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- Weinberg, Henry
- Weinberg [Vaynberg], Moisey [Mieczysław] Samuilovich
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Weimar, Georg Peter(b Stotternheim, nr Erfurt, 16 Dec 1734; d Erfurt, 19 Dec 1800). German composer. From 1752 he attended the Ratsgymnasium in Erfurt, studying music with J. Adlung; from 1758 he was a court musician (bass singer and violinist) and deputy Kantor in Zerbst, where he continued his study of music under J.F. Fasch, C. Höckh (violin) and occasionally under C.P.E. Bach. He also acted as singing and clavier teacher to the princess. In 1763 he became Kantor at the Kaufmannkirche, Erfurt, a post that he retained until his death. He was also appointed music director at the Ratsgymnasium (1774), music master at the Catholic Gymnasium (1776), took full charge of the city’s auxiliary choirs, and organized a great number of sacred concerts, performing large-scale works including Handel oratorios; his ‘incomparable’ level of activity drew special praise from Gerber. He composed much four-part church music in the homophonic style associated with late 18th-century Protestant Kantormusik, notably a two-volume motet and chorale aria collection of 1782–5, and edited a volume of Protestant chorale melodies in J.C. Kittel’s settings, posthumously completed by C.M.F. Gerbhard and published by Weimar’s son. Weimar is also the author of an account of musical life in Erfurt which appeared in Cramer’s Magazin der Musik (ii, 1784/R). WORKS
BIBLIOGRAPHYBlumeEK GerberL GerberNL S. Kümmerle: Encyklopädie der evangelischen Kirchenmusik (Gütersloh, 1888–95/R) O. Günther: Katalog der Handschriften der Danziger Stadtbibliothek, iv (Danzig, 1911) A. Dreetz: Aus Erfurts Musikgeschichte, 1750–1800 (Leipzig, 1932) NIGEL SPRINGTHORPE Weinberg, Henry(b Philadelphia, 7 June 1931). American composer. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania (BFA 1952) and Princeton University (MFA 1961; PhD 1966), where his composition teachers included Sessions and Babbitt. He also studied with Dallapiccola in Florence. Other influences include Elliott Carter, George Perle, Ralph Shapey and Edgard Varèse. A member of the composition department at Queens College, CUNY, he also served as composer-in-residence at the Koussevitzky Foundation Studio, Tanglewood (1968) and the Marlboro Festival (1968). Other distinctions include the Naumburg Award (1967), a Brandeis Creative Arts Citation (1969), the Prix de Rome (1968–70) and commissions from the Fromm Foundation. Weinberg is especially interested in rhythmic structure, often varying a steady rhythmic flow through the simultaneous use of three or more metrical cycles. The resultant macro-rhythm is organized around ratios similar to those of the chromatic scale. Multiple cycles, therefore, substitute what Weinberg calls ‘rhythmic harmony’ for ‘rhythmic monody’. Examples of this are evident in the String Quartet No.2 (1960–64) and Cantus commemorabilis I (1966). Recent compositions such as the brass work Fanfare (1992) and Three Pieces for Organ (1993) derive rhythmic sets from the ratios of an all-interval note row and emphasize new possibilities for organizing crescendos, glissandos, accelerandos and other musical details. WORKS(selective list)
BIBLIOGRAPHYG. Winham: ‘ Henry Weinberg: Three Songs [‘Song Cycle’] (1959)’, PNM, ii/2 (1963–4), 106–11 E.M. Smaldone: Linear Analysis of Selected Posttonal Works of Arnold Schoenberg (diss., CUNY, 1986) [introduces and employs Weinberg's analytical method] LINDA ARDITO Weinberg [Vaynberg], Moisey [Mieczysław] Samuilovich(b Warsaw, 8 Dec 1919; d Moscow, 2 Feb 1996). Russian composer of Polish origin. He began writing music in early childhood and at the age of 10 played the piano in the theatre where his father worked. Two years later he entered the Warsaw Conservatory where he studied with Jozef Turczinski, who had been a pupil of Osipova in St Petersburg. Weinberg’s pianistic talent was noticed by Joseph Hoffman who arranged for the boy to study in America, a plan which was forestalled by the outbreak of World War II. Weinberg then emigrated to the Soviet Union. Although he had written his first two compositions in Poland (the Berceuse for piano and the First String Quartet, of 1935–7), serious study only began in 1939 when he joined Zolotaryov’s class at the Minsk Conservatory, graduating in 1941. During the war he settled in Tashkent where he married the daughter of the actor and director of the Jewish Theatre, Solomon Mikhoels. It was then he met Shostakovich whose ideas about music shattered Weinberg’s conception of art: ‘It was as if I had been born anew …. Although I took no lessons from him, Dmitri Shostakovich was the first person to whom I would show each of my new works’ [Nikitina]. This friendship lasted until Shostakovich’s death. Along with Myaskovsky, Weinberg bravely refused to ‘repent’ of modernist leanings during the official attacks on composers of 1948 from the CPSU resolution on Muradeli’s The Great Friendship. Weinberg, when remarking that ‘it was a historical resolution’ was cut short by Myaskovsky who retorted ‘not historical, but hysterical’ [Nikitina]; he now received little official help and made a living writing for the theatre and the circus. On February 6 1953 he was jailed because his wife’s uncle – the Kremlin physician Vovsi – had been labelled an enemy of the people, and partly as a result of the continuing attacks from the press. He spent three months in prison and was saved from inevitable death by Shostakovich who wrote a letter in his defence. Despite this, Weinberg was not inclined to regard himself as a political victim: ‘I cannot say about myself what others say about themselves – that they were persecuted. I would say that in those years the powers-that-be did nothing to popularize my compositions. What was performed, was performed due to a performer’s express desire to do so. … Perhaps, some pieces were not performed and some were banned’ [ibid.]. During this era his works had indeed attracted attention from Russia’s renowned instrumentalists including Gilels and Mariya Grinberg, and by late 1950s and early 1960s these pioneers were joined by Rostropovich and the conductors Gauk and Sanderling, who often gave the premières of works soon after their completion. During the last two decades of his life his output increased unabated; the several operas he wrote during these years can be regarded as a synthesis of the techniques he mastered in his symphonic and choral works. Weinberg’s compositional style is influenced by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, Bartók and Mahler; his works are often based on a programme, largely autobiographical in nature, and they reflect on the fate of the composer and of humanity in general. The mood is often meditative, especially in his sacred choral works, in which sorrow succeeded by radiant catharsis is a common theme. He regarded his opera Passazhirka (‘The Passenger’) as his most important work, and one which was central to the conception of several others, such as the Symphony no.21 written in commemoration of the burning of the Warsaw ghetto where many of his close relatives died. The imagery of many of his works is connected with his memories of his childhood and of World War II, and consequently themes relating to the destruction of childhood (and, by extension, purity, serenity and stability) are central to his aesthetic and are frequently symbolized by the musical material. Despite this, Weinberg strove for a reflection of a philosophy of universal harmony and unity by means of neo-classical, rationalist clarity and proportion. For all the importance of the word, the programmatical nature of many works and the occasional Slavic and Jewish thematic materials, his music has an absolute – even abstract – quality, with similar themes able to assume varied semantic hues in given environments. WORKS(selective list) stage
vocal
instrumental
BIBLIOGRAPHYA. Nikolayev: ‘O tvorchestve M. Vaynberga’ [About Weinberg’s work], SovM (1960), no.1, pp.40–47 Yu. Korev: ‘Po pervïm vpechatleniyam’ [By my first impressions], SovM (1960), no.5, pp.12–17 M. Roytershteyn: ‘Simfonii s monologami’ [Symphonies with monologues], SovM (1969), no.3, pp.26–8 L. Nikitina: Symfonii M. Vaynberga (Moscow, 1972) K. Savka: ‘Geroi Dyuma na opernoy stsene’ [Dumas’s heroes on the operatic stage], Muzïkal'naya zhizn' (1975), no.6, pp.5–6 L. Faykina: ‘Opera o voyne’ [An opera about the war], SovM (1975), no.10, pp.31–5 M. Weinberg: ‘Chestnost', pravdivost', polnaya otdacha’ [Clarity and sincerity given away fully], SovM (1988), no.9, pp.23–6 LYUDMILLA DMITRIYEVNA NIKITINA Directory: New%20Grove%20Dictionnary%20Of%20Music Download 14.95 Mb. Share with your friends:
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