Yuri Sergeevich Milyutin |
Jury Milutin
A popular Soviet composer of that generation, whose work developed in the 1930s and reached its peak in the post-war period, Milyutin worked in the genres of operetta, music for drama performances, films, and mass song.
His works are marked by brightness, cheerfulness, sincerity of intonations. The best of them, such as the popular song “Lenin’s Mountains”, embody the feelings, character, spiritual structure of the Soviet people, their lofty ideals.
Yuri Sergeevich Milyutin was born on April 18 (5th according to the new style) April 1903 in Moscow in the family of an employee. He began to study music quite late, at the age of ten, after graduating from a real school (1917), he entered the music courses of Professor V.K. Kossovsky. However, in these years, the main thing for a young man is not music. The dream of becoming an actor leads him to the studio of the Chamber Theater (1919). But music is not abandoned by him – Milyutin composes songs, dances, and sometimes musical accompaniment to performances. Gradually he realizes that his vocation is composition, the work of a composer. But along with this realization came the understanding that it is necessary to study seriously, to acquire professionalism.
In 1929, Milyutin entered the Moscow Regional Musical College, where he studied with major composers and famous teachers S. N. Vasilenko (in composition, instrumentation and analysis of musical form) and A. V. Aleksandrov (in harmony and polyphony). In 1934, Milyutin graduated from college. By this time, he was already in charge of the musical part in the theater-studio of Y. Zavadsky, wrote music for the performances of many Moscow theaters, and in 1936 he first turned to film music (the anti-fascist film “Karl Bruiner”). In the following years, the composer worked a lot in cinema, creating popular mass songs “The Seagull”, “Don’t Touch Us”, etc.
During the Great Patriotic War, Milyutin continued active creative work, went to the front with concert teams, performed in hospitals.
Even before the war, in 1940, Milyutin first turned to the operetta genre. His first operetta “The Life of an Actor” did not hold on to the stage, but the following works by the composer took a firm place in the repertoires of theaters. The composer died on June 9, 1968.
Among the works of Y. Milyutin are several dozen songs, including “Far Eastern”, “Serious Conversation”, “Friendly Guys”, “Lilac-Bird Cherry”, “Lenin Mountains”, “Komsomol Muscovites”, “Seeing the Accordion Player to the Institute” , “Blue-eyed” and others; music for more than ten theatrical productions and films, including the films “The Sailor’s Daughter”, “Hearts of Four”, “Restless Household”; operettas The Life of an Actor (1940), Maiden Trouble (1945), Restless Happiness (1947), Trembita (1949), First Love (1953), Chanita’s Kiss (1957), Lanterns -Lanterns” (1958), “The Circus Lights the Lights” (I960), “Pansies” (1964), “Quiet Family” (1968).
Laureate of the Stalin Prize of the second degree for the songs “Lenin Mountains”, “Lilac Bird Cherry” and “Naval Guard” (1949). People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1964).
L. Mikheeva, A. Orelovich
