Philip Herschkowitz

Philip HerschkowitzPhilip or Philipp Herschkowitz (also known as Philip Hershkowitz; Romanian: Filip Herşcovici; Russian: Филипп Гершкович, Filipp Gershkovich) (September 7, 1906-January 5, 1989) was a Romanian-born composer and music theorist, pupil of Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who spent almost half a century (1940 to 1987) in the Soviet Union.

Biography
Born to a Jewish family in Iaşi, he graduated from the conservatory in the city in 1927 and entered the Music Academy in Vienna, Austria, where he studied with Josef Marx. Then he studied privately with Berg (1928–31), and with Webern (1934-1939). He left Nazi German-occupied Austria and arrived in the Soviet Union in 1940, settling first in Chernovtsy, which he left on June 22, 1941 (at the beginning of the German invasion), and then moving to Tashkent (in the Uzbek SSR) where he lived until 1944.

He settled in Moscow in 1946, where we began to teach privately, exerting a major influence on several generations of Russian musicians, including leading figures of the so called "Underground division". Among these were the composers Andrei Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Nikolai Karetnikov, Boris Tishchenko, Valentin Silvestrov, Leonid Hrabovsky, Vyacheslav Artyomov, Vladimir Dashkevich, Alexander Voustin, Vladislav Shoot, Viktor Suslin, Dmitri Smirnov, Elena Firsova, Leonid Gofman; the musicologists Mikhail Druskin, Natan Fishman, Yuri Kholopov, and many others.

Herschkowitz was one of the most important pupils of Webern, and devoted his life to the understanding and development of his teacher's ideas. He was interested in exploring and creating a theoretical foundation to Webern's musical thought. He focussed on the analysis of the music of the great masters and in particular on Beethoven. The essence of this approach lies in the exploration of musical material in terms of the opposition between two fundamental categories: Fest ("fixed") and Locker ("floating").

By the invitation of the Alban-Berg-Stiftung, he returned to Vienna in 1989 — he died there two years later. The four volumes of his book On music that contain the essence of his teaching were edited and published by his widow L. Herschkowitz in Moscow in 1991–1997.

Works
1929 Waltz for piano (planned as part of a larger composition)
1930 Die Tulpen (Tulips). Melodrama after Peter Altenberg (project)
1930 Fugue for 14 solo instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, alto saxophone, horn, trumpet, harp, percussion, violin, viola, cello, double bass and piano (planned as part of a larger composition)
1932 Wie des Mondes Abbild zittert (Heinrich Heine) for voice and piano
1947 Vesennie tsvety (Spring Flowers) for piano
1950s Capriccio, 2 pF. ‘Sovetsky Kompozitor’, Moscow, 1957
1960s Drei Klavierstücke (Three Piano Pieces)
1960s Fünf Klavierstücke (Five Piano Pieces)
1962 Vier Lieder (Four Songs, Paul Celan) for mezzo-soprano and piano
1965–6 3 lieduri (Three Songs, Ion Barbu) for voice and piano
1960s Brandmal (Paul Celan) for voice and piano
1968 Vier Stücke (Four Pieces) for cello and piano
1969 Klavierstiück (Piano Piece) in 4 movements:
1971 Brandmal (Paul Celan) for mezzo-soprano, flute, 2 clarinets, piano in 4 hands, percussion, 6 violas and double bass
early 1970s Espenbaum (Paul Celan) for mezzo-soprano, flute, 2 clarinets, percussion, piano in 4 hands, 6 violas and double bass
early 1970s Leuchten (Paul Celan) for mezzo-soprano, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, piano, 4 violins, 2 violas and 2 celli
early 1970s Vier Lieder (Four Songs, Paul Celan) for mezzo-soprano, 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, small drum, piano, 4 violins, 2 violas and 2 celli
1970s Drei Stücke (Three Pieces) for cello and piano
1970s Malaya kamernaya syuita (A Small Chamber Suite) for 2 clarinets, violin, viola, cello and piano
1979 Malaya kamernaya syuita (A Small Chamber Suite) for mezzo-soprano, 2 clarinets, violin, 2 violas, cello and
1983 Madrigaly (Madrigals)setting the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, Federico García Lorca and Guillaume Apollinaire
1980s Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major (Hess 34) after his Ninth Piano Sonata (Op.14/1), arranged for string orchestra.
1987-8 Drei Gesänge mit Begleitung eines Kammerensembles (Three Songs with Chamber-Ensemble Accompaniment)