Daniel Zhitomirsky
Daniel Zhitomirsky (22 December 1906 – 27 June 1992) was a Soviet musicologist and Doctor of Arts, awarded the degree in 1968. He was born in Pavlohrad and spent his childhood in Cherkasy. His father, Vulf Zhitomirsky, was an assistant attorney; his sister, Sarra Zhitomirskaya, became a historian and archivist. In 1921–1922 he worked as a librarian at a military hospital in Kharkiv.
From 1923 to 1925, Zhitomirsky studied at the Kharkiv People's Conservatory. Beginning in 1925, he trained as a pianist with M. G. Pilstrem and as a theorist with Semion Bohatyrev at the Higher Music and Drama Courses. In 1925–1926 he directed the music sections of the publications Living Newspaper and At the Workbench. He then attended the Moscow Conservatory from 1926 to 1931, studying composition with Nikolai Zhilyayev and musicology with Mikhail Ivanov-Boretsky.
From 1931 he taught at the Moscow Conservatory, and later taught at the Baku Conservatory from 1949 to 1953 and the Gorky Conservatory from 1955 to 1970. He was also a research fellow at the All-Union Research Institute of Art Studies in Moscow from 1965 to 1980, then served there as a consultant from 1980 to 1986.
Zhitomirsky wrote extensively on Russian and Western music. His publications included studies of Alexander Alexandrov, Dmitri Shostakovich, Modest Mussorgsky, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and late-19th- and early-20th-century composers. He was particularly associated with Robert Schumann scholarship, producing books on Schumann and editing editions of Schumann's articles, writings on music and musicians, and letters. In 1966 he became the first Soviet recipient of the Robert Schumann Prize.
Zhitomirsky died in Moscow in 1992. His ashes were placed in the columbarium at Donskoye Cemetery in Moscow.