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(Hans)

(b Mannheim, March 4, 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 USA 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 USA. In 1957 he was appointed professor of composition at North Texas State University, and in ...

(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 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 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 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 ...

(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 Breslau [now Wrocław], Aug 13, 1831; d Leipzig, Feb 1, 1902). German composer, theorist, teacher and conductor. He studied first in Breslau and later at the Leipzig Conservatory. He left Leipzig to study the piano with Liszt in Weimar (1849–52); there he heard Wagner's Lohengrin, which greatly impressed him. After returning to Leipzig, he studied with E.F. Richter and privately with Moritz Hauptmann. Jadassohn taught the piano in Leipzig, then conducted the synagogue choir (1865), the Psalterion choral society (1866) and the Musikverein Euterpe concerts (1867–9). In 1871 he was appointed teacher of harmony, counterpoint, composition and piano at the conservatory, and in 1893 named royal professor. His students included Busoni, George Chadwick, Delius, Grieg, Karg-Elert and Felix Weingartner.

Although successful as a performer, theorist and teacher, Jadassohn considered himself primarily a composer. He wrote works for piano, chamber ensemble, orchestra, chorus and solo voices, comprising over 140 opus numbers, but was perhaps best known for his canonic compositions: the Serenade for Orchestra op.35, two serenades for piano opp.8 and 125, the ballet music op.58 and the vocal duets opp.9, 36, 38 and 43. He also edited and arranged works by Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner and others....

(b Kitsee, nr Pressburg [now Bratislava], June 28, 1831; d Berlin, Aug 15, 1907). Austro-Hungarian violinist, composer, conductor, and teacher. He was born on the Esterházy estates into a Jewish family which moved in 1833 to Pest. His talent was recognized at an early age and systematically nurtured. His first teacher was the leader of the Pest Opera Orchestra, Serwaczyński, with whom Joachim made his public début at the Adelskasino in Pest, on March 17, 1839. He went to Vienna to play first for Hauser and then for Georg Hellmesberger the elder, and took lessons from Joseph Böhm, a former pupil of Rode, himself taught by Viotti, both of whom adhered to the classical French school.

By the age of 12 his technique was fully developed, and in early 1843 he began studying with Mendelssohn in Leipzig. The meeting with Mendelssohn was so decisive for the young Joachim that his life can be understood in terms of a mission to promote Mendelssohn’s work. The composer arranged for Joachim to receive composition tuition from Hauptmann, and also a good general education. After a successful début playing Bériot’s Adagio and Rondo at the Leipzig Gewandhaus in ...

[Shlomi]

(b Warsaw, May 19, 1909; d Beit-Alpha, Dec 29, 1995). Israeli composer and teacher of Polish origin . In his youth he studied the piano, theory and solfège in Kuybïshev, Russia (1918–21), and in 1924 in Warsaw joined the Zionist movement Hashomer Hatzair, playing the mandoline, tuba, baritone and clarinet in its folk orchestras. He graduated from the Teachers’ Seminarium in Poznań in 1928, and in 1930, following agricultural studies in Brno, Czechoslovakia, moved to Palestine, helping to establish a kibbutz in 1932. Only after 1940 did he begin to be involved with music again, at first teaching and arranging music at the kibbutz Beit-Alpha. After a period of concentrated study (1947–53), with Tal and Partos at the New Jerusalem Academy of Music, and privately with Boskovich, he devoted himself to composition and teaching at the district conservatory for kibbutzim at Beth-She‘an Valley, where he was director until ...

(b Gelsenkirchen, Aug 21, 1926). Israeli composer and teacher of German origin. In 1933 he moved to Palestine, where he studied the violin with P. Kimari (1934–42) and R. Bergman (1942–7), and composition with Ben-Haim (1941–6) and Tal, graduating from the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem, in 1947. He went to the USA in 1949 to study with Copland at Tanglewood and to attend Kurt Sachs’s lectures at New York University. In 1950 his symphony Ha-sui Yisra’el (‘The Beauty of Israel’) was introduced by the Israel PO under Bernstein, and in 1950 his biblical cantata Sipur ha-meraglim (‘The Story of the Spies’) won him the International Koussevitzky Competition, enabling him to continue his studies at Tanglewood, where the work was first performed in 1952. He also studied under Fine, Shapero and Levi at Brandeis University (1960–61), receiving the MFA in musicology. In Israel he has worked as supervisor (...

[Ödön]

(b Budapest, Oct 1, 1907; d Tel-Aviv, July 6, 1977). Israeli composer, string player and teacher of Hungarian origin. Born to an assimilated Jewish upper middle class family, he was a child prodigy and studied the violin with Ormandy. Hubay heard him play the violin at the age of eight and took him as a pupil at the Budapest Academy of Music, where he also studied composition with Kodály. After graduating from the academy in 1924, he was leader of the Lucerne Stadtsorchester (1924–6) and the Budapest Konzertorchester (1926–7). In 1927 he moved to Germany, working as a soloist, and in 1933 he became first violinist of the Jewish Cultural Centre. At the end of that year he returned to Hungary, moving then to Baku to teach the violin and composition at the conservatory (1935) and returning to Budapest as leader of the Konzertorchester (...

[Shosh ]

(b Cyprus, April 10, 1948). Israeli composer, teacher and stage director . She was born while her parents were in Cyprus en route to Israel. First taught music at the Tel-Aviv Conservatory and Telma Yalin Music High School, she graduated in 1970 from the Tel-Aviv Academy of Music, where her main study was the piano (she was a pupil of Madeleine Aufhauser); she also completed a degree in philosophy. During her period of compulsory military service, from 1970 to 1972, she was responsible for classical music at Galei-Zahal, the radio station of the Israeli Defence Forces, and wrote on music for Bahmane, the IDF’s weekly magazine. From 1973 to 1974 she studied composition with Hans Heimler in Guildford, England.

After Riseman’s return to Israel, her song cycle Eize yom yafe (‘What a Beautiful Day’) for male voice and chamber ensemble was recorded; a further cycle, Nine Haiku Songs, received its première at the Israel Festival in ...

(August Julius)

(b Monaco, March 23, 1878; d Berlin, March 21, 1934). Austrian composer, teacher, conductor and administrator. He is a central figure in that remarkable flowering of opera in Austria that included the works of Zemlinsky, Berg and Korngold. Integrating his aesthetic plurality (a mixture of Romanticism, naturalism, symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit), timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and conception of total music theatre into the narrative of 20th-century music has contributed to a more differentiated understanding of central European modernism.

Schreker was the oldest of four surviving children born to Ignaz Schrecker, a court photographer of Jewish birth, and Eleonore von Clossmann, a member of the Catholic aristocracy of eastern Styria. Ignaz Schrecker’s restless travels took him and his family from Vienna to Monaco, Spa, Brussels, Paris, Trieste and Pola before he settled at last in Linz in 1882. After his death in 1888 the family moved to Vienna, where in ...

[Lazarus]

Robyn Holmes and Peter Campbell, revised by Judith Crispin

(b Tianjin, China, Sept 10, 1934). Australian composer, pianist, and musicologist. Born to Russian-Chinese parents, he emigrated to Australia with his family in 1951. He studied the piano at the NSW Conservatorium of Music, Sydney, where his teachers included Winifred Burston (1952–8), and in San Francisco with Egon Petri (1959–61). On his return to Australia, he taught at the Queensland Conservatorium (1961–5) and lectured on contemporary composition at the University of Queensland. In 1965 he assumed the position of Head of Keyboard at the newly founded Canberra School of Music (now part of the Australian National University), where he became Head of Composition and Head of Academic Studies in 1978, and Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Visiting Fellow in 2005.

Sitsky first came to prominence as a composer at the inaugural Australian Composers’ Seminar (Hobart, Tasmania, ...

(Wolfgang)

(b Düsseldorf, Nov 27, 1918). Israeli composer and violist. He began to play the violin and to compose at an early age; during the years 1932–5 he wrote several works indebted to Reger, an influence which remained perceptible. In 1933 he studied under Eldering at the Cologne Academy, and in 1934 he settled in Palestine, where his studies were completed under Partos (1940–42). Steinberg joined the Palestine SO (later the Israel PO) as a violist in 1942; he has also appeared as a soloist and frequently as a chamber musician (he was a founder of the New Israel Quartet in 1957). From 1969 to 1972 he lectured on chamber music at the Tel-Aviv Academy. The Viola Sonata (1949) showed a first interest in Schoenbergian 12-note serialism, which came to dominate his work. (CohenWE)