Joseph Schillinger

Joseph Moiseyevich Schillinger (; 1 September 1895 (other sources: 31 August 1895 ) – 23 March 1943) was a composer, music theorist, and composition teacher who originated the Schillinger System of Musical Composition. He was born in Kharkov, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kharkiv, Ukraine) and died in New York City. He sometimes used the pseudonym “Frank Lynn”. Life and career The unprecedented migration of European knowledge and culture that swept from East to West during the first decades of the 20th century included figures such as Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninoff, composers who were the product of the Russian system of music education. Schillinger came from this background, dedicated to creating professional musicians, having been a student at the St Petersburg Imperial Conservatory of Music. He communicated his musical knowledge in the form of a written theory, using mathematical expressions to describe art, architecture, design and music. In New York, Schillinger flourished, becoming famous as an advisor to many leading American musicians and concert music composers, including George Gershwin, Earle Brown, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, O