LEIBOWITZ, RENÉ

LEIBOWITZ, RENÉ (1913–1972), composer, theorist, teacher, and conductor. Born in Warsaw, Leibowitz went to France at a young age. From 1930 to 1933 he studied with schoenberg and Webern, and became the chief advocate of the Schoenberg school in France. In 1947 he organized a chamber music festival, "Hommage to Schoenberg," in which he conducted the first performances of several compositions of the Second Viennese school. He wrote a survey, Schoenberg et son Ecole (1947), which was the first monograph on Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern in French, and a treatise, Introduction à la musique de douze sons (1949). Being closely connected with such famous French intellectuals as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jean-Paul Sartre, he succeeded in integrating the Germanic type of Schoenbergian musical thought in the cultural context of France. Throughout his life Leibowitz continued to promote interest in the 12-tone principle by his work as a conductor and also by his own compositions for orchestra and chamber ensembles. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: NG2; MGG2; S. Meine, "Ein Zwöftöner in Paris: Studien zur Biographie und zur Wirkung von René Leibowitz (1913–1972)," diss. Hochschule fuer Musik und Theater, Hanover (1998). (Yulia Kreinin (2nd ed.)