family; his father was a tailor. He was the seventh son of a large family in which there was much singing and playing of the dutar, nay and doira. In 1922 the family was living in Samarkand, where the boy attended two schools at once — the Uzbek “Turon” school and School No. 26 for Bukharan Jewish children; in 1926 the Bukharan singer Levi Babakhanov heard him play and advised him to take up music seriously.

In 1930 Leviev entered the Samarkand institute of music and choreography, studying alongside the future composers Mukhtar Ashrafi, Mutal Burkhanov and Tolib Sodiqov. In 1933 he went to Leningrad, to the Mussorgsky music school; his graduation piece was the symphonic poem “Nurkhon”, in memory of the actress Nurkhon Yuldashbaeva. With it he entered the Leningrad Conservatory in 1937, in the composition class of Khrisanf Kushnarev; at the entrance examination the poem was played by Dmitri Shostakovich.

When the war began Leviev, a fifth-year student, volunteered for the 265th machine-gun battalion, was badly wounded and shell-shocked near Petrodvorets, and returned to Tashkent, where in 1942 he joined the musical life of the republic. His first song to Russian words, “For Leningrad”, was written in hospital. He graduated from the conservatory in 1944.

In Tashkent Leviev wrote songs to words by Ghafur Ghulam, Abdulla Qahhor, Hamid Olimjon and Komil Yashin, music for the drama “Jaloliddin”, the ballet “Suhayl and Mehri” (1945) and the musical comedy “The Golden Lake” (1949) to a libretto by Uyghun. His romances and songs, among them “Dilistonim, sen mening” and “O‘zbek qizi ovozi”, entered the republic’s concert repertoire; waltzes hold a special place, above all the waltz from the film “The Whole Neighbourhood Is Talking About It” (1960).

From 1955 Leviev was executive secretary of the board of the Union of Composers of Uzbekistan; he also took part in the work of the artistic councils of Uzbek television and radio and of the Muqimiy Theatre. He was named Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR (1962) and People’s Artist of the Uzbek SSR (1972); in 1979 he received the Hamza State Prize of the Uzbek SSR for his music to the productions “The Fair Princess of Tashkent” and “My Poplar in a Red Kerchief”, based on Chingiz Aitmatov’s novella.

Manas Leviev died on 12 May 1990 in Tashkent. His life and work are the subject of a book by the musicologist A. Jabborov, “Manas Leviev” (1986).