Khrennikov, Tikhon Nikolaievich (1913- )

Russian composer. He was secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers from 1948, and was made a Hero of Socialist Labour in 1973. He played a prominent part in the Stalinist-inspired denunciations of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and renewed his attacks with the emergence of the New Music generation of composers, Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina.

He was taught music at home, but entered the Gnesin School of Music, Moscow, in 1929 and the Conservatory in 1932 as a pupil of Vissarion Shebalin.

Works Stage and incidental music operas The Brothers (In the Storm, 1939) and Mother (after Gogol, 1957); incidental music for Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing, an adaptation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, and others; film music for The Pigs and the Shepherd.

Orchestral three symphonies (1955-73); three piano concertos (1933-82).

Other piano pieces; songs to words by Pushkin and Burns; war songs.