Jerzy Fitelberg was a Polish composer. He studied music in Warsaw with his father, conductor and violinist Grzegorz Fitelberg, and learned to play percussion in the orchestra of the National Theatre. Following a period of study at the Warsaw Conservatory, Fitelberg attended the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin from 1922 to 1926, studying composition with Walter Gmeindl and Franz Schreker. In 1928, his String Quartet No. 2 won first prize in a competition of the Association of Young Polish Musicians in Paris, and his Violin Concerto No. 1 was featured on the 1929 concert of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Between 1933 and 1939, Fitelberg lived in Paris, and then moved to New York, where he joined the American League of Composers. His String Quartet No. 4 received the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Award in 1937, and his String Quartet No. 5 won a lifetime achievement award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1945. He became a U.S. citizen in 1947.