Zhitomirsky, Daniel
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Daniel Vladimirovich Zhitomirsky (22 December 1906 – 27 June 1992) was a Russian
musicologist Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...
and music critic who specialized in the music of German composer
Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; ; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and music critic of the early Romantic music, Romantic era. He composed in all the main musical genres of the time, writing for solo piano, voice and piano, chamber ...
and the aesthetics of German
Romanticism Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The purpose of the movement was to advocate for the importance of subjec ...
. He also wrote extensively on Russian composers of the Soviet period, especially
Dmitri Shostakovich Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer. Shostak ...
.


Life and career

Zhitomirsky studied
music theory Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "Elements of music, ...
at
Kharkiv Conservatory Kharkiv National University of Arts named after I. P. Kotlyarevsky (or Kharkiv Conservatory or Kharkiv National I. P. Kotlyarevsky University of Arts; Ukrainian: Харківський національний університет мистец ...
under S.S. Bogatiryov, then
music history Music history, sometimes called historical musicology, is a highly diverse subfield of the broader discipline of musicology that studies music from a historical point of view. In theory, "music history" could refer to the study of the history of ...
and theory with Ivanov–Boretsky and composition with Zhilyayev at the
Moscow Conservatory The Moscow Conservatory, also officially Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory () is a higher musical educational institution located in Moscow, Russia. It grants undergraduate and graduate degrees in musical performance and musical research. Th ...
, where he graduated in 1931. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Zhitomirsky was a member of the
Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians The Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians or RAPM () was a musicians' creative union of the early Soviet period. It was founded in June 1923, by Lev Shul'gin, Aleksei Sergeev, and David Chernomoridikov. RAPM's members advocated "mass songs" ...
(RAPM) and served as a music critic for the journals ''Prolietarskiy muzikant'' (''The Proletarian Musician'') and ''Za proletarskuya muziku'' (''For Proletarian Music'').Gojowy, ''New Grove (2001)'' Throughout his career, he served a variety of newspapers and periodicals as a music critic.Keldish, ''New Grove (1980)''. Zhitomirsky began teaching music history and introductory classes in
music analysis Musical analysis is the study of musical structure in either compositions or performances. According to music theorist Ian Bent, music analysis "is the means of answering directly the question 'How does it work?'". The method employed to answ ...
at the Moscow Conservatory in 1931 and in 1936 was made senior lecturer. Forced to leave his post in 1937, he was quickly reinstated. He was dismissed again in 1948, the year of the Zhdanov decree that affected composers
Aram Khachaturian Aram Ilyich Khachaturian (; 1 May 1978) was a Soviet Armenians, Armenian composer and conductor. He is considered one of the leading Music of the Soviet Union#Classical music of the Soviet Union, Soviet composers. Khachaturian was born and rai ...
,
Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''. , group=n ( – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who l ...
and Dmitri Shostakovich, in a. The cause for his dismissal, a printed denunciation by the
Union of Soviet Composers The Union of Russian Composers (formerly the Union of Soviet Composers, Order of Lenin Union of Composers of USSR () (1932– ), and Union of Soviet Composers of the USSR) is a state-created organization for musicians and musicologists created in 1 ...
and an official censure was
anti-Semitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
, conducted under the bureaucratic veneer of a campaign against "cosmpolitalism." According to musicologists Judith Kuhn and
Richard Taruskin Richard Filler Taruskin (April 2, 1945 – July 1, 2022) was an American musicologist and music critic who was among the leading and most prominent music historians of his generation. The breadth of his scrutiny into source material as well as ...
, this campaign, which included the murder of virtually every Jewish cultural activist over a five–year period, became the first instance of anti-Semitism as "official government policy in the Soviet Union."Taruskin, 6. Also see Kuhn, 47–78; 137–39. Following this political fallout, Zhitomirsky taught as senior lecturer at the conservatory of Azerbaijan Conservatory in
Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...
from 1949 to 1953 and at the Gorky Conservatory from 1955 to 1970. In 1965, he was made a senior scientific officer at the Moscow Institute for the History of Art. While Zhitomirsky focused primarily on Schumann's music, letters and written articles, he also studied Russian musical culture of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the first Russian musicologist to assess the music of
Alexander Scriabin Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, scientific transliteration: ''Aleksandr Nikolaevič Skrjabin''; also transliterated variously as Skriabin, Skryabin, and (in French) Scriabine. The composer himselused the French spelling "Scriabine" which was a ...
in the context of the spiritual movements with which the composer was associated. He also wrote on Soviet composers of the 1920s, especially Shostakovich. He wrote his articles, reviews and reminiscences of Shostakovich in what Detlev Gojowy, in the ''
New Grove ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and th ...
'', called "a nonconformist attitude." Zhitomirsky's presentation at the
Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
conference of 1968, Gojowy adds, was similarly colored and shed new light on the history of Soviet music. However, toward the end of his life, he developed a conservative attitude on contemporary music, especially about avant–garde composers.


Degrees and honors

Zhitomirsky received his ''Kandidat'' degree in 1942 with a dissertation on
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popula ...
. He received his
doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...
in 1942 with a dissertation on Robert Schumann. He was awarded the
Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau The Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau is a classical music award. Since 1964 it has been awarded by the Lord Mayor of Zwickau. Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau. Between 1964 and 2002 the prize was awarded annually, since 2003 bienni ...
in 1966.


Shostakovich

In ''The Shostakovich Casebook'', Irina Nikolskaya portrays Zhitomirsky as someone who "made" Shostakovich into an acceptable artist for the Soviet bureaucracy. At a June 1929 meeting of the RAPM, where members denounced Shostakovich's opera '' The Nose'' for "formalism" and "anti–Soviet escapism", Zhitomirsky reportedly pointed his fist at the composer and said, "If he does not accept the falsity of his path, then his work will inevitably find itself at a dead end." Later, however, Zhitomersky became a supporter of the composer and may have ghost written some of his official speeches and articles. Nikolskaya says Zhitomirsky eventually portrayed Shostakovich as an artist "living in internal exile, one who totally rejected the existing system and repudiated everything Soviet."Nikolskaya, 176. Zhitomirsky's positive review and subsequent defense of Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony, which would be singled out by the authorities for its "formalism" under the Zhdanov decree, might not have helped his personal position. He also defended the Third String Quartet, written at approximately the same period, when other Soviet critics remained silent. In a monograph on the composer, Zhitomirsky emphasized the quartet's "rich and multi-faceted content" and called it "an entire world of romantic feelings, where the beauty of bright, 'naive' daydreams exists side-by-side with austere patriotic passion, with grief and heroism." Much later, while Zhitomirsky remained resolute against
serial music In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were also ...
in general, he defended Shostakovich's use of the 12-tone system in his late works. In the September 1976 issue of ''Sovietskaia muzyka'' (''Soviet Music''), he emphasized the "indissoluble connection between the tonal and atonal moments in Shostakovich's music" and the fact that the composer's atonal themes "create the optimal conditions for the expulsion of a tonal center.... The tonal beginning of them, as is correct, does not vanish, although frequently it is as if already hanging by a thread." Zhitomirsky claimed that Shostakovich used 12-tone themes for expressive effect and were thus an extension of a type of "melodic intensity" which had existed since the 19th century.Schmelz, 316, 318.


References


Bibliography

* Fanning, David, "Shostakovich, Dmitry (Dmitriyevich)." In ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition'' (London: Macmillan, 2001), 29 vols., ed. Sadie, Stanley. . * Fanning, David, "Placing Shostakovich and the Eighth Quartet." In ''Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8 (Landmarks in Music Since 1950)'' (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004). . * Fay, Laurel E., ''Shostakovich: A Life'' (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). . * Gojowy, Detlef, "Zhitomirsky, Daniil Vladimorovich." In ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition'' (London: Macmillan, 2001), 29 vols., ed. Sadie, Stanley. . * Keldesh, Yury, "Zhitomirsky, Daniil Vladimorovich." In ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, First Edition'' (London: Macmillan, 1980), 20 vols., ed. Sadie, Stanley. . * Kuhn, Judith, ''Shostakovich in Dialogue: Form, Imagery and Ideas in Quartets 1–7'' (Ashgate Publishing, 2010). . * MacDonald, Ian, ''The New Shostakovich'' (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990). . * Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, ''A History of Russian Music: From ''Kamarinskaya ''to'' Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). . * Nikolskaya, Irina, "Shostakovich Remembered: Interviews with His Soviet Colleagues." In ''The Shostakovich Casebook'' (Indiana University Press, 2004), ed. Brown, Malcolm Hamrick. . * Schmelz, Peter J., "Shostakovich's 'Twelve-Tone' Compositions and the Politics and Practice of Soviet Serialism." In ''Shostakovich and His World'' (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), ed. Fay, Laurel E. .
Taruskin, Richard, "Shostakovich and Us." Retrieved 29 Mar 2012.


External links



* [http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/zhito/zhito2.html Zhitomirsky, Daniel, "Shostakovich, the Public and the Private: reminiscences, materials, comments. Part 2: A Double Life." In ''Daugava'' (1990, No. 4). English version by Katia Vinogradova and Ian MacDonald. Retrieved 28 Mar 2012.] {{DEFAULTSORT:Zhitomirsky, Daniel 1906 births 1992 deaths Russian musicologists Russian music critics Soviet musicologists Soviet music critics Moscow Conservatory alumni People from Pavlohrad