Perfect Pitch: A Life Story

by Nicolas Slonimsky

Book Overview

A man of untiring energy and humor, Nicolas Slonimsky has led a long and accomplished musical life, and he remains today, in his nineties, a vital presence in American music. He has pursued four distinct careers: as a pianist, as a composer, as a pioneering conductor who introduced the works of such composers as Ives, Varese, and Cowell, and as a musical lexicographer who has achieved world-wide recognition, particularly as editor of the highly-respected Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, a reference work renowned for its highly imaginative, lively, and gem-like entries.
In Perfect Pitch, his fast-paced and often hilarious autobiography, Slonimsky recounts in fascinating detail a life that spans the whole of twentieth-century music, ranging from his childhood in St. Petersburg, where he studied piano with his illustrious aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, to his years as secretary and "piano pounder" to Serge Koussevitzky, to his present career as musical lexicographer. He describes the extraordinary accomplishments of members of his family; Russia before, during, and after the Revolution; his successful appearances as conductor in Paris, Berlin, and New York, as well as his fall from grace at the Hollywood Bowl; the whimsical pleasures of lexicographical detective work; unexpected fame and fortune as a game show contestant; and much more. Along the way, the reader meets famous personalities as seen through Slonimsky's eyes, including Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Sergei Prokofiev, Leonard Bernstein, John Cage, and Frank Zappa.
Filled with illuminating anecdotes, Perfect Pitch captures through wit, spice, and irreverence an extraordinary life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195062434
• ISBN13: 9780195062434
• Release Date: March 1990
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Great vendor (and product)!

My book arrived quickly and in even better condition than "very good"! The book itself is a gem, and the price was very favorable.

Renaissance Man

Intelligent and witty. The compelling life story of a wonderfully creative and open-minded pianist/conductor, mathematician and linguist. A great read even for people who are neither mathematicians nor into 20th century composers (like me).

Musician. Lexicographer. Raconteur. Polymath. Zappatista.

I might well have called this "While I Slept" (with apologies to Art Buchwald). For, despite the facts that [a] Nicolas Slonimsky lived for more than 101 years (from 27 April 1894 to 25 December 1995), [b] because of this longevity, my life overlapped his by some 55 years, and [c] Slonimsky played a major role in a good part of the music I love (that of Charles Ives), he is a quite "new" discovery for me. Born a Jew in St. Petersburg but baptized in the Orthodox church, Slonimsky was just one of many overachievers in his family. (As one example, his maternal aunt, Isabelle Vengerova, who - like him - was to emigrate to the United States, taught piano not only to Slonimsky but to Dmitri Tiomkin, the famous Hollywood composer, while both were still in Russia, and then to the likes of Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Gary Graffman, when she lived in New York and served for many years on the faculty of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.) The 1917 Revolution led to Slonimsky's 1918 emigration from the Soviet Union, but not before he became known to a number of St. Petersburg composers and musicians of fame, not the least of whom was Alexander Glazunov, the director of the music conservatory there. His migratoy path while wending his way eventually to the U.S. is a story all in itself, with "pit stops" in Kiev, Karkhov, Yalta, Constantinople, Sofia, and, eventually, Paris, where he met Koussevitsky, Stravinsky and Prokofiev, assisting all three of them in various (and humorous) ways. Arriving first in the U.S. at Rochester (NY), where he had been invited to coach the newly-instituted American Opera Company at the Eastman School of Music, Slonimsky had his initial conducting experiences (not a total success, but one which nonetheless demonstrated that he had a unique ability to "decouple" his two arms, permitting him to conduct in two different meters at the same time [something that would stand him in good stead when he later conducted the music of Ives]). From there, he went to Boston, as Koussevitsky's assistant (also not without its humor). It was in Boston that he met his wife-to-be, Dorothy Adlow (another Russian Jewish immigrant who became famous in her own right as the only Jewish editor on the staff of the Christian Science Monitor), and formed his own small chamber orchestra - made up largely of musicians from the Boston Symphony - for the performance of "new, modern" music. It was here, in 1928, that he first met Henry Cowell, which was to factor importantly in his early championing of Charles Ives and his music. Skipping (temporarily) the Ives - Slonimsky connection, in 1933 Slonimsky was invited to be the conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, an assignment that ended in disaster when he programmed too much modern music for the tastes of the audience, not the least of which was Edgar Varèse's "Ionisation." Later in life - in fact, largely for the balance of what was to turn out to be an exceedingly