Vladimir Vavilov (composer)


Vladimir Fyodorovich Vavilov was a Russian guitarist, lutenist and composer. He was a student of Pyotr Isakov and Iogann Admoni at the Rimski-Korsakov Music College in Leningrad.
Vavilov was active as a performer on both lute and guitar, as a music editor for a state music publishing house, and more importantly, as a composer. He routinely ascribed his own works to other composers, usually of the Renaissance or Baroque, usually with total disregard of the appropriate style, 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, aged 47, 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: