Nicolas Slonimsky

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Lore & Background

Slonimsky was born Nikolai Leonidovich Slonimskiy in Saint Petersburg on April 27 [O.S. April 15] 1894. He was of Jewish origin; his grandfather was Rabbi Chaim Zelig Slonimsky. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved south 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 tenor Vladimir Rosing. In 1923, Rosing became director of opera at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and invited Slonimsky to join him. In Rochester, he continued his composition and conducting studies with Albert Coates and Eugene Goossens. After two years, he moved to Boston, where Koussevitzky had become conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and resumed his position as his pianist and bilingual secretary. During this time, Slonimsky taught music theory at the Boston Conservatory and the Malkin Conservatory. In 1927, he formed the Boston Chamber Orchestra, for which he solicited music from contemporary composers. He conducted the world premieres of Ives' Three Places in New England in 1931 (in New York's Town Hall) and Edgard Varèse's Ionisation for thirteen percussionists in 1933. In 1931, Slonimsky married Dorothy Adlow, art critic of The Christian Science Monitor, in Paris, with Varèse as the best man. In 1932, he conducted a series of concerts in Havana highlighting Ives, Ruggles, Cowell, Amadeo Roldán and Alejandro García Caturla, then traveled to Paris, Berlin and Budapest to conduct further concerts. He mentioned at the time, he found conducting to be 'the nearest approximation to music in motion'. He was invited to conduct five concerts in the Hollywood Bowl in the summer of 1933, which were controversial and received mixed critical reviews.

Reader's Guide

Slonimsky's significance lies in his encyclopedic reference works that shaped musical scholarship and practice. He produced the chronology Music Since 1900 and later, after travelling in Latin America, produced the first thorough coverage in English, Music of Latin America. In 1947 he published the Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, which would later become one of his most influential works as a sourcebook for composers and performers. The book influenced many jazz musicians and composers, including Allan Holdsworth, John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, Paul Grabowsky, and Steve Rochinski. Quincy Jones said in a February 2018 interview: 'Every time I used to see Coltrane, he'd have Nicolas Slonimsky's book.' In 1953, Slonimsky brought out the Lexicon of Musical Invective ('Critical Assaults on Composers since Beethoven's Time'), a collection of hilariously scathing, insulting, vituperative, and enraged contemporary critiques of musical greats in their time. In 1958, he became editor of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, developing a reputation for factual accuracy, and remained its head editor until 1992. He wrote the Lectionary of Music as a 'reading dictionary,' as he called it. In 1988, he published his autobiography, Perfect Pitch, filled with anecdotes about 20th century musical figures. His conducting premieres of avant-garde works also advanced contemporary music. His legacy endures through his reference books, still in print, and his influence on composers and performers across genres.

Did You Know?

• Slonimsky's maternal aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, later a founder of Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, was his first piano teacher.
• He conducted the world premiere of Edgard Varèse's Ionisation for thirteen percussionists in 1933.
• Quincy Jones said in a February 2018 interview: 'Every time I used to see Coltrane, he'd have Nicolas Slonimsky's book.'
• He named his cat Grody-to-the-Max after learning the phrase from Frank Zappa's daughter Moon Zappa.
• Slonimsky described himself as a 'diaskeuast' (from Greek διασκευαστής), a 'reviser or interpolator'.