Biography
Born as Paul Frankenburger in Munich on July 5, 1897, the future Paul Ben-Haim completed training in composition, piano, and conducting at the Munich Academy of the Arts, then spent several years leading orchestras in Augsburg. Early German scores included the Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 4 of 1920 and the Concerto Grosso of 1931. After returning to Munich with the goal of writing full time, he found prospects fading amid rising Nazi power and his Jewish heritage. He relocated in 1933 to Tel Aviv, at that time within British Palestine, and soon took the name Paul Ben-Haim; Israeli citizenship followed with the state’s founding in 1948.
His fundamentally late-Romantic language absorbed Middle Eastern folk idioms once he settled in the region. Emulating Bartók, he transcribed indigenous melodies and folded them into his own idiom. Symphony No. 1, completed in 1940, conveyed the darkening European situation through its grave character. In the decade after independence Ben-Haim stood as Israel’s leading composer, receiving the Israel Prize for Music in 1957. Two years later Leonard Bernstein conducted The Sweet Psalmist of Israel, a concerto for harp and harpsichord. An automobile accident in 1972 curtailed further work.
As an instructor he exerted lasting influence, directing the Jerusalem Academy of Music from 1949 to 1954 and teaching at conservatories in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Conductor Eliahu Inbal and composer Shulamit Ran numbered among his pupils. Ben-Haim died in Tel Aviv on January 14, 1984.
His fundamentally late-Romantic language absorbed Middle Eastern folk idioms once he settled in the region. Emulating Bartók, he transcribed indigenous melodies and folded them into his own idiom. Symphony No. 1, completed in 1940, conveyed the darkening European situation through its grave character. In the decade after independence Ben-Haim stood as Israel’s leading composer, receiving the Israel Prize for Music in 1957. Two years later Leonard Bernstein conducted The Sweet Psalmist of Israel, a concerto for harp and harpsichord. An automobile accident in 1972 curtailed further work.
As an instructor he exerted lasting influence, directing the Jerusalem Academy of Music from 1949 to 1954 and teaching at conservatories in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Conductor Eliahu Inbal and composer Shulamit Ran numbered among his pupils. Ben-Haim died in Tel Aviv on January 14, 1984.
Albums
