The works

Two operas, one symphony, four or five symphonic suites, a string quartet, an oratorio, five cantatas, eight vocal-choreographic suites, music for theatre and film, more than three hundred songs and fourteen romances.

The songs are what people knew him for. The symphonic works are why the encyclopedias call him the father of Tajik symphonic music. He was writing both at once for most of his working life.

The catalogue

The list below comes from our own pages of about 2004, the Music Encyclopedia article by Z. Tadzhikova, Elena Orlova’s monograph of 1986 and her essay of 1990, and the Russian and Tajik encyclopedia entries that follow them. They do not always agree on the dates. Buzruk is 1972 in one and 1976 in another. Gulomon is 1978, 1979 or 1980 depending on where you look. Komde and Madan was staged in 1960 according to the Russian sources and 1961 according to the Tajik ones; Munira, in her last interview in July 2026, said 1960, in Dushanbe, and Samarkand after that, with the full score published in Moscow in 1982.

An opera called Zebuniso turns up in a recent AI-written compendium and in no encyclopedia we have checked. It is not in the list.

Two to start with

Komde and Madan, from 1960, is the first Tajik national opera, made from a poem by Bedil, the Persian-language poet of seventeenth-century India. A dancer and a singer, kept apart by the court. It does not behave like a European opera, and our own note says why: “the characters are not so distinct. The theme of Madan sometimes appears in Komde’s features as she accompanies Madan’s arias.” Its recurring theme is Ushshoqi Samarkand, the Beloved of Samarkand.

The Symphony of Maqams, from 1977, sets a single unharmonised Tajik line against sonoristic orchestral colour, written-out aleatory and ostinato complexes. Neither one is softened to fit the other.