Nicolas Slonimsky

Nicolas Slonimsky (April 27 [O.S. April 15] 1894 – December 25, 1995), born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy (Russian: Никола́й Леони́дович Сло́нимский), was a Russian-born American conductor, author, pianist, composer and lexicographer. Best known for his writing and musical reference work, he wrote the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns and the Lexicon of Musical Invective, and edited Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians.

Slonimsky was born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy in Saint Petersburg. He was of Jewish origin; his grandfather was Rabbi Chaim Zelig Slonimsky. His parents adopted the Orthodox faith after the birth of his older brother, and Nicolas was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. His maternal aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, later a founder of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, was his first piano teacher. He grew up in the intelligentsia, and after the Russian revolution he moved south first to Kiev, then to Constantinople, and ultimately to Paris, where many other Russian musicians and his sister Yulia Slonimskaya Sazonova had already fled. He worked as accompanist to conductor Serge Koussevitzky, and toured Europe in 1921-22 as accompanist to Vladimir Rosing. In 1923 Rosing became director of opera at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and invited Slonimsky to join him. His younger brother Mikhail remained in Russia and became an author, and his nephew Sergei became a composer.

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