Boris Andreevich Mokrousov

Born Feb. 14 (27), 1909, in Nizhny Novgorod, present-day Gorky; died Mar. 27, 1968, in Moscow. Soviet composer. Honored Art Worker of the Chuvash ASSR (1962).

Mokrousov completed N. la. Miaskovskii’s course in composition at the Moscow Conservatory in 1936. His works include the opera Chapaev (produced in 1942; second version, Chapai, produced in 1961) and the operetta Rose of the Winds (produced in 1947). His songs, in which elements from Russian folk music and art songs are used, won him particular popularity. Among Mokrousov’s best pieces are the ballad “The Sacred Stone” (1944) and the songs “The Flowers Are Lovely in Spring Gar-dens” (1946), “About the Motherland,” and “The Lonely Accordion” (1947; State Prize of the USSR, 1948). The composer wrote music for stage and screen (the film The Wedding With a Dowry, 1953).