Ilya Aleksandrovich Musin
(1904 - 1999)
OUTSTANDING TEACHER and CONDUCTOR
FOUNDER OF THE
CONDUCTOR'S SCHOOL
" ... I still thank Providence,
for breaking off my piano lessons, and directing me to the only path true for me."
Ilya Musin was born on December 24, 1903 according to the old style calendar (January 6, 1904 in the new calendar) in the city of Kostroma. He lived on Maryinsky Street (now Shagova Street), in a house, on the site of which now stands house number 15 with a memorial plaque.
lya Musin's father was a watchmaker, his mother was a midwife. She died early with her youngest son, from diphtheria.
In 1919 he came to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and entered the Conservatory in the class of Nikolai Dubasov as a pianist.
Later he studied under Samaria Savshinsky, but due to an illness of his hand he left his thoughts about the career as a pianist.
"... because of classes in an unheated room, I ruined my left hand. This circumstance made me decisively abandon the career of a pianist and direct my attention to the realization of a craving for conducting art that arose somewhere in the depths of my consciousness ...
I thank heaven for breaking off my piano lessons and directing me to the only path true for me."
With the formation of the conducting department in 1925, he entered the class of Nikolai Malko, and after leaving abroad in 1929, he continued his studies with Alexander Gauk.
Ilya Musin began his pedagogical work at the Central Music College and continued it at the Leningrad Conservatory, where the first graduation took place in 1936, the students of his class.
"... I myself experienced the wisdom of the aphorism: "Teaching others, we learn about ourselves".
To what extent my explanations were understandable, how well they reached the consciousness of my students, I could immediately tell by their reaction, by the way the movements of the hands of my students became more perfect, their conducting techniques improved."
In 1937, Ilya Musin was offered the position of chief conductor of the Belarusian Philharmonic and as professor at the Conservatory in Minsk, where he moved with his wife Anna and his young son Eduard.
" ... It is difficult for me to say what my life would have been like if I had stayed in Leningrad. After all, a particularly difficult period in the country's history began - 1937 ".
He met the war in Minsk and after miraculously escaping, was sent with his family to Tashkent, where the evacuated employees of the Leningrad Conservatory already were.
In Tashkent, Ilya Musin began writing a textbook on conducting, first published in 1967 (“Conducting Technique” - Leningrad: Music)
"... I had no thought that my work on the book would stretch on (intermittently) for twenty years.
Sometimes I was overcome by despair from constantly arising difficulties.
Sometimes I had a desire to leave this business, to admit,
that writing such a book at all is an impossible task ..."
In the last years of his life, Ilya Musin, thanks to his students, went with master classes to the UK, Israel, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, and Japan ...
Ilya Musin Ilya Musin passed away on June 6, 1999 and was buried on the Literatorskiye Mostki Museum Necropolis (Literary bridges of Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg) in St. Petersburg.
"... The first days of my stay in Petrograd gave rise to a desire to get acquainted with him.
I walked the streets and fell more and more in love with this amazing city.
... For once in my life I could listen to operas and Symphony concerts ...
The vast world of music that Petrograd opened to me then."
