Zaremba, Nikolai
Zaremba, Nikolai
Zaremba, Nikolai (Ivanovich), Russian composer and pedagogue; b. near Vitebsk, June 15, 1821; d. St. Petersburg, April 8,1879. He studied piano and cello, then went to Berlin, where he took lessons with Adolf Marx; also attended the Univ. of St. Petersburg. In 1854 he became director of the choral society at the Lutheran church of St. Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg, and in 1859 he became a teacher of harmony and composition at the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Musical Soc. When the St. Petersburg Cons, was founded in 1862, he was engaged as a teacher of composition, and from 1867 to 1871 served as its director. He was the first to teach music theory using Russian terminology rather than the prevalent German nomenclature; among his students was Tchaikovsky. In his musical views Zaremba was extremely conservative. He was also apt to connect harmony rules with religious notions (such as piety being expressed by major keys, and sin and corruption by minor keys). Mussorgsky ridiculed Zaremba in his satirical piece Rayok, in which he illustrated Zaremba’s Classical tastes by a mock quotation from Handel.
—Nicholas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire