Igor Belza

Belza, Igor’ Fedorovich 

Born Jan. 26 (Feb. 8), 1904, in Kielce, Poland. Soviet musicologist; doctor of art studies (1954).

In 1925, Belza graduated from the Kiev Conservatory in B. N. Liatoshinskii’s class (composition). He moved to Moscow in 1941; he was a professor at the conservatory (1942-49) and senior scholar at the Institute of Art History (1954-61). In 1961 he became a senior scholar at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Since 1965 he has also headed the Commission for the Study of Dante of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Belza’s principal works are on the musical culture of Poland and Czechoslovakia and on the Russian classics. He has also written musical works. He became an honorary doctor of philosophy at Charles University in Prague in 1967. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, various medals, and the Order of the Polish Renaissance.

WORKS

Ocherki razvitiia cheshskoi muzykal’noi klassiki. Moscow-Leningrad, 1951.
Istoriia pol’skoi muzykal’noi kul’tury, parts 1-3. Moscow-Leningrad, 1954-72.
Istoriia cheshskoi muzykal’noi kul’tury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1959.
Shopen. Moscow, 1968.
O slavianskoi muzyke; Izbr. raboty. Moscow, 1963. (With a bibliographical index.)