Search Results

[Yuly Dmitrevich]

(b Berdyansk, Crimea, 4/April 16, 1868; d Tel-Aviv, Feb 11, 1927). Russian composer, critic, lexicographer and folklorist. He studied law at Kharkov University but soon turned to music, studying theory and composition with Taneyev and Ippolitov-Ivanov at the Moscow Conservatory (1893–7). From 1897 to 1919 he worked as a music critic for the newspaper Russkiye vedomosti. In 1901 his translation of Riemann’s Lexikon into Russian with newly written sections on Russian music was published in Moscow. Although an early opera, Esther, was performed in 1894, his work as a critic overshadowed that as a composer. Under the influence of the Russian nationalist music critic Vladimir Stasov, however, he turned his attention to Jewish folklore, collecting, arranging, performing and publishing the songs of eastern European Jews. In 1909 his first album of ten Jewish folksongs appeared in Moscow; a second volume followed later in the same year. Engel continued to promote his new interest with public lectures and a series of articles in ...

(b Ruse, Sept 23, 1925). Bulgarian folklorist and composer. He graduated in 1952 in both theory and performance at the State Academy of Music in Sofia and worked at the Music Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, as junior research fellow (1953–66) and senior research fellow (1966–89). He received the doctorate at the institute in 1973 with a dissertation on Bulgarian polyphonic folksong; in 1979 he was appointed professor of ethnomusicology at the State Academy of Music and in 1989, senior research fellow at the Institute for Folklore of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His areas of research include various aspects of Bulgarian and Jewish folk music and he has been a member of the Union of Bulgarian Composers' executive committee since 1965. Much of his work in the 1960s on the folksong from particular regions in Bulgaria was published in Izvestiya na Instituta z muzika...

(b Berlin, June 19, 1761; d Berlin, May 11, 1854). German harpsichordist, music collector and patron. She was a daughter of the Jewish banker Daniel Itzig (1723–99) and great-aunt of Mendelssohn. On 2 July 1783 she married the banker Samuel Salomon Levy (1760–1806). With her siblings, of whom Fanny von Arnstein (1758–1818) and Zippora Wulff (later Cäcilie von Eskeles, 1760–1836) were particularly well known as musical amateurs, she received a thorough musical education. She is said to have been a pupil of W.F. Bach at a later date, and she was certainly in contact with C.P.E. Bach, from whom she commissioned a harpsichord concerto. A number of contemporary documents mention her activity as a harpsichordist in private musical circles, for instance in the house of her brother-in-law Joseph Fliess. Later she frequently performed with the Ripienschule of the Berlin Sing-Akademie founded by C.F. Zelter. She was particularly interested in the music of the Bach family as well as the works of other Berlin composers (J.G. and C.H. Graun, Janitsch and Quantz), and is therefore one of the figures central to the appreciation of Bach in Berlin in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She gave the Sing-Akademie considerable parts of her extensive collection of music, including autograph manuscripts by W.F. and C.P.E. Bach; after her death, some of the remaining items apparently came into the possession of A.W. Bach, and is now dispersed among many European and North American libraries....

(b Prague, Feb 13, 1862; d Prague, April 4, 1944). Czech composer and folksong collector. He studied in Prague at the conservatory (1873–8) and the organ school (1878–81) and privately with Fibich. He was organist of St Štěpán and choirmaster at the main synagogue of Prague (1881–2), a teacher at the music school of the Moravan choral society in Kroměříž (1882–3), a violinist in the National Theatre orchestra, Prague (1883–6) and conductor of the Švanda Theatre Company in Prague and Brno (1886–7). Subsequently he edited the monthly Hudební květy (1895–9), conducted the Academic Orchestra (1898) and worked as an accompanist (1896–1904), mainly for the violinist František Ondříček. From 1896 to the end of his life he gave most of his attention to collecting and arranging folksongs, particularly those of the Chodsko region, south Bohemia. Weis’s large and varied output was influenced mostly by Smetana and Dvořák and included three operas in Czech, two in German and six German operettas. His only work to have stood the test of time, however was the 15-volume collection ...