{"id":79349,"date":"2022-02-01T10:16:29","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T09:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iemj.org\/weinberg-jacob-1879-1956\/"},"modified":"2022-02-01T13:12:14","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T12:12:14","slug":"weinberg-jacob-1879-1956","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iemj.org\/en\/weinberg-jacob-1879-1956\/","title":{"rendered":"WEINBERG, JACOB (1879-1956)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Born in 1879 in Odessa, Jacob Weinberg was a pianist and composer who wrote more than 135 works for the piano and other instruments. Born to a totally-integrated Russian Jewish family, he started his career at seventeen as a bank employee.\u00a0 He resigned rapidly however and left to study the piano and counterpoint at the Imperial Music Conservatory in Moscow.\u00a0 He then began to compose his first instrumental works, which he played during concerts in Saint Petersburg, Kiev and Odessa.\u00a0 In 1905, he travelled to Paris to participate in the Anton Rubinstein Piano Competition.\u00a0 While he did not win the First Prize, his performance contributed to launching his career as a piano virtuoso.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In 1910, he met the composer <\/span>Joel Engel<\/a>, <\/span>a founding member of the Society for Jewish Folk Music, who shared his enthusiasm for Jewish folklore. \u201cIt was there that my interest for Jewish things was born,\u201d he later declared.\u00a0 \u201cI took great interest in Jewish music, and I began to collect and study Jewish popular songs.\u00a0 A new and practically unexplored perspective opened before me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"In 1916, Weinberg returned to Odessa to teach at the Imperial Music Conservatory until 1921, date when he emigrated to Palestine where he absorbed oriental modes and melodies, which he then used in his compositions From Jewish Life <\/em>and Jacob\u2019s Dream<\/em>.\u00a0 In 1924, he resumed his collaboration with Joel Engel, recently arrived in Palestine from Berlin.\u00a0 However, in 1926\u2015after the success of his opera in Hebrew, Hechalutz <\/em>(The Pioneers<\/em>), which won the First Prize in the music contest for the 150th<\/sup> Independence anniversary of the United States\u2015he emigrated to New York where he became actively involved in Jewish intellectual circles as an instructor-researcher, composer and orchestra conductor.\u00a0 There he met up again with several composers from the Society for Jewish Folk Music.<\/p>\n

From 1929 onward, Weinberg taught music at the New York College of Music, then at Hunter College.\u00a0 At the beginning of the 1940s, he organized a series of annual festivals of Jewish arts (music and dance) in New York that achieved great success. He also participated in launching several Jewish music festivals in other American cities.\u00a0 He died on November 2, 1956 at the age of seventy-seven form a pulmonary disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to individual liturgical arrangements and two biblical cantatas, Isaiah<\/em> and The Life of Moses<\/em>, Weinberg wrote three complete Shabbat services, particularly for the Temple Emanu-el in Manhattan, where he was one of the house composers.<\/p>\n

Biography from the CD\u2019s booklet\u00a0Hebrew Melodies for cello and piano, 2nd<\/sup> vol., Collection Classiques vol. 7, Les Editions de l\u2019IEMJ, 2021<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0Sources: Neil W. Levin, Milken Archive<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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