Alexander Mossolov

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Alexander Vasilievich Mosolov (Russian: Александр Васильевич Мосолов, 29 July/11 August 1900, Kiev — 11 July 1973, Moscow), was a significant Russian avant-garde composer of the early Soviet era. The son of a lawyer (who died when he was five) and a singer at the Bolshoi Theatre, during the Revolutionary period in 1917-18 he worked in the office of the People's Commissioner for State Control, where he had fleeting personal contact with Lenin. He then served with the Red Army on the Polish and Ukrainian fronts and was wounded and shell-shocked. From 1920 he worked as a pianist for silent films, and in 1922 entered the Moscow Conservatory to study under Reinhold Glière and Nikolai Miaskovsky, graduating in 1925. He became director of chamber music for the Association of Contemporary Music, and then worked as a radio music editor. His works were often taken to embody the new brutalism and worship of the machine, and his most famous composition is the orchestral piece Iron Foundry (Zavod), a movement from a ballet entitled Steel (1927), which was performed all over the world. Later Mosolov fell foul of the musical politics of the USSR and after violent attacks on his reputation by RAPM he was expelled from the Association of Contemporary Music in 1936 for 'public drunkenness'. Before this he had written to Stalin complaining that through no fault of his own he had 'become a kind of musical outlaw' even though he was 'a loyal Soviet man'. He was sent to Armenia, Kirghizia, Turkme

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albums

Baku: Symphony Of Sirens. Sound Experiments In The Russian Avant Garde

Soviet Avant-Garde

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Russian Avant-Garde 2

Soviet Avant-Garde 1

Soviet Avant-Garde I

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Baku: Symphony Of Sirens

Soviet Avant-Garde 2

The Dombass Symphony

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Baku: Symphony Of Sirens. Sound Experiments In The Russian Avant Garde II

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Iron Foundry And Other Works

Sounds of New Music

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Baku: Symphony of Sirens, CD 2

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