Sospeso presented Joseph Schillinger's Melody at the July 19 Lincoln Center Festival 2000 theremin concert with grand thereminist Lydia Kavina.  

The Ukranian composer Joseph Schillinger, one of the truly unique members of the twentieth century pantheon, was born in Kharkov, Russia, in 1895. He became an American citizen in 1936. He was educated at the St. Petersburg Imperial Conservatory of Music, studying composition and conducting, but he was an ambitious autodidact in the humanities, learning Hebrew, German, French, English, and Italian, and studying, in his twenties, history, Western and Oriental philosophy, religious history, and poetic versification with Nikolai Shebouev.

He held a series of administrative positions in the Ukraine from 1918 to 1928, when he left for the US. He was the Head of the Music Department of the Ukranian Board of Education, as well as Dean and Professor at the State Academy of Music; he simultaneously served as a Consultant of the Ukranian State Opera. During this time he was hired as a Conductor and Lecturer of the Club of the Institute of Technology; Lecturer of the State Symphony Orchestra of Ukrania; Lecturer for the Board of Education of Ukrania; Conductor and Lecturer of the State Symphony Orchestra of the Donetz Basin; Composer for the State Academic Theatre for Children; and served as choirmaster and lecturer for various regimental and workers' clubs. In 1921 he was called to Moscow as a Consultant of the Board of Education; the next year, he became a senior instructor for the Leningrad State Institute of Musical Education. In 1925 he joined the faculty of the State Institute of the History of Arts in Leningrad, and the next year became Vice-President of the Leningrad Branch of the International Society for Contemporary Music, as well as Composer for the State Academic Theatre of Drama and Composer for the Experimental Theatre of the State Institute of the History of Arts. It was also in Leningrad that he created the first jazz orchestra in Russia. His 1928 visit to New York was for the purpose of lecturing on Russian contemporary music; he was invited by the American Society for Cultural Relations with Russia. 

It was in New York that he met, and eventually collaborated with, Leon Theremin. He lectured at the New School for Social Research and taught at various institutions, including the Teachers College at Columbia University and NYU.  Young American musicians were attracted by his charisma, and Schillinger had many private students, most famously George Gershwin; others included Tommy Dorsey, Vernon Duke, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller.

A year before he left Leningrad, Schillinger was sent by the State Institute of the History of Arts in Leningrad to Caucasus to make phonograms of the native folk music of the Georgian tribes (Khevsouri, Mokhevi, Mtiouleti, and Ajari). This music, previously "unknown to the scientific world, was representative of the European polyphonic forms of the tenth to eighteenth centuries (sic)." Schillinger's phonograms remain in the archives of the Institute. His work with Theremin was a continuation of his scientific approach to music. Together they designed and constructed an electronic organ, with a high-precision micro-tuning system and volume control of differential tones; they were able to create "a compound tuning system, which eliminates the controversies of all systems previously offered (sic)."

But it was in 1932 that Schillinger accomplished his first breakthrough, which ironically was in the field of mathematics: the invention of a new system of projective geometry where all curves may be expressed in terms of circular arcs. His success in mathematical theory lead to his ambitious attempt at a "scientific theory of the arts." His aesthetic theory combined a "historical" approach (from "pre-esthetic to post-esthetic") with a "material" perspective, interpreting both "individual and compound art forms" as "based on the five senses, space, and time." 

Some of the titles of his publications give an idea of his eccentricity: The Conductorless Orchestra; Manual for playing the Space-Control Theremin (1928); Electricity, a Musical Liberator (1931); Excerpts from the Theory of Synchronization ("Experimental Cinema" No. 5, 1934); and The Destiny of the Tonal Art (1937).

Among Schillinger's many works, which span genres from lied to full orchestra to early electronic instruments, are Orientalia, for voice and piano (1921); the Japanese Suite, for two voices and small orchestra (1927); and, of course, the First Airphonic Suite for R.C.A. Theremin and Orchestra, which was premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra under Nikolai Sokoloff in both Cleveland and New York in 1929. 

Biographical information adapted from the Joseph Schillinger Home Page.