Joseph Schillinger

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Joseph Schillinger next to a rhythm icon

Joseph Schillinger Moissejewitsch ( Russian Иосиф Моисеевич Шилингер ; born August 20 . Jul / 1. September  1895 . Greg (according to other data: August 19, . Jul / 31 August  1895 . Greg ) in Kharkiv , then Russian Empire ; † 23rd March 1943 in New York City ) was a composer , music theorist, and teacher. The Schillinger system of composition training, which enjoyed a certain popularity in the 20th century, goes back to him .

Life

From 1914 Schillinger studied at the Petrograd Conservatory with Nikolai Tscherepnin and Jāzeps Vītols . In the Soviet Union, Schillinger taught at the Kharkiv Conservatory from 1918 to 1922, where he conducted the Ukrainian Symphony Orchestra for a time and then taught - composing himself - at the Petrograd Musical College. At the same time he was the founder and director of the first Soviet jazz orchestra and also conducted ethnomusicological studies in Georgia . His music was highly regarded in the Soviet Union: his Symphonic Rhapsody (October) was voted the best work of the first ten years of the Soviet Union by the state committee for symphonic and chamber music in 1927, ahead of works by Shostakovich and Glière , and the tenth at official celebrations On the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, music was played exclusively by him and Beethoven. In his life he wrote 33 complete musical works, of which he only published eight. He published a book on composition and numerous essays. From his training documents, his wife and various editors posthumously put together further books, of which The Schillinger System of Musical Composition of 1946 was to become the most influential.

The Schillinger system is rarely used directly any more, and his name is hardly ever present in music didactic debates. Still, many of his ideas and concepts remain influential in American music to this day. Schillinger particularly attached great importance to the mathematical organization of music. Among other things, he developed a new system of music notation . He publicly rejected large parts of the previous music history, composition theory and instrument making as faulty trial-and-error attempts that would have failed due to the lack of scientific standards of their makers. He did not exclude famous instrument makers or composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach or Ludwig van Beethoven from these judgments . The influential Berklee College of Music began its existence as the Schillinger House of Music when it was founded by Schillinger student Lawrence Berk. Schillinger also applied his theories to painting, architecture, photography, fashion, design, film and dance, for example.

Schillinger came to the United States in 1928 and then taught composition in New York City . Schillinger quickly established himself in the city and was one of the first members of the New York Musicological Society, later the American Musicological Society . His composition students included George Gershwin , Benny Goodman , Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller . He taught Gershwin, among other things, while he wrote Porgy and Bess ; Schillinger's influence on this opera is highly controversial in musicology. He himself described Porgy and Bess - as well as Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade - solely as homework that they should deliver in his class. However, he gave most of his teaching by mail across the United States. His books later emerged from the notes and materials for this. The income from these classes allowed Schillinger to live a prosperous life in Manhattan on Sutton Place and Park Avenue .

Schillinger worked on coordinating the soundtrack with the moving film image and developed the rhythm icon together with Leon Theremin . As a composer he created, among other things, the first Western work for an electronic instrument, the 1st Airphonic Suite from 1929 for the theremin . Schillinger rejected the traditional instruments on principle as unscientific and was an advocate of early electronic instruments such as the Hammond organ and theremin.

In the late 1920s he had a brief marriage to Russian actress Olga, which ended in divorce after two years. In 1936 he received American citizenship. In 1938 he married Frances Rosenfeld Singer, dancer and model. Five years later, Schillinger died of cancer. Frances Schillinger spent the rest of her life until 1998 preserving her husband's work and bringing it into the world. In 1945 she and friends founded the Schillinger Society, in the following years she published various writings of her husband as a book. Over the years, she distributed her husband's estate to most museums in New York and other institutions in the Anglo-American world using a sophisticated strategy of sales and gifts. The largest contiguous collection is in the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University .

Works

  • Kaleidophone: New Resources of Melody and Harmony. New York: M. Witmark, 1940
  • The Schillinger System of Musical Composition, ed. By Arnold Shaw and Lyle Dowling, 2 vols. (New York: C. Fischer, 1946; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1977);
  • Joseph Schillinger, The Mathematical Basis of the Arts, ed. By Arnold Shaw (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948; reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1976).
  • Encyclopedia of Rhythms. New York: Charles Colin, 1966
  • Graph Method of Dance Notation. London: Cervera Press, 1985.

literature

  • Warren Brodsky: Joseph Schillinger (1895–1943): Music Science Promethean in: American Music Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 45-73
  • Joe Conzo, David A. Pérez: Mambo Diablo. My Journey with Tito Puente . Verlag Author House, New York 2011 (p. 103: The Schillinger Method)
  • Detlef Gojowy:  Schillinger, Joseph. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 14 (Riccati - Schönstein). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1134-9  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  • Ned Quist: Toward a Reconstruction of the Legacy of Joseph Schillinger in: Notes, Volume 58, Number 4, June 2002, pp. 765-786

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Detlef Gojowy:  Schillinger, Joseph. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 14 (Riccati - Schönstein). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1134-9  ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
  2. ↑ Joseph Schillinger in the Munzinger Archive , accessed on September 6, 2018 ( beginning of article freely available)
  3. ↑ James M. Burk, Wayne J. Schneider:  Schillinger, Joseph. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  4. ↑ a b c Brodsky p. 46
  5. ↑ a b c Quist p. 765
  6. ^ Detlef Gojowy: New Soviet Music of the 20s , Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1980, p. 129
  7. ↑ a b Brodsky p. 48
  8. ↑ Quist p. 776
  9. ↑ Harry Lyden: The Schillinger System of Musical Composition (with biography Joseph Schillinger)
  10. ↑ a b c Brodsky p. 52
  11. ↑ a b Brodsky p. 45
  12. ↑ a b Quist p. 767
  13. ↑ Brodsky p. 56 (PDF, 1.8 MB)
  14. ↑ Quist p. 769
personal data
SURNAME Schillinger, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Шиллингер, Иосиф Моисеевич (Russian spelling); Schillinger, Joseph Moissejewitsch
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-American composer, composition teacher and music theorist
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1895 or September 1, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Kharkiv
DATE OF DEATH March 23, 1943
Place of death New York City