Lazar Weiner

Lazar Weiner (born October 24, 1897 in Cherkassy , Russian Empire ; died January 10, 1982 ) was an American composer and choir director of Russian-Jewish origin, who became known as the most important composer of Yiddish art songs.

Life

At the age of nine, Lazar Weiner became a member of the choir and student of the Khor Shul of the Brodsky Synagogue in Kiev under the direction of the cantor Abram Dzimitrovsky , with whom he also had piano lessons for two years. At the age of eleven he also sang in the choir of the Kiev Opera. From 1910 he studied piano and music theory at the Kiev Conservatory. In 1914 he emigrated to the USA with his family. There he initially worked as a silent film pianist , but soon became a piano accompanist in the studio of the singing teacher Lazar Samoiloff . He also performed as a pianist and initially worked as a sheet music manager, later as a conductor for the Mendelssohn Symphony Orchestra , a municipal amateur orchestra in Brooklyn. During this time he wrote his first compositions, including an elegy for violin and piano. He later completed his musical training with Robert Russell Bennett , Frederick Jacobi , the first professor of composition at the Juilliard School, and the music theorist Joseph Schillinger .

Nahum Baruch Minkoff , violinist in the Mendelssohn Symphony Orchestra and member of a group of modern Yiddish poets around Jacob Glatstein and Aaron Glanz-Leyeles , introduced him to Di Yunge, a group of Jewish writers and intellectuals of European origin, including Moshe Leib Halpern , Mani Leib , Moshe Nadir , Aaron Nissenson , Naftoli Gross , Zishe Weinper , Yehoash , H. Rosenblatt and Joseph Rolnick counted. The decisive impetus for his musical preoccupation with modern Yiddish literature was a guest performance by the Saint Petersburg-based Zimro Ensemble in 1919 . During this time three of his most famous songs were written. In field , Shtile tener and Volt mayn tate raykh geven . In the 1920s he turned to secular Yiddish choral singing and in 1923 took over the management of the New Yorker Freiheits Gezang Verein , with which he made his debut at a festival organized by Leo Low in the Hippodrome . From 1925 he directed several choirs, some of them simultaneously, including the Yidishe Kultur Gezelshaft , the choir of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union , the Central Synagogue choir and the Arbeter Ring Khor . After a trip to the Soviet Union in 1927, he concentrated on working with the Arbeter Ring Khor , whose official conductor he became in 1931 and with whom he performed most of his choral works over the next 35 years. Most of his choral cantatas such as Amol in a tzayt — Legend of Toil , The Last Judgment — Bontshe shvayg , Hirsh lekert; He composed for this ensemble in kamf far frayhayt , Tzu dir, amerike , Mentsh in der velt and Amos . At the same time he also composed numerous art songs for soloist and piano.

In 1930 Weiner became music director of the Central Synagogue in New York, where he led, among other things, premieres of his own liturgical works and also those by Ernest Bloch , Darius Milhaud and Joseph Achron . From 1952 until his death, Weiner taught at the School of Sacred Music , the cantor school of New York's Hebrew Union College . In 1966 he ended his collaboration with the Arbeter Ring Khor and concentrated on his tasks at the central synagogue, which he carried out until 1974. In the last years of his life he devoted himself increasingly to song composition.

The composer Yehudi Wyner is a son.

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• Milken Archive of Jewish Music - Lazar Weiner
• New York Times, Jan. 11, 1982 - Obituaries - Lazar Weiner (84) Composer and Teacher of Jewish Music