Like Arriaga -- "The Spanish Mozart" -- before him and Canadian composer André Mathieu in his own time, Russian Herman Galynin was a teen composer of considerable note. The core of the early part of his modest output was created before he reached the age of 18; the very idea of juvenilia seems to have been unknown to him, as by that time Galynin was producing fully mature and original conceptions. At the age of about 27, embittered and harassed by the Zhdanov purges and the public humiliation of his idol Dmitry Shostakovich ...
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Like Arriaga -- "The Spanish Mozart" -- before him and Canadian composer André Mathieu in his own time, Russian Herman Galynin was a teen composer of considerable note. The core of the early part of his modest output was created before he reached the age of 18; the very idea of juvenilia seems to have been unknown to him, as by that time Galynin was producing fully mature and original conceptions. At the age of about 27, embittered and harassed by the Zhdanov purges and the public humiliation of his idol Dmitry Shostakovich, Galynin stopped composing. With one or two exceptions, that was about the end of it until he reached the age of 40 when he resumed and at 44, Galynin was felled by a sudden heart attack.End of story, one might say, although in body he lasted a bit longer, in his creative life some might suggest that Galynin should join the so-called "27 Club," the age at which certain rock stars tend to die. However, Galynin's creative death did not occur at the end of a needle or a shotgun pointed...
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