ZINOVI KOMPANAYETS

ZINOVI KOMPANAYETS (June 22, 1902-October 21, 1987)

            He was a composer, born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia.  He studied in the music school at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and in the composition department at the Moscow Conservatory.  In the early 1930s he composed musical works to the texts of Leyb Kvitko, Yekhezkl Dobrushin, Yashe Zeldin, Moyshe Kulbak, Arn Kushnirov, M. Tayf, Oskar Strelits, and later to the poems of Arn Vergelis, Chaim Beider, A. Khanin, Boris Mogilner, and to an array of folk and children’s poems.  In book form: Finf lider fun yidishe sovetishe dikhter (Five songs from Soviet Yiddish poets) (Moscow, 1960), 18 pp.—musical notation to poems by A. Vergelis, Yoysef Kerler, Leyzer Katsovitsh, and Sholem-Aleichem—transcribed in the Jewish and Roman alphabets, with a Russian translation.  In 1961 he began contributing to Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland), and with the editorial board published a collection, Naye yidishe lider (New Yiddish songs) (Moscow, 1970).

Source: Sovetish heymland (Moscow) 2 (1984).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 473-74.