Sabir Babaev

Sabir Babaev (Uzbek: Sobir Boboyev) was born on 30 December 1920 in Tashkent. He lost his father early and was raised in an orphanage. He studied composition at the Tashkent Conservatory in the class of Professor Boris Nadezhdin and graduated in 1949.

In 1943–1947 he worked as an assistant choirmaster at the Uzbek Radio Committee, and in 1949–1950 he was artistic director of the song and dance ensemble of the Uzbek State Philharmonic. From 1948 he held leading posts in the Union of Composers of Uzbekistan: in 1948–1956, in the first half of the 1960s and in 1982–1985 he headed it as first secretary or chairman (sources differ slightly on the years). In 1958–1960 he chaired the Choral Society of Uzbekistan.

His works of the 1950s include the “Festive Overture” for an orchestra of Uzbek folk instruments (1951), performed in 1951 in Moscow at the Decade of Uzbek Literature and Art; the cantata “Cotton Festival” to words by Ramz Babajan (1955); the symphonic poem “On the Day of the Festival” (1958); and music for the musical drama “Love of the Homeland” (“Vatan ishqi”, 1957).

His best-known stage work is the opera “Hamza” to a libretto by Komil Yashin, staged in 1961 at the Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tashkent. He later wrote the children’s opera “Split, Stone” (1967), the opera “Fidoyilar” (“At the Cost of Life”, staged in Samarkand in 1973) and the musical drama “Song of Love” (1980). His romances “Yor ketdi”, “Qalb” and “Meros” are named among the best-known examples of his chamber music.

In 1966–1969 he was director and artistic director of the Samarkand Opera and Ballet Theatre, and in 1972–1976 artistic director of the Uzbek State Philharmonic. In 1969–1977 he taught at the Tashkent Conservatory. In 1967 he was given the honorary title Honored Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR, and in the same year he became a laureate of the Youth Prize of Uzbekistan. He received the Order of the Badge of Honour four times (1950, 1951, 1959, 1965) and the El-Yurt Hurmati Order in 1998.

In the 1990s he composed cycles of romances to poems by Navoi, Mashrab and Nodira. Sabir Babaev died in 2004.