Nicholas Slonimsky, Date-Meister

Synopsis

We have a special Datebook birthday to note today, for on this date in 1894, one of music’s great “date-meisters,” Nicholas Slonimsky, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia.

A self-described “failed wunderkind,” Slonimsky became an accomplished conductor and relentless new music promoter, giving the first performances of avant-garde works by Charles Ives, Henry Cowell and Edgard Varese, to name just a few. A composer himself, Slonimsky’s own works include settings of actual advertisements he found in the Saturday Evening Post circa 1925, and a symphonic work that culminates in the triple-forte explosion of 100 colored balloons.

Slonimsky was an obsessive collector of the dates, venues, and premiere performers of concert music in the 20th century. Slonimsky’s chronicle, Music Since 1900, runs over 1000 pages and went through several editions during his long lifetime. Slonimsky also served as the editor for several editions of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary, writing many of the wittiest contributions himself.

Slonimsky’s scholarly writings include a 1947 Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, an inventory of all conceivable and inconceivable tonal combinations, a work that became a cult classic among BeBop jazz musicians, including legendary saxophonist John Coltrane. In 1952, Slonimsky published his Lexicon of Musical Invective, a collection of some of the juiciest bits from the devastatingly bad reviews many musical masterpieces received at the hands of contemporary critics, and in 1968, for the Music Library Association of America, a painstakingly researched report, Sex and the Music Librarian.

Slonimsky died in Los Angeles in 1995, just four months shy of his 102nd birthday.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Ives (1874-1954): Three Places in New England; San Francisco Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; BMG 63703