Arthur Vincent Lourié

( b St Petersburg, 14 May 1892; d Princeton, 12 Oct 1966). Russian composer. He abandoned studies at the St Petersburg Conservatory to experiment with 12-note procedures (Formes en l′air and other piano pieces of 1915). In 1918 he was appointed music commissar but in 1921 he left for Berlin, where he met Busoni; in 1924 he moved to Paris and became a close friend of Stravinsky, whom he followed to the USA in 1941. He was, however, antipathetic to neo-classicism, preferring a modal, chant-like style in his Sonata liturgica (1928) and Concerto spirituale (1929), both for chorus and orchestra. He also wrote two symphonies (1930, 1939) and two operas (The Feast During the Plague, 1935; The Blackamoor of Peter the Great, 1961).