Editing Vernon Duke (section)

==Early life==
'''Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dukelsky''' ([[Russian language|Russian]]: Владимир Александрович Дукельский) was born in 1903 into a [[Belarusians|Belarusian]]<ref>[[Vyacheslav Ivanov (philologist)|V. V. Ivanov]], [[Mikhail Gasparov|Gasparov M.]] (eds.) Музыка и незвучащее. Moscow: Nauka, 2000. ISBN 9785020115934. P. 219.</ref> noble family in the village of Parfyanovka, [[Pskov Governorate]], [[Russian Empire]].<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HXILEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT276|title = The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians|isbn = 9780674255722|last1 = Randel|first1 = Don Michael|date = 30 October 2002| publisher=Harvard University Press }}</ref><ref name="LarkinGE"/><ref>According to another source, his birthplace was a small railroad station in [[Minsk Governorate]]. At the time, his mother "happened to be traveling by train". See: Vernon Duke. ''Passport to Paris'', Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1955, p. 6.</ref>  His family was of the [[szlachta|small gentry class]]; the 1954 ''[[Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'' referred to his paternal grandmother, née Princess [[Tumanishvili]], as having been "directly descended from the [[kings of Georgia]]". According to Duke, his mother also had some [[Austrians|Austrian]] and [[Spain|Spanish]] ancestry. The ''[[Jewish Standard]]'' lists him among [[Jewish]] musicians, for reasons unknown;<ref>{{cite web|title=How Many Famous Jewish Composers Can You Name? |url=https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com|website=Jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com}}</ref> composer Jack Gottlieb denies this claim.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_VqNbDvC5XgC&pg=PA221|title = Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood|isbn = 9780791485026|last1 = Gottlieb|first1 = Jack|date = February 2012| publisher=State University of New York Press }}</ref>

The Dukelskys resided in [[Kiev]], and Vladimir's only visit to [[Saint Petersburg]] and [[Moscow]] occurred in the summer of 1915. The impressions of that summer were later echoed in Dukelsky's [[oratorio]] ''The End of St. Petersburg'' (1931–37).{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} The title is a reference to the film [[The End of St. Petersburg]], directed by [[Vsevolod Pudovkin]].

At the age of eleven, Dukelsky was admitted to the [[Kiev Conservatory]],<ref name="LarkinGE"/> where he studied [[composer|composition]] with [[Reinhold Glière]] and [[musical theory]] with [[Boleslav Yavorsky]]. In 1919, his family escaped from the turmoil of [[Russian Civil War|civil war]] in Russia and spent a year and a half with other refugees in [[Constantinople]]. In 1921, they obtained American visas and sailed steerage class on the SS ''King Alexander'' to [[New York City|New York]].

He underwent his immigration inspection at [[Ellis Island]]. On the passenger list, the [[purser]] of the ''King Alexander'' recorded his name as ''Vladimir Doukelsky,'' in the [[France|French]] fashion. In 1922 in New York, [[George Gershwin]] befriended the young immigrant. Gershwin (born Jacob Gershwine) suggested that Dukelsky truncate and Americanize his surname, taking Vernon as his given name. Dukelsky's first songs published under his [[pen name]] were conceived that year, but he continued to write classical music and Russian [[poetry]] under his birth name until 1955.<ref name="LarkinGE"/>