 Vavilov was active as a performer on both lute and guitar, as a music editor for a state music publishing house, and more importantly, as a composer.He routinely ascribed his own works to other composers, usually of the Renaissance or Baroque (occasionally from later eras), usually with total disregard of the appropriate style, in the spirit of other mystificators of the previous eras.His works achieved enormous circulation, and some of them achieved true folk-music status, with several poems set to his melodies.