Full Description
The autobiography of one of the 20th century's most innovative and wittiest composers/performers/authors who witnessed the birth of modern music.
Perfect Pitch tells the compelling story of Nicolas Slonimsky. A boy prodigy as a pianist, Slonimsky fled pre-Communist Russia, reaching Paris at the height of another revolution-one in music and the arts. His early association with conductor Serge Koussevitzky brought him into contact with many of the era's greatest talents, including Igor Stravinsky and Serge Prokofiev. Emigrating to Boston in 1925, he embarked on a writing career, authoring key works still in print decades after their first publication, including Music Since 1900, a chronological history; Lexicon of Musical Invective, which proved definitively that new works are rarely understood in their time; and Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, which inspired generations of composers and performers, including jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Known for his sharp wit, Slonimsky appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and was befriended by Frank Zappa. Perfect Pitch captures a life that was rich with discovery and invention and spanned a century of revolutions and explorations. This new edition is enhanced with several previously unpublished photographs, an extensive oral history, and several original essays, some reprinted for the first time.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Electra Slonimsky Yourke
A Note about This Edition
I. Perfect Pitch
1. St. Petersburg
2. My Grandfather Invented the Telegraph
3. Joyless Youth, Joyful Revolution
4. Exodus
5. Paris
6. Rochester
7. Koussevitzkiana
8. Boston Beginnings
9. Three Places in New England
10. Time Out
11. Disaster in Hollywood
12. Puella
13. Lofty Baton to Lowly Pen
14. Jailed Friend
15. Exotic Journeys
16. Interpolation: Grossmutterakkord
17. Back in the Family Fold
18. America Loves Russia
19. I, Diaskeuast!
20. Fame and Fortune
21. The Future of My Past
22. California, Here I Come
23. The Age of Absurdity
II. Oral History and Other Writings
Oral History
Edgard Varèse
1. Conversation with Nicolas Slonimsky on Edgard Varèse
2. Analysis of Ionisation
Heitor Villa-Lobos
1. A Visit
2. The Flamboyant Chanticleer
Cultural Explosion in the U.S.S.R.
Lexicographis Secundus Post Herculem Labor
Index
