A Visitor from an Unknown Planet: Music in the Eyes of Filipp Herschkowitz

Abstract

I have never in my life met such an extraordinary person as Filipp Moiseyevich Herschkowitz, nor am I likely to ever again. He was a man of sharp intellect and great learning; and he combined a deep love of true art with a merciless irony, which was directed at everything and everyone around him. His clever remarks, serious as well as humorous, would instantly become anecdotes that would go round the whole of Moscow. He lived in a minute oneroom flat with his young wife Lena and their cat Kisik, and could barely make ends meet. They refused to make him a member of the Union of Composers, Muzfond would have nothing to do with him, and those who could have helped to support him, or even just lend him some money steadily, became fewer and fewer in number. He would spend days poring over a volume of Beethoven sonatas, a Mahler or Schoenberg score, making ever more unique discoveries, which would one day, he thought, go to make up a book – his life's work.