senior lecturer at the conservatory of Azerbaijan Conservatory in Baku
Which employer did Daniel Zhitomirsky work for from 1949 to 1953?
Daniel Zhitomirsky Daniel Vladimirovich Zhitomirsky ( 22 December 1906 – 27 June 1992 ) was a Russian musicologist and music critic who specialized in the music of German composer Robert Schumann and the aesthetics of German Romanticism . He also wrote extensively on Russian composers of the Soviet period , especially Dmitri Shostakovich . Life and career . Zhitomirsky studied music theory at Kharkiv Conservatory under S.S . Bogatiryov , then music history and theory with Ivanov–Boretsky and composition with Zhilyayev at the Moscow Conservatory , where he graduated in 1931 . In the late 1920s and early 1930s , Zhitomirsky was a member of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians ( RAPM ) and served as a music critic for the journals Prolietarskiy muzikant ( The Proletarian Musician ) and Za proletarskuya muziku ( For Proletarian Music ) . Throughout his career , he served a variety of newspapers and periodicals as a music critic . Zhitomirsky began teaching music history and introductory classes in music analysis 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 , Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich , in a . The cause for his dismissal , a printed denunciation by the Union of Soviet Composers and an official censure was anti-Semitism , conducted under the bureaucratic veneer of a campaign against cosmpolitalism . According to musicologists Judith Kuhn and Richard Taruskin , 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 . Following this political fallout , Zhitomirsky taught as senior lecturer at the conservatory of Azerbaijan Conservatory in Baku 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 Schumanns 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 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 , called a nonconformist attitude . Zhitomirskys presentation at the Leningrad 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 . He received his doctorate in 1942 with a dissertation on Robert Schumann . He was awarded the Robert Schumann Prize of the City of Zwickau 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 Shostakovichs 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 . Zhitomirskys positive review and subsequent defense of Shostakovichs 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 quartets 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 general , he defended Shostakovichs 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 Shostakovichs music and the fact that the composers 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 . 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. , Shostakovichs 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 . - Zhitomirsky , Daniel , Shostakovich , the Public and the Private : reminiscences , materials , comments . Part 1 : A Case of Mistaken Identity . In Daugava ( 1990 , No . 3 ) . English version by Tatjana M . Norbury and Ian MacDonald . Retrieved 28 Mar 2012 . - 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 .