Sergey Tolstoy

Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy (Russian: Сергей Львович Толстой; 10 July 1863, Yasnaya Polyana – 23 December 1947, Moscow) was a composer and ethnomusicologist who was among the first Europeans to make an in-depth study of the music of India. He was also an associate of the Sufi mystic, Inayat Khan, and participated in helping the Doukhobors move to Canada. Biography He was the eldest son of Leo Tolstoy. As a child, he studied music with his mother Sophia. He also studied composition with Sergei Taneyev. From 1881 to 1886, he was enrolled in the "Department of Natural Sciences, Physics and Mathematics" at Moscow University, while attending classes at the Moscow Conservatory taught by Nikolay Kashkin. After graduating, he worked in the Tula branch of the Peasants' Land Bank and later became a manager at the Saint Petersburg branch. In 1890, he became head of the zemstvo for Chernsky District, near the family estate. Over the next ten years, he came to the defense of many Tolstoyans who were being suppressed for anti-government activities; notably Leopold Sulerzhitsky. From 1898 to 1899, he helped to organize the Doukhobor community for resettlement in Western Canada and accompanied them to Lawlor Island in Nova Scotia. He was married in 1895, but his wife died of tuberculosis five years later after a separation of two years. He remarried in 1906. During this time, he also composed, setting the words of several poets to music; including Pushkin, Fofanov, Fet and Tyutchev. At the "House of Song" competition in 1908, he was awarded a prize for his settings of ten poems by Robert Burns.