GRADENWITZ, PETER EMANUEL

GRADENWITZ, PETER EMANUEL (1910–2001), musicologist, composer, and publisher. Born in Berlin, Gradenwitz studied musicology, sociology, and literature in Freiburg and Berlin with Wilibald Gurlitt, Arnold Schering, and Curt Sachs, and composition with Joef Rufer. In 1934 he pursued his research in Paris and Berlin, and in 1936 he received his doctorate with a thesis on the Stamitz family. In 1936 he joined the large migration of Jewish refugees from Germany and settled in Palestine, where he founded the first publishing house which specialized in concert music, Israeli Music Publications (imp), in 1948. In 1968 Gradenwitz was appointed lecturer at Tel Aviv University. He regularly published concert reviews, mostly in Das Orchester, Opernwelt and the Neue Zeitschriftfuer Musik. In 1980 he was appointed honorary professor at Freiburg Universitiy.

One of his main fields of interest was music appreciation. He published three listening guides (in Hebrew) to symphonic (Olam ha-Simfonyah 1945, 1959), chamber (Ha-Musikah ha-Kamerit, 1948, 1953), and piano music (Olam ha-Pesanteran, 1952) which were widely read in Israel. He also studied the history of Jewish and especially Israeli music. His main publication in this field was The Music of Israel (1949, 1996²). In 1954 he organized in Haifa the first Annual Music Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music to be held outside Europe or the United States.

[Jehoash Hirshberg (2^nd ed.)]