page_title: The Composers' House in Ivanovo
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: The Composers' House in Ivanovo / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: The Composers' House in Ivanovo. One of the dashas.
context_page_description: The Composers' House in Ivanovo, Russia, also often simply referred to by musicians as "Ivanovo", was created in 1943 by the USSR Union of Composers and its organizing committee. Their goal was to help Soviet composers during these difficult years and to give them the opportunity to continue to do creative work while ensuring basic living conditions, at least during the summer months.
context_section_description: The Composers' House in Ivanovo, also often simply referred to by musicians as “Ivanovo”, was created in 1943, in the midst of World War II. It was the USSR Union of Composers and its organizing committee led by Reinhold Glière that set as its goal to help composers during these difficult years and to give them the opportunity to continue to do creative work while ensuring basic living conditions, at least during the summer months. Aram Khachaturian, as vice-chairman of the Composer’s Union organizing committee, was also actively involved in the creation and organisation of the Composers' House in Ivanovo; he felt that it was his duty to give back to the society that had so prodigiously recognized his talents.
  Invited composers lived in separate, comfortable, one or two bedroom country cottages (dacha in Russian), each fully equipped with modern amenities (water, electricity). At evening, after dinner, everyone gathered in the biggest dacha to listen and discuss new music. Leisure time was spent with impromptu concerts, walking, discussing, collecting mushrooms, playing volleyball, playing charades and so on.
  During and after World War II The House of Creativity continued to serve as a favorite place to work and to rest for several generations of composers and musicologists.
  Sergei Prokofiev spent there the summers of 1944 and 1945, met and became friends with R. Glière, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Vano I. Muradeli, Y.A. Shaporin and their families.
  Khachaturian was also there in the summer of 1943 and met with most of them.Myaskovsky spent almost one year during that period. 
  N. Peyko, A. Eshpai,
  B. Tchaikovsky and many others also spent a significant amount of time in Ivanovo. Many of the dachas included a grand piano and some of them were used by the great masters themselves.
caption: Dacha No. 19 (ca. 1997)
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