Luna Alcalay

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Luna Alcalay (born October 21, 1928 in Zagreb ; † October 9, 2012 in Vienna ) was an Austrian composer and pianist.

Live and act

Alcalay came from a middle-class background as the daughter of an old Austrian Jewish textile merchant and received piano lessons from Svetislav Stančič at an early age. Since her youth she has been artistically active as a pianist, composer, author and painter. In 1947 she began studying at the Zagreb Academy of Music, but the family emigrated to Israel the following year . In Tel Aviv she was tutored by Leo Kestenberg .

In 1951 Luna Alcalay came to Vienna to study composition technology with Alfred Uhl and piano with Bruno Seidlhofer at the Music Academy, today's University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna . Alfred Uhl introduced her to the music of Luigi Nono , which made a lasting impression on her. Inspired by this, she took part in the Darmstadt summer courses to get to know the music of Nono and other avant-gardists. As a teacher, she was particularly impressed by Bruno Maderna . In 1968 he conducted the world premiere of Alcalay's choral work "Una Strofa di Dante" in Vienna.

From 1959 Alcaly taught at the Vienna Boys' Choir . In 1963 she received a professorship for the subject “piano for composers” at what is now the University of Music.

Luna Alcalay's music was initially shaped by the serial composition method according to René Leibowitz , but she gradually moved away from its strict application and came in the 1970s with pieces such as "New point of view" to a technique in which aleatoric passages also play a role and instruments are used in a way that deviates from tradition.

Text plays an important role for Alcalay, especially in her work in the 1970s and 1980s. She composed operas, choir, ensemble and solo pieces. There are also works in which male and female voices are accompanied by instruments during the spoken text presentation. With compositions like "homo sapiens" there are also examples of radiophony . She set various poets to music, including Else Lasker-Schüler .

She dedicated Jan Palach , who in 1969 in Prague in protest against the suppression of the Prague Spring and against the invasion of the troops of the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia burned even an opera. Luna Alcalay considered her most important work to be the internationally acclaimed composition "I am wrapped in longing" in 1984, in which she reflects on poems by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger in a scenic way . This Jewish poet died in a forced labor camp in Ukraine in 1942.

Honourings and prices

  • International IGNM competition Italy 1972
  • First prize in the composition competition of the ORF regional studio in Styria in 1973
  • Honorary Prize of the City of Vienna 1973
  • Prize of the City of Vienna for Music 1992

Works (selection)

  • UN cantata 1968
  • new point of view 1975
  • homo sapiens 1977
  • Jan Palach (Opera) 1985
  • the passed man 1965/1996

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alcalay, Luna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Zagreb
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 2012
Place of death Vienna