Vladimir Vavilov

Who was Vladimir Vavilov?

Vladimir Fyodorovich Vavilov was a Russian guitarist, lutenist and composer. He was a student of P. Isakov and Iogann Admoni at the Rimski-Korsakov Music College in St Petersburg. He played an important part in the early music revival in the Soviet Union.

Vavilov was active as a performer on both lute and guitar, as a music editor for a state music publishing house, and more important, as a composer. He routinely ascribed his own works to other composers, usually Renaissance or Baroque, usually with total disregard of a style that should have been appropriate, in the spirit of other mystificators of the previous eras. His works achieved enormous circulation, and some of them achieved true folk music status, with several poems set to his melodies.

Vavilov died in poverty, of pancreatic cancer, a few months before the appearance of "The City of Gold", which became a hit overnight.

The most famous of his anonymous or misattributed compositions are:

⁕"Сanzona by Francesco da Milano". Poets Anri Volokhonsky and Alexei Khvostenko would later set lyrics on this music, the song called "The City of Gold" song. The song, in turn, would become a hit in the 1980s when it was performed by Aquarium for the soundrack for the film Assa.