Anatoly Bogatyrev

Anatoly Bogatyrev (1913–2003) was a Belarusian composer and music teacher, seen as one of the leaders of the national school of Belarusian music. Bogatyrev was born in Vitebsk and studied at the Vitebsk Music School, the Minsk School of Music, and the Conservatory of Belarus, where he was taught composition by Vasily Zolotarev, a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. He came to prominence while still in his twenties, being appointed chairman of the board of the Belarusian Union of Composers in 1938, and receiving the Stalin Prize in 1941. In 1948, he began teaching composition at the National Conservatory, Minsk, where he later became a deputy director. Bogatyrev's music is tonal with marked nationalist tendencies. His study of Belarusian folklore strongly influenced his music, not just in his folksong arrangements, but also in the choice sometimes to adopt modes and the rhythms of Belarusian folk music in his other works. He was made a People's Artist of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1968. Bogatyrev died in 2003 in Minsk.