Ivan Kryzhanovsky
Ivan Ivanovich Kryzhanovsky (8 March 1867 – 9 December 1924) was a Russian physiologist, composer, and musicologist. He was born in Kyiv and died in Leningrad.
He studied violin with Otakar Ševčík in Kyiv and later earned a medical degree, becoming a Doctor of Medicine in 1909. From 1901 he worked at the St. Petersburg Medical Institute, including under Ivan Pavlov. His research included the physiological aspects of musical activity, and he taught specialist courses in the field.
In 1922 Kryzhanovsky published the monograph Physiological Foundations of Piano Technique. His final work, Biological Foundations of the Development of Music, remained unpublished in Russian manuscript form, but an English translation by S. U. Pring, made from the manuscript, was issued by Oxford University Press in 1928 as The Biological Bases of the Evolution of Music.
In 1900 he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and he belonged to the Belyayev Circle. Of his relatively few compositions, M. Montagu-Nathan singled out his sonata for violin and piano. Reviewing Alexander Schmuller’s performance of Kryzhanovsky’s violin Ballade, a New York Times critic found it to contain interesting musical ideas that deserved better development. Kryzhanovsky also worked as a music critic.
Nikolai Myaskovsky studied music theory under Kryzhanovsky and dedicated his First Symphony, Op. 3 (1908), to him.