Louis Gruenberg
Encyclopedia
Louis Gruenberg was a Russian-born American pianist
and composer
.
(now in Belarus
but then in Russia
), to Abe Gruenberg and Klara Kantarovitch. His family emigrated to the United States
when he was a few months old. His father worked as a violinist in New York City
. Young Louis had a talent for the piano, and by the age of eight Gruenberg was taking piano lessons with Adele Margulies at the National Conservatory in New York (then headed by Antonín Dvořák
).
Gruenberg played both solo concerts and in ensembles from the beginning, and in his early twenties he went to study in Europe with Ferruccio Busoni
at the Vienna Conservatory. Before World War I
, Gruenberg taught students and toured, both as an accompanist and soloist.
In 1919, Gruenberg wrote The Hill of Dreams for orchestra, which gained him the highly acclaimed Flagler Prize and enabled him to devote himself more completely to composition. As Gruenberg began to make his mark as a composer, he showed his fascination with jazz, composing works with strong jazz and ragtime influences.
In 1933 and 1934 the Metropolitan Opera
produced his expressionistic opera The Emperor Jones
, based on the play
by Eugene O'Neill
. The title role was created by Lawrence Tibbett
. It was performed there for two seasons, and featured on the cover of Time Magazine receiving much critical acclaim. Between 1933 and 1936, Gruenberg headed the composition department of Chicago Musical College (now part of Roosevelt University
). After Chicago he moved with his family to Beverly Hills
, California
. There he worked at merging music with visual media and film. Collaborating with Pare Lorentz
to create The Fight for Life (a documentary about childbirth in Chicago slums), Gruenberg was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score
.
In 1944, Jascha Heifetz
commissioned and premiered the Violin Concerto, Op. 47 with Eugene Ormandy
and the Philadelphia Orchestra
, and recorded it with Pierre Monteux
and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
in 1945. It is a lively work in three movements (Rhapsodie - With simplicity and warmth - Lively and with good humour), and lasts 38 minutes (in Heifetz's performance).
The violinist Koh Gabriel Kameda
reintroduced the almost forgotten concerto to the public with a premiere of the work in Japan in 2002 with the New Japan Philharmonic under the direction of Gerard Schwarz
. He was the first violinist who has ever played the concerto after Heifetz. In 2009 Kameda made another premiere of the concerto in Mexico with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico City under Edwin Outwater.
During the last twenty years of his life, Gruenberg became increasingly isolated from the concert music world. He maintained a close friendship with Arnold Schoenberg
until the latter's death in 1951.
Louis Gruenberg composed continuously until his death in 1964 in Beverly Hills. Besides other works, he wrote five symphonies, four full length operas (Volpone, Jack and the Beanstalk, Antony and Cleopatra and The Dumb Wife) and the lengthy oratorio A Song of Faith.
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
.
Life and career
He was born near Brest-LitovskBrest, Belarus
Brest , formerly also Brest-on-the-Bug and Brest-Litovsk , is a city in Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the city of Terespol, where the Bug River and Mukhavets rivers meet...
(now in Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
but then in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
), to Abe Gruenberg and Klara Kantarovitch. His family emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
when he was a few months old. His father worked as a violinist in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Young Louis had a talent for the piano, and by the age of eight Gruenberg was taking piano lessons with Adele Margulies at the National Conservatory in New York (then headed by Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
).
Gruenberg played both solo concerts and in ensembles from the beginning, and in his early twenties he went to study in Europe with Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
at the Vienna Conservatory. Before World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Gruenberg taught students and toured, both as an accompanist and soloist.
In 1919, Gruenberg wrote The Hill of Dreams for orchestra, which gained him the highly acclaimed Flagler Prize and enabled him to devote himself more completely to composition. As Gruenberg began to make his mark as a composer, he showed his fascination with jazz, composing works with strong jazz and ragtime influences.
In 1933 and 1934 the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
produced his expressionistic opera The Emperor Jones
The Emperor Jones (opera)
The Emperor Jones is an opera in two acts with a prologue and interlude composed by Louis Gruenberg to an English language libretto adapted by Kathleen De Jaffa and the composer from Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play, The Emperor Jones. It premiered on January 7, 1933 at the Metropolitan Opera in New...
, based on the play
The Emperor Jones
The Emperor Jones is a 1920 play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill which tells the tale of Brutus Jones, an African-American man who kills a man, goes to prison, escapes to a Caribbean island, and sets himself up as emperor...
by Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
. The title role was created by Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Mervil Tibbett was a great American opera singer and recording artist who also performed as a film actor and radio personality. A baritone, he sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera company more than 600 times from 1923 to 1950...
. It was performed there for two seasons, and featured on the cover of Time Magazine receiving much critical acclaim. Between 1933 and 1936, Gruenberg headed the composition department of Chicago Musical College (now part of Roosevelt University
Roosevelt University
Roosevelt University is a coeducational, private university with campuses in Chicago, Illinois and Schaumburg, Illinois. Founded in 1945, the university is named in honor of both former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The university's curriculum is based on...
). After Chicago he moved with his family to Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. There he worked at merging music with visual media and film. Collaborating with Pare Lorentz
Pare Lorentz
Pare Lorentz was an American filmmaker known for his movies about the New Deal. Born Leonard MacTaggart Lorentz in Clarksburg, West Virginia, he was educated at Wesleyan College and West Virginia University. As a young film critic in New York and Hollywood, Lorentz spoke out against censorship in...
to create The Fight for Life (a documentary about childbirth in Chicago slums), Gruenberg was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score
Academy Award for Best Original Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
.
In 1944, Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...
commissioned and premiered the Violin Concerto, Op. 47 with Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy
Eugene Ormandy was a Hungarian-born conductor and violinist.-Early life:Born Jenő Blau in Budapest, Hungary, Ormandy began studying violin at the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music at the age of five...
and the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
, and recorded it with Pierre Monteux
Pierre Monteux
Pierre Monteux was an orchestra conductor. Born in Paris, France, Monteux later became an American citizen.-Life and career:Monteux was born in Paris in 1875. His family was descended from Sephardi Jews who came to France in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. He studied violin from an early age,...
and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
San Francisco Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization...
in 1945. It is a lively work in three movements (Rhapsodie - With simplicity and warmth - Lively and with good humour), and lasts 38 minutes (in Heifetz's performance).
The violinist Koh Gabriel Kameda
Koh Gabriel Kameda
Koh Gabriel Kameda is a German-Japanese concert violinist and violin teacher.- Early life :Koh Gabriel Kameda was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, into a family of medical doctors...
reintroduced the almost forgotten concerto to the public with a premiere of the work in Japan in 2002 with the New Japan Philharmonic under the direction of Gerard Schwarz
Gerard Schwarz
Gerard Schwarz is an American conductor. He was music director of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 2011.In 2007 Schwarz was named music director of the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina, having served as principal conductor since 2005...
. He was the first violinist who has ever played the concerto after Heifetz. In 2009 Kameda made another premiere of the concerto in Mexico with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico City under Edwin Outwater.
During the last twenty years of his life, Gruenberg became increasingly isolated from the concert music world. He maintained a close friendship with Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
until the latter's death in 1951.
Louis Gruenberg composed continuously until his death in 1964 in Beverly Hills. Besides other works, he wrote five symphonies, four full length operas (Volpone, Jack and the Beanstalk, Antony and Cleopatra and The Dumb Wife) and the lengthy oratorio A Song of Faith.
Operas
- The Bride of the Gods, libretto by Busoni, translated by C. H. Meltzer (1913)
- The Dumb Wife, libretto after The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife by Anatole FranceAnatole FranceAnatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
after RabelaisFrançois RabelaisFrançois Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
(1923) - Jack and the Beanstalk, libretto by John Erskine (1931)
- The Emperor JonesThe Emperor Jones (opera)The Emperor Jones is an opera in two acts with a prologue and interlude composed by Louis Gruenberg to an English language libretto adapted by Kathleen De Jaffa and the composer from Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play, The Emperor Jones. It premiered on January 7, 1933 at the Metropolitan Opera in New...
, libretto by the composer (working alone), after a play by Eugene O'NeillEugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
(1931) - Queen Helen (1936)
- Green Mansions (radio opera), libretto after a novel by William Henry HudsonWilliam Henry HudsonWilliam Henry Hudson was an author, naturalist, and ornithologist.- Life and work :Hudson was born in the Quilmes, a borough of the greater Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, son of settlers of U.S. origin...
(1937) - Helena's Husband, libretto by P. Moeller (1938)
- Volpone, libretto by the composer after Ben JonsonBen JonsonBenjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
(1945) - One Night of Cleopatra, libretto by the composer after T. GautierThéophile GautierPierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, art critic and literary critic....
- The Delicate King, libretto by the composer after Alexandre Dumas, pèreAlexandre Dumas, pèreAlexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...
(1955) - Antony and Cleopatra, libretto by the composer after ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
(1955)
Orchestral
- The Hill of Dreams, 1919
- The Daniel Jazz, 1925
- Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 47, 1944
- 5 symphonies
Films
- Quick Sand, 1950
- All the King's Men (1949 film), 1949
- Smart Woman, 1948
- Arc of Triumph, 1948
- The Gangster, 1947
- Counter-Attack, 1945
- An American Romance, 1944
- The Nazi-Strike Documentary Short, 1943
- Commandos Strike at Dawn, 1942
- So Ends Our Night, 1941
- The Fight for Life, 1940
External links
- Louis Gruenberg Papers, 1900-1988 Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
- http://www.musicweb-international.com//Classpedia/Gruenberg.htm