Schneerson, Grigori

Schneerson, Grigori, eminent Russian musicologist; b. Eniseisk, Siberia, March 13, 1901; d. Moscow, Feb. 6, 1982. He was the son of a political exile under the tsarist regime; went to Moscow as a youth, and studied piano at the Cons. with Medtner and Igumnov. From 1939 to 1948 he was in charge of the music dept. of the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Nations; from 1948 to 1961, was head of the foreign section of the monthly Sovietskaya Muzyka, and from 1954 to 1966, ed. the bibliographic series Foreign Literature of Music. A remarkably gifted linguist, he mastered several European languages and undertook a study of Chinese. In his polemical writings he displayed wit and sarcasm in attacking the extreme manifestations of Western modernism, but preserved scholarly impartiality in analyzing the music of all genres and styles. He was a Member Correspondent of the Academy of the Arts of the German Democratic Republic (1968), Honorary Member of the Accademia di Scienze, Lettere, Arti (1976), and a recipient of the Bernier Prize of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1976). Among his writings, all publ, in Moscow, were monographs on Khachaturian (1957; Eng. tr., 1959) and Ernst Busch (1962; rev. 1964), a study of French music in the 20^th century (1964; rev. 1970), and a vol. of articles on foreign music (1974). He also ed. a vol. on Shostakovich (1976).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire