Arthur-Vincent Lourié, born Naum Izrailevich Luria (), later changed his name to Artur Sergeyevich Luriye () (14 May 1892 in Propoysk – 12 October 1966 in Princeton, New Jersey) was a significant Russian composer. Lourié played an important role in the earliest stages of the organization of Soviet music after the 1917 Revolution but later went into exile. His music reflects his close connections with contemporary writers and artists, and also his close relationship with Igor Stravinsky. Russian career Born into a prosperous Jewish family, he converted to Catholicism while still in Russia. An admirer of van Gogh, from whom he derived the name 'Vincent', Lourié was partly self-taught, but also studied piano with Barinova and composition with Glazunov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1913. He became friendly with the Futurist poets and particularly Anna Akhmatova, whose poetry he was among the first to set. He was also acquainted with Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Kulbin, Fyodor Sologub and Alexander Blok; and was deeply influenced by contemporary art. His early piano pieces, from 1908 onward, take on from the late works of Scriabin but evolve new kinds of discourse, arriving in 1914 at an early form of dodecaphony (the Synthèses) and in 1915 at the Formes en l'air, dedicated to Picasso, a rather Cubist conception using an innovative form of notation in which different systems are placed spatially on the page in independent blocks, with blanks instead of bars' rest. At this stage of his career he seems a parallel figure to Nikolai Roslavets, though Lourié's aesthetic appears more 'decadent'. Essentially he was the first Russian Futurist in music, and in 1914 was the co-signatory, with the painter Georgy Yakulov and the poet Benedikt Livshitz, of the Petersburg Futurist Manifesto, 'We and the West', proclaiming principles common to all three arts. Revolutionary Russia After the October Revolution of 1917 Lourié served under Lunacharsky as head of the music division (Muzo) of the Commissariat of Popular Enlightenment (Narkompros). For a while he shared a house with Serge Sudeikin and his wife Vera Sudeikina. His tenure proved to be contentious. When he suggested renaming his music department "The People's Tribune for Civil Music", and to style himself the "People's Tribune", Lunacharsky allegedly replied: "No, Artur Sergeevich, this does not suit us." Alexander Goldenweiser and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov complained to Lenin himself about him. Though his sympathies were Leftist he became increasingly disenchanted with