Peoples and Music Cultures

(Hans)

(b Mannheim, 4 March 1928). American composer and conductor of German birth.

Both of his parents were musical, his father being a cantor and composer of Jewish liturgical music. The family came to the United States in 1939 and Adler attended Boston University (BM 1948) and Harvard University (MA 1950). He studied composition with Aaron Copland, Paul Fromm, Paul Hindemith, Hugo Norden, Walter Piston, and Randall Thompson; musicology with Karl Geiringer, A.T. Davison, and Paul A. Pisk; and conducting with Sergey Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center. In 1950 he joined the US Army and organized the Seventh Army SO, which he conducted in more than 75 concerts in Germany and Austria; he was awarded the Army Medal of Honor for his musical services. Subsequently he conducted concerts and operas, and lectured extensively throughout Europe and the United States. In 1957 he was appointed professor of composition at North Texas State University, and in ...

[Georgy]

(b Leningrad [now St Petersburg], May 13, 1932; d Cologne, Oct 31, 2002). Israeli conductor of Soviet birth. He studied at the Leningrad Central School of Music and the Leningrad Conservatory, and also with Natan Rakhlin and Kurt Sanderling. In 1956 he was appointed conductor of the Saratov PO; he also taught at the conservatory there and conducted his first operas. The next year he became conductor at Yaroslav, remaining there until his appointment as chief conductor of the Moscow RSO in 1964; his guest engagements included appearances with the Bol′shoy Ballet. Ahronovich left the USSR in 1972 and became an Israeli citizen. After concerts with the Israel PO he began touring, appearing in London with the RPO and with the New York PO in the USA. He made his operatic début in the West with Otello at Cologne, where he was conductor of the Gürzenich Concerts from ...

(Emanuel)

(b Stockholm, Jan 19, 1860; d Stockholm, Jan 20, 1938). Swedish composer, organist and conductor. He attended the Swedish Royal Academy of Music (1882–6), studying counterpoint and composition with J. Dente, and was a pupil of Franck in Paris (1887–8). In Stockholm he was coach at the Royal Opera (1888–90), organist at the synagogue (1890–1928), music teacher at Norrmalm’s grammar school (1895–1923) and teacher at Richard Anderssons Musikskola (1897–1909). From 1886 he conducted several choirs, including the Bellman Choir (1895–1926), which he also founded, and the Philharmonic Society (1900–03). Åkerberg’s compositions often approach the style of Swedish folk music, especially the ballads Kung Svegder and Prinsessan och Svennen. They are technically sound but conventional.

MSS in S-Skma, Svenska Tonsättares Internationella Musikbyrå

(Heinz)

(b Berlin, Aug 9, 1915). Israeli composer of German birth. His studies at the Stern Conservatory were halted in 1936 as a result of the Nazi persecution, and in the same year he emigrated to Palestine. There he studied composition with Wolpe and the piano with Irma Wolpe-Schoenberg and Ilona Vince-Kraus. As a student he made his living as a café jazz pianist in Jersualem and established himself as an excellent improviser. From 1945 until his retirement he was a professor at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem. A highly versatile musician, he taught the piano, the harpsichord, theory, composition and improvisation. He also lectured in the musicology departments of Tel-Aviv University, the Hebrew University, the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze, Geneva, and New York University.

One of the diverse group of composers who emigrated from Europe to Palestine during the 1930s, Alexander experienced the tension between the ideological pressure to create a new national style with a nebulous Middle Eastern and folklike orientation, and the urge to keep abreast of current Western music. This tension is reflected in the contrast between the post-Romantic chromaticism of ...

(b Warsaw, Aug 8, 1909; d Yakum Kibbutz, Israel, Dec 18, 1993). Israeli composer and teacher of Russian descent. He received his early musical education in Moscow. In 1924 he emigrated with his family to Palestine, where he continued his musical studies with Shlomo Rozovsky (1928–9). He began to compose in 1930. From 1934 to 1936 he studied music education at Trinity College, London, and composition with Bantock and Rowley; at the same time he also studied at Tonic Sol-fa College, London. With the formation of the Israeli Army, he was appointed First Officer for music, founding the orchestras of both the army and the cadets. In 1949 he became the central inspector for music education at the Ministry of Education, a post he held until his retirement in 1975.

Amiran was one of the Ereṣ Yisrael composers who developed the character of what became known as typical Israeli folksong. His vast number of songs (around 600), many of which set biblical texts, were published in a wide array of pamphlets and song books. The most notable of these include: the nursery songs ...

(b Boscobel, WI, Aug 8, 1952). American ethnomusicologist. He received the BM in piano at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975, and the MM in 1980 and the PhD in 1984 in musicology and ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Bruno Nettl and Alexander Ringer; he also studied for two years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with Amnon Shiloah, 1980–82. He was assistant professor at MacMurray College (1982–4) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (1985–7) before joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, where he was appointed professor in 1999. He was visiting professor at the University of Vienna, 1995–6. In 1997 he was awarded the Dent medal.

Bohlman's work may be characterized as a sustained critique of modernity, canon-formation and the monumentalization of 19th-century Austro-German musical practice through an ethnographic engagement with the ‘others’ of Europe, whether on, or within its margins. His earlier work investigated music-making among immigrant Jews in early 20th-century Palestine; his later work brings ethnographic critique back to the centre, exploring popular religious, street and folk musics in Vienna and elsewhere in Central Europe. Other areas of research include immigrant and ‘ethnic’ folk musics in America, and the intellectual history of ethnomusicology. In addition to extensive publications in these areas, Bohlman is editor of the series Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music and co-editor (with Bruno Nettl) of ‘Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology’....

(b Vienna, Nov 17, 1892; d Paris, Nov 22, 1982). French composer, teacher and conductor of Austrian origin. He studied at the University of Vienna (1910–15) and with Schoenberg (1913–20), also serving in World War I. During the 1920s he worked as a theatre conductor in several European countries and composed large orchestral scores for Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse and Der Schatz. In Berlin in 1923, following the example of Schoenberg's Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen, he founded an orchestra for private performances. He moved to Paris in 1924, and there gave the French premières of works by Schoenberg, Webern and Berg (including the Kammerkonzert in 1927). He also founded Le Miroir Jiddish, a Jewish theatre ensemble, which gave concerts in England. In 1934 he took up a chair at the University of Madrid, where he was musical director for the Casa Cinematográfica Aranjuez, but the civil war forced his return to Paris the next year. He then worked as a pianist and revue composer before volunteering for service in the French Foreign Legion (...

(b Warsaw, Jan 1, 1896; d Tel-Aviv, Dec 14, 1973). Israeli composer and teacher of Polish birth. He was brought up in his grandfather’s Hassidic home, where he absorbed Jewish folk and liturgical music and learnt to play the violin. A period in cosmopolitan Russia (1913–22) caused him to doubt the significance of his Jewishness, but back in Warsaw he regained his faith through Zionism. He taught music in Hebrew high schools and the Janusz Korczak orphanage, conducted the Hashomer Hatza’ir Choir, for which he arranged Jewish folksongs and composed, and founded the Hevrat Dorshei Musika Ivrit (Society for the Promotion of Hebrew Music) in 1928. In the previous year he had graduated from the State High School of Music, where he studied composition with Szymanowski, though the violin was his principal subject. He moved in 1929 to Palestine. In Tel-Aviv he worked as a teacher and choir director at the Lewinsky Teachers’ Seminary until ...

(b Vienna, March 9, 1885; d Vienna, May 27, 1964). Austrian Jewish music historian, educator, and critic. In 1912 he graduated from Vienna’s Imperial Academy of Science with a doctoral dissertation entitled Die indische Musik der vedischen und der klassischen Zeit (‘The Indian Music of the Vedic and the Classical Period’) under the supervision of Leopold Shröder. Felber’s dissertation remains an authoritative source for modern scholars interested in the recitation techniques and ethos of early South Asian music. Prior to his arrival in China, he was active in the Indian community in Vienna and had given lectures on Indian music at the Indian Club. Furthermore, he felt privileged to have met the legendary Nobel laureate Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore who was also a noted musician. During their meeting, Tagore shared his views on the aesthetics of European music and Indian classical music with him. After the Anschluss (...

(b Florence, SC, May 23, 1917; d Boston, Feb 7, 1977). American pianist and teacher. He began his studies with Walter Goldstein in New Orleans. At the age of ten he entered the Curtis Institute, where he was a pupil of Isabelle Vengerova and David Saperton (diploma 1938). In 1940 he became the first winner of the Leventritt Award, and in 1941 he made his début with the New York PO in Carnegie Hall, performing Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. He then embarked on an international career, making tours of the USA, Europe, Israel and Japan; in 1964 he performed 16 concerts in the Soviet Union. One of the first internationally renowned pianists to teach at an American state university, Foster held positions at Florida State University (1949–51) and then at Indiana University (1952–77), where he developed a reputation as an outstanding teacher. His playing was remarkable for its virtuosity and his repertory notable for including lesser-known works of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He made several recordings for the Musical Heritage Society, including two Mozart Concertos, Beethoven’s ‘Appassionata’ Sonata and Schumann’s ...

(b New York, April 1, 1930; d Seattle, Jan 30, 2003). Israeli composer of American birth. She studied at the Eastman School, Rochester (BMus 1952), and at the Manhattan School, New York (MMus 1961), where her teachers included Wayne Barlow, Vittorio Giannini, Ralph Shapey, Stefan Wolpe and, for short courses, Vladimir Ussachevsky and Roman Haubenstock-Ramati. From 1962 to 1971 she directed the concert series ‘New Dimensions in Music’ in Seattle, and she also lectured there, at the new School of Music, on contemporary music. In 1971 she moved to Israel, where she continued her concert-giving activities at the Israel Broadcasting Authority and through her series ‘New Dimensions in Music’ and ‘Israeli Composers Plus One’. In these she programmed specially written music sometimes involving audience participation, a technique that influenced her own compositional style. Several of her works incorporate staging, acting and improvisation, such as her ‘mini comic monodrama’ ...

(b Satu-Mare, Sept 9, 1946). Israeli violinist of Romanian birth. She studied at the Rabin Academy in Tel-Aviv, and then in the USA as a protégée of Isaac Stern. She also worked with Josef Gingold at Indiana University (1966–7), and with Ivan Galamian at the Juilliard School (1967–9). She won the 1968 Paganini International Competition at Genoa, and the 1971 Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition at Brussels. Her prizewinning performance of the Sibelius concerto on the latter occasion was subsequently issued as a recording, and was praised for a maturity of approach and vibrant expression reminiscent of Ginette Neveu. Her New York recital début was in 1969, and her British début was at Windsor Castle in 1971. In 1986 she joined the faculty of Indiana University, where she gave the first performance of Donald Erb's Together Forever: Three Poems (1988) and recorded his violin concerto. She has toured widely, and is admired for intelligent and perceptive musicianship as well as spirited brilliance of technique....

(b Lemberg [now L′viv], April 16, 1906; d Los Angeles, March 12, 1989). American pianist and teacher of Polish birth. Having graduated from the Lwów (formerly Lemberg) Conservatory at the age of 15, he went to Vienna and became a pupil of Steuermann, also taking private lessons in composition from Berg. He made his Vienna début in 1923. Before World War II Gimpel toured with the violinists Erica Morini and Nathan Milstein, and also with his younger brother, Bronislav. He emigrated to the United States in 1939, settling in Los Angeles. One of the first pianists to record for the newly founded company Vox, he also made widely admired discs for Columbia. In 1954 he resumed playing in Europe. Gimpel gave concerts with the Palestine SO (later the Israel PO) from its inception and maintained a busy career until the time of his death. He taught at the California State University at Northridge from ...

(b Quillota, March 7, 1956). Chilean composer. He studied with Cirilo Vila, Juan Amenábar, Miguel Letelier and Juan Lemann (1974–81) and obtained the licentiate in composition from the arts faculty of the University of Chile (1981). From 1977 he taught music in Chilean schools at elementary and intermediate levels and from 1982 at the University of Playa Ancha and the University of Talca. He has been an associate professor at the Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación since 1987.

González's works have been performed in various places in South America and Europe, and also in Lebanon and Israel. His motet Jesucristo sálvanos earned him third prize in the 1978 Chilean National Choir Federation and Beethoven Association Competition. In 1986 he won the third prize of the Overture Composition Competition of the University of Chile with his Obertura de concerto for orchestra.

[Wilhelm]

(b Vienna, Sept 5, 1914; d Buenos Aires, Jan 22, 1993). Austrian composer, musicologist and teacher, later an Argentine citizen. He studied composition with Pisk and Hindemith. In 1939 he emigrated to Argentina, where he lived for the remainder of his life. His early compositions are strongly influenced by Hindemith, but from the 1950s his style evolved beyond that of his mentor into realms of polytonality, atonality and serialism. His music displays a refined sense of orchestral texture and colour. He delved deeply into his Jewish roots (Canciones hebreas, 1940) and also into the indigenous culture of his adopted Latin America (La creación según el ‘Pop wuj maya’, 1989).

As a musicologist Graetzer edited both scholarly and practical editions of early music and directed the Collegium Musicum of Buenos Aires, which he founded in 1946. His philosophy was grounded in a humanist belief in the essential role of music in the development of a fully integrated human personality. He taught advanced students at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and undertook important work in music education for the young. His achievements in this area include an adaptation of Orff’s ...

[Fromentin(-Elias)]

(b Paris, May 27, 1799; d Nice, March 17, 1862). French composer, teacher and writer on music. His parents were Jewish; his father, Elias Levy, was a scholar and poet from Fürth, and his mother, Julie Meyer, came from Malzéville, near Nancy. The family name was changed to Halévy in 1807. Fromental’s musical ability was evident very early and in 1810 he entered the Paris Conservatoire. In 1811 he became a pupil of Cherubini for composition, an important step, for Cherubini showed great interest and confidence in Halévy and guided his career with all his considerable influence. Halévy acknowledged a profound debt to his teacher; his brother Léon wrote: ‘The teaching and friendship of Cherubini implanted in Halévy his love of great art and confirmed his instinctive repugnance to everything vulgar or shoddy’. He was also a pupil of H.-M. Berton (for harmony) and Méhul. In 1816 and ...

[Hersh, Donald Lee]

(b Cambridge, MA, April 22, 1936; d June 15, 2016). Israeli musicologist of American birth. At Yale University he studied French literature (1953–7); he then studied musicology at the University of California, Berkeley (1957–62, MA 1959), where he took the doctorate under Kerman in 1963 with a dissertation on Verdelot and the early madrigal. In 1963 he settled in Israel, where he lectured at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem (1963–6), before being appointed to the musicology department of the Hebrew University (1966); he was also a regular guest lecturer at the Bar-Ilan University (from 1970) and worked as corresponding reporter in Israel for Current Musicology of Columbia University (from 1968). He received research grants from the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation for work on mannerism in Renaissance music (1964), from the Hebrew University for work on ...

(b Nordhausen, June 19, 1780; d Göttingen, June 2, 1846). German musical educationist and writer. He was the nephew of Gottlieb Heinroth, a singer, harpist and composer. He received his early musical instruction from his father, organist of the Peterskirche, Nordhausen. At the universities of Leipzig (1798) and Halle (1800) he studied literature, theology and education. His second post (1804) was at Israel Jacobson’s boarding school at Seesen, where he taught and composed new devotional music for the Jewish communities of Kassel and Berlin. At this period hatred of the French occupation prompted him to write popular songs against Napoleon which were circulated in manuscript.

In 1818, on Forkel’s death, Heinroth was invited to become musical director of the University of Göttingen. His predecessor’s great reputation made this a demanding position, but from the beginning Heinroth showed considerable enterprise. He formed and directed a choral society, lectured in both music and theology, and in ...

(von)

(b Frankfurt, Oct 24, 1811; d Cologne, May 11, 1885). German conductor, composer and teacher. He was the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant and revealed an outstanding talent for music at a very early age. His principal piano teacher was Alois Schmitt, in his day one of Frankfurt's most discriminating pianists. When he was ten Hiller played a concerto by Mozart at a public concert. Several important artists showed an interest in him, among them Spohr, Speyer, Moscheles and Mendelssohn who became Hiller's closest friend and on whose recommendation he went to Weimar to become one of Hummel's pupils (1825–7). During his stay there he met Goethe, played in concerts at court and at Goethe's home and composed various pieces of incidental music for the Weimar theatres and society. He also accompanied Hummel to Vienna to visit Beethoven on his deathbed. After returning to Frankfurt he continued to study and compose and made occasional concert tours. In ...

(b Washington DC, Aug 15, 1884; d New York, July 17, 1965). American pianist and teacher. He studied with S.M. Fabian in Washington, DC, Rafael Joseffy in New York and Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna (1907–10), eventually serving as Leschetizky’s assistant (1909–10). After teaching at the Ganapol School of Musical Art in Detroit (1910–12), he made his European début in Vienna in 1912 and spent the next four years teaching in Munich and performing throughout Germany. He then settled in New York where he taught at the Volpe Institute of Music (1916–17) and the Institute of Musical Art (1918–23) and was editor-in-chief of piano music for G. Schirmer (1920–25). He made his New York recital début on 14 March 1917 and thereafter performed extensively in Europe and the USA; he also gave two-piano recitals with his wife, Jewel Bethany Hughes. His memorabilia are held at the University of South Carolina....