Biography
Halim El-Dabh's path into music opened during the early 1940s when Prince Hassan Tussun of Egypt essentially abducted him after hearing the radio broadcast of the composition "It Is Dark and Damp on the Front" and insisting on an introduction to its creator. Until then El-Dabh had treated writing music as a sideline while pursuing agricultural studies. Once he and the prince improvised together at the royal residence, however, El-Dabh began weighing a professional future in composition.
A decisive shift arrived in 1944 when he encountered a wire recorder at the Middle East Radio Station in Cairo and immediately began shaping sounds with the device. Four years afterward Pierre Schaeffer adopted the same method for the initial public presentation of musique concrète in 1948, once magnetic tape had been developed—an event widely recognized as the first instance of manipulated recorded sound.
Another pivotal moment unfolded in 1947 during a visit to the American Embassy in Cairo, where El-Dabh had hoped to obtain scores by United States composers. Instead he was given field recordings of Native American music, which left a deeper impression than any contemporary academic works. That exposure prompted him, three years later, to decline enrollment at Juilliard so he could document the traditions of the Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi communities in New Mexico.
While enrolled at the University of New Mexico he spent two summers at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, studying with Aaron Copland and Irving Fine. Several of his pieces also received their first performances at Juilliard, where he formed a lasting friendship with John Cage.
In 1955 he demonstrated his tape-editing techniques to Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening, electronic-music pioneers who subsequently invited him to the newly established Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. An excerpt from his electronic opera Leiyla and the Poet later appeared on the 1964 Columbia Masterworks album The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
El-Dabh joined the faculty of Kent State University’s Glauser School of Music in 1969. The campus shootings of May 4, 1970, in which national guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine others, moved him to compose the opera Opera Flies; the work received its premiere in New York, Washington, and on the Kent State campus within twelve months.
Thereafter he continued composing and teaching at Kent while directing ensembles, most prominently the Kent State University African Ensemble. He formally retired from the university in 1991 yet returned periodically as an instructor.
His academic credentials include degrees from Cairo University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Brandeis University. He has also held teaching positions at Haile Selassie University in Ethiopia, Kinshasa University in Zaire (Congo), and Howard University. Among his grants and honors are Guggenheim Fellowships awarded for 1959–1960 and 1961–1962, Fulbright Fellowships in 1950 and 1967, a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1961, a Meet-the-Composer grant in 1999, and an Ohio Arts Council grant in 2000. In 1959 he performed the solo derabucca part in the premiere of his Fantasia-Tahmeel: Concerto for Derabucca and Strings with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
The 2000 Without Fear Recordings release Crossing Into the Electric Magnetic gathered his early electronic works, assembled by Mike Hovancsek and David Badagnani. Kent State University professor Denise Seachrist has prepared a comprehensive biography scheduled for publication by Kent State University Press.
A decisive shift arrived in 1944 when he encountered a wire recorder at the Middle East Radio Station in Cairo and immediately began shaping sounds with the device. Four years afterward Pierre Schaeffer adopted the same method for the initial public presentation of musique concrète in 1948, once magnetic tape had been developed—an event widely recognized as the first instance of manipulated recorded sound.
Another pivotal moment unfolded in 1947 during a visit to the American Embassy in Cairo, where El-Dabh had hoped to obtain scores by United States composers. Instead he was given field recordings of Native American music, which left a deeper impression than any contemporary academic works. That exposure prompted him, three years later, to decline enrollment at Juilliard so he could document the traditions of the Pueblo, Zuni, and Hopi communities in New Mexico.
While enrolled at the University of New Mexico he spent two summers at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, studying with Aaron Copland and Irving Fine. Several of his pieces also received their first performances at Juilliard, where he formed a lasting friendship with John Cage.
In 1955 he demonstrated his tape-editing techniques to Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening, electronic-music pioneers who subsequently invited him to the newly established Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York. An excerpt from his electronic opera Leiyla and the Poet later appeared on the 1964 Columbia Masterworks album The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
El-Dabh joined the faculty of Kent State University’s Glauser School of Music in 1969. The campus shootings of May 4, 1970, in which national guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine others, moved him to compose the opera Opera Flies; the work received its premiere in New York, Washington, and on the Kent State campus within twelve months.
Thereafter he continued composing and teaching at Kent while directing ensembles, most prominently the Kent State University African Ensemble. He formally retired from the university in 1991 yet returned periodically as an instructor.
His academic credentials include degrees from Cairo University, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Brandeis University. He has also held teaching positions at Haile Selassie University in Ethiopia, Kinshasa University in Zaire (Congo), and Howard University. Among his grants and honors are Guggenheim Fellowships awarded for 1959–1960 and 1961–1962, Fulbright Fellowships in 1950 and 1967, a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1961, a Meet-the-Composer grant in 1999, and an Ohio Arts Council grant in 2000. In 1959 he performed the solo derabucca part in the premiere of his Fantasia-Tahmeel: Concerto for Derabucca and Strings with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
The 2000 Without Fear Recordings release Crossing Into the Electric Magnetic gathered his early electronic works, assembled by Mike Hovancsek and David Badagnani. Kent State University professor Denise Seachrist has prepared a comprehensive biography scheduled for publication by Kent State University Press.
Albums
