Tolib Sodiqov

Tolib Sodiqov was born on 12 March (27 February in the old style) 1907 in Tashkent. In 1928 he entered the Institute of Music and Choreography in Samarkand, where he became closely acquainted with folk songs, instrumental music and the Shashmaqom, and performed at the institute’s concerts.

He began composing around 1930 at the Samarkand theatre of musical drama, writing the music for S. Abdulla’s play “Bog‘bon qiz” (“The Gardener’s Daughter”). In 1930–1932 he was music director of the Uzbek State Drama Theatre (the Hamza theatre), and from 1933 he conducted the orchestra of the musical drama theatre in Tashkent; that same year he wrote the music for the musical drama “Layli and Majnun”. From 1941 to 1954 he was chief conductor of the Alisher Navoi Theatre of Opera and Ballet.

In 1939–1941 he studied composition under Reinhold Glière at the Uzbek studio of the Moscow Conservatory; the outbreak of war forced him to break off his studies. Together with Glière he wrote the opera “Layli and Majnun” (1940, libretto by Khurshid), regarded as the first opera in the Uzbek language, and the opera “Gulsara” (1949). The latter was staged at the Navoi Theatre and won a Stalin Prize in 1951.

In 1939–1948 he was the first chairman of the Composers’ Union of Uzbekistan, and in 1951–1954 he headed the music and literature department of Uzbek radio. He wrote the musical dramas “Davron ota” (with A. Kozlovsky, 1941) and “Armug‘on” (with V. Meyen, 1946), the symphonic poem “Shodlik”, the music for the film “Alisher Navoi” (1947), and romances and songs such as “Bahor”, “Sarvigul”, “Bulbul” and “Jonon ko‘rinur”; in all he wrote more than a hundred songs and scores.

He began his last opera, “Zaynab and Omon”, with Zeydman but did not finish it: Yunus Rajabiy and Doni Zokirov completed the work in 1958. Sodiqov died in Tashkent on 5 September 1957. In 2003 he was posthumously awarded the Order “Buyuk xizmatlari uchun”.