Noskowski, Zygmunt

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Noskowski, Zygmunt

Noskowski, Zygmunt, significant Polish conductor and composer; b. Warsaw, May 2, 1846; d. there, July 23, 1909. He studied at the Warsaw Music Inst., then became an instructor in a school for the blind, and devised a music notation for the blind. He subsequently studied composition with Kiel in Berlin. After a brief period of professional activities in Western Europe, he returned to Warsaw and was director of the Music Soc. (1881–1902); in 1888 he was appointed a prof. at the Warsaw Cons., and later was director of the Warsaw Phil. (1905–08) and Opera (1907–09). He wrote the operas Livia Quintilla (Lemberg, Feb. 1, 1898), Wyrok (The Judgement; Warsaw, Nov. 15, 1906), and Zemsta za mur graniczny (Revenge for the Boundary Wall), after A. Fredro’s Zemsta (Warsaw, 1909), as well as 3 syms.: No. 1 (1874–75); No. 2, Elegiac (1875–79); No. 3, Od wiosny do wiosny (From Spring to Spring; 1903), Mor skie Oko, symphonic overture (1875), Step (The Steppe), symphonic poem (1896–97), Z zycia narodu (From the Life of the Nation), symphonic variations (1901), chamber music, and songs.

Bibliography

A. Sutkowski, Z. N.(Kraków, 1957); W. Wrónski, Materialy z zycia i twórczoséci Z. Naego (Kraköw, 1960).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire