Perfect Pitch, Third Revised Edition
An Autobiography
Nicolas Slonimsky, Electra Slonimsky Yourke, Electra Slonimsky Yourke
- 432 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Perfect Pitch, Third Revised Edition
An Autobiography
Nicolas Slonimsky, Electra Slonimsky Yourke, Electra Slonimsky Yourke
About This Book
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 revolutionâone 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 This new edition is enhanced with several previously unpublished photographs, an extensive oral history, and several original essays, some reprinted for the first time.