Joseph Schillinger
Joseph Schillinger Moissejewitsch (Russian Иосиф Моисеевич Шилингер; born September 1, 1895 in Kharkov, then Russian Empire, † March 1943 in New York City ) was a composer, music theorist and teacher. On him the Schillinger system of composition training goes back, which enjoyed a certain popularity in the 20th century.
From 1914 studied at the Petrograd Conservatory under Schillinger Nikolai Tcherepnin and Jāzeps Vītols. In the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1922 Schillinger taught at the conservatory in Kharkiv, Ukrainian Symphony Orchestra conducted there temporarily the and taught - even compositionally active - then musical composition at the pilot plant Petrograd. He was also founder and head of the first Soviet jazz orchestra and also ran ethnomusicological studies in Georgia. His music was highly regarded in the Soviet Union: Its Symphonic Rhapsody (October) in 1927 selected by the State Committee for symphonic and chamber music at the best work of the first ten years of the Soviet Union, ahead of works by Shostakovich and Glière, and at the official celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution was exclusively played music from him and Beethoven. He wrote in his life 33 complete musical works of which he but only eight published. He published a book on the theory of composition and numerous essays. From his documents for training his wife and various publishers presented posthumously together more books, of which The Schillinger System of Musical Composition from 1946 that should be influential.
The Schillinger system is hardly used still directly, and his name is hardly present in music educational debates. Nevertheless, many of his ideas and concepts to today are influential in American music. Schillinger put a particular emphasis on a mathematical organization of music. To this end, he developed a new system of musical notation. Large parts of the previous music history, theory of composition and instrument making it publicly rejected as erroneous trial- and-error experiments, which would have failed at the lack of scientific rigor of their makers. From these judgments, he took neither famous instrument makers still composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven. The influential Berklee College of Music began its existence as Schillinger House of Music, as it was founded by Schillinger student Lawrence Berk. Schillinger applied his theories as well as in painting, architecture, photography, fashion, design, film and dance.
Schillinger came in 1928 in the U.S. and then taught composition in New York City. Schillinger was able to quickly establish in the city and one of the first members of the New York Musicological Society, later the American Musicological Society. Among his pupils in composition included, among others, George Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller. Gershwin he taught, among others, during this Porgy and Bess wrote; Schillinger's influence on this opera is highly controversial in musicology. He described Porgy and Bess - as Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade - only as homework, they should deliver in his classes. But most of his teaching he gave by mail across the U.S.. From the notes and materials for later his books were created. The income from this classroom allowed Schillinger a prosperous life in Manhattan in Sutton Place and Park Avenue.
Schillinger worked to coordinate the soundtrack to the motion picture film, and developed together with Leon Theremin the Rhythmicon. As a composer, he created among other things, the first Western work for an electronic instrument, the 1st Airphonic Suite 1929 for the theremin. Schillinger rejected the traditional instruments in principle as unscientific and was an advocate of early electronic instruments such as Hammond organ and theremin.
In the late 1920s he had a brief marriage with the Russian actress Olga, which ended after two years with the divorce. In 1936 he became an American citizen. 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 in order to preserve her husband's work and to contribute to the world. In 1945, she founded the Schillinger Society and friends in the following years, she released her husband as a book various writings. Her husband's estate distributed them over the years with a clever strategy from sales and gifts to most of the museums in New York and other institutions of the Anglo-American world. The largest contiguous collection is housed at the Peabody Institute of the 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.