Lev Pulver
Soviet Jewish theatre composer (1883-1970)
Lev Mikhailovich Pulver (Yiddish pronunciation: Leib Pulver, Yiddish: לייב פּולווער, European spelling: Leo Pulver, Russian: Лев Михайлович Пульвер; 18 December 1883, Verkhnodniprovsk – 18 March 1970, Moscow), was a Soviet and Russian-Jewish composer and musician.
Early life
He was an offspring of a renowned klezmorim's family.
Pulver studied violin since early childhood, at first with his father; later on, he studied with his brother-in-law, a disciple of Czech violinist Otakar Ševčík. Pulver graduated from Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied violin and composition under Anatoly Lyadov.
Initially, he was a violinist and composer in a wandering Ukrainian theatre group. Later on, he was a symphonic concert-master and conductor, a founding member of the Stradivari Quartet. He was the musical director of the State Jewish Theatre in Moscow (the GOSET).
Compositions
Pulver composed incidental music for works including Shakespeare's King Lear; Sholem Aleichem's 200.000 and The Man of the Air; Adventures of Benjamin the Third after Mendele Mocher Sforim; Abraham Goldfaden's The Sorceress (in collaboration with Joseph Achron); and Zalman Shneyer's Freylekhs (in collaboration with Maximilian Steinberg). He also composed operettas (Gulliver, Inside the Big Top, What is her name?), movie scores, songs, and Yiddish folk-song arrangements. Some of his tunes have been considered as Jewish folklore.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lev Pulver” as soviet Jewish theatre composer (1883-1970). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2074443. VIAF identifies the subject as 258302433. The Library of Congress control number is no2013049461. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1883 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lev Pulver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.