Steinpress, Boris (Solomonovich)

Steinpress, Boris (Solomonovich), erudite Russian musicologist; b. Berdyansk, Aug. 13, 1908; d. Moscow, May 21, 1986. He studied piano with Igumnov at the Moscow Cons., graduating in 1931, and took a postgraduate course there in musicology with Ivanov-Boretsky, completing it in 1936; was a member of its faculty (1931; 1933–36); in 1938 he received the title of candidate of fine arts for his diss. on Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. He taught at the Urals Cons. in Sverdlovsk (1936–37; 1942–43); served as head of the music history dept. of the Central Correspondence Inst. for Musical Education (1939–41), and was senior lecturer and dean of the faculty of history and theory (from 1940). In 1942 he joined the Communist Party. Although engaged primarily in musical encyclopedic work, Steinpress also composed; his patriotic songs were popular in the U.S.S.R. during World War II. From 1938 to 1940 and from 1943 to 1959 he was chief contributor to the music section of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. His publcations are particularly important in musical biography; he decisively refuted the legend of Salieri’s poisoning Mozart. His biography of Aliabiev clarifies the story of Aliabiev’s life and his internal exile on the false charge of murder in a duel. With I. Yampolsky, he ed. an extremely valuable and accurate one-vol. encyclopedic musical dictionary (Moscow, 1959; second ed., 1966); also with Yampolsky he compiled a useful brief dictionary for music lovers (Moscow, 1961; second ed.,1967).In 1963 he pubi, a partial vol. of a monumental work on opera premieres covering the period 1900–40, giving exact dates and names of theaters for all opera productions worldwide.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire