German Avgustovich Larosh

Born May 13 (25), 1845, in St. Petersburg; died there Oct. 5 (18), 1904. Russian music critic.

Larosh graduated in 1866 from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he had studied with A. G. Rubinstein and had become a friend of P. I. Tchaikovsky. He was professor at the Moscow Conservatory (1867–70 and 1883–86) and at the St. Petersburg Conservatory (1872–75 and 1879), teaching music history and theory.

Larosh’s works include the series of articles “Glinka and His Importance to the History of Music” (Russkii vestnik, 1867, no. 10; 1868, nos. 1, 9, 10) and reminiscences and numerous articles on the works of Tchaikovsky, other Russian and West European composers, and many performers. He also wrote on such topics as music education and music science.

His highly professional and original opinions were nevertheless often marked by contradictions. Larosh’s general aesthetic ideas and concepts were quite weak and some evaluations were tendentious—for example, he failed to grasp Mussorgsky’s national spirit and, in general, underrated the composers known collectively as the Russian Five. Contemporaries (particularly V. V. Stasov) carried on sharp polemics with him, primarily regarding problems in Russian music.