Lev Stepanovich Gurilyov

Lev Stepanovich Gurilyov (Moscow, 1770 – Moscow, 1844) was a Russian composer of the first half of the nineteenth century and the father of the composer Aleksandr L'vovich Gurilyov. His significance lies chiefly in his keyboard music, at a time when Russian instrumental music was beginning to define its own idiom.

Born into serfdom, he worked on the Orlov estate near Moscow. He received musical training from Giuseppe Sarti and went on to conduct the orchestra formed by the serfs of the household. Over the first two decades of the century he composed some twenty sets of variations on Russian folk songs, taking their thematic material with considerable freedom, although the melodies did not always lend themselves readily to variation. He often included extended cadenzas, a device rare among his Russian contemporaries.

His most ambitious work is Vingt-quatre préludes et une fugue, dedicated to his former patron, Count V. G. Orlov, and published in 1810. It is the first surviving example in Russian keyboard music of a set of pieces written in all the major and minor keys. The preludes show a firm command of counterpoint and a clear debt to Bach, along with improvisatory, unmetred episodes that anticipate the free prelude of the mid-nineteenth century. In his later years he devoted himself increasingly to teaching. He also wrote sacred music, including a mass and a setting of the Lord's Prayer.