Richard Pennycuick wrote:

>When I first encountered the composer some years ago, his name was spelt
>Miaskovsky, and I assumed that it was pronounced MEE-AH-SKOFF-SKEE.  In
>recent years, it's changed to Myaskovsky, which some have pronounced as
>MY-AH-SKOFF-SKEE.  I wondered whether the more recent spelling is an
>attempt to combine M and YAH (as in the German Ja) into one syllable.

Miaskovsky's name has THREE syllables, no matter how you transcribe or
transliterate it.  The first is "myah", pronounced together; it's not
"mee-ah" and certainly not - what horror!  - "my-ah".

The transliteration and transcription of Cyrillic into the Latin alphabet
are tricky, and no matter what system you use, some people will
mispronounce words and names.

-Margaret Mikulska