Accountant, probably in the oil industry centered around Drohobycz; father of pianist Paula Szalit.

Simon Szalit and his wife Reisel had four children: Beile (1866–), Heinrich (1867–), Rebeca (1871–), and Paula (1885–1942). Of these, Heinrich and Paula are known both to have been musically gifted.

Heinrich having been in charge of Paula’s musical education for the first ten years of her life, Simon, in written correspondence with her third teacher, Eugen d’Albert in 1897, appears to have taken charge of Paula’s performance career, probably after she became an international celebrity in 1895. He insisted that she increase her number of public appearances when d’Albert was advising that she take a total rest from public performance over the winter of 1897/98.

Paula herself wrote to Schenker in 1918 that she was entirely “cut off” from her family. This suggests that a rift had taken place somewhere between 1906, when she returned to Lemberg as head of the advanced piano class at the Lemberg Conservatory, at which point her performing career appears to have stopped, and some time in the mid-1910s.

Correspondence

No correspondence between Simon Szalit and Heinrich Schenker is known ever to have existed, nor is there any record of the two men having met. The correspondence between Szalit and Eugen d’Albert does not survive.

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