Aleksandr Matveyevich Zhitomirsky

Aleksandr Matveyevich Zhitomirsky (1881–1937) was a Russian composer and pedagogue, born in Kherson, in what is now Ukraine, and died in Leningrad. His work as a professor at the St Petersburg Conservatory places him among the figures who trained a substantial part of the early Soviet generation of musicians.

He began as a violinist with Ye. Mlynarsky in Odessa (1892–1897) and then with K. Prill in Vienna (1898–1900), where he also studied composition and piano. He later entered the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied orchestration and composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and Lyadov, graduating in 1910. He taught at the same institution between 1915 and 1937, and was appointed professor in 1919.

His pupils included Andrey Balanchivadze, Mikhail Chulaki, Aleksandr Gauk, Khristofor Kushnaryov, Aleksandr Melik-Pashayev and Mikhail Yudin. His catalogue includes the symphonic poem Op. 10 (1915), the Suite (1929), the Geroicheskaya poema (1933), the poem Vesenneye, in memory of Rimsky-Korsakov (1933), and the Traurnoye shestviye pamyati S. Kirova (1935), as well as a Violin Concerto (1937), a string quartet dated to around 1923, and arrangements of Russian and Jewish folk songs. His significance lies above all in his role as a teacher.