Frederick Jacobi

Frederick Jacobi as musician in the Alcatraz Army Band.

Frederick Jacobi (May 4, 1891 – October 24, 1952) was an American composer and teacher. His works include symphonies, concerti, chamber music, works for solo piano and for solo organ, lieder, and one opera.

He taught at Juilliard School of Music and served as the director of the American section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. He was also a founding member of the League of Composers. His notable students included Mark Bucci and John Verrall. He died on October 24, 1952 in New York City of heart failure.

Biography

Early life

Frederick Jacobi was the son of San Francisco wholesale wine merchant, Frederick Jacobi Sr. and Flora Brandenstein, whom Frederick Sr. had married in 1876. During the composer's childhood years, he demonstrated his musical talent, composing short pieces at the piano and playing tunes from contemporary musical comedies by ear. In these years the family traveled each summer to visit relatives in New York City. The scenery of those cross-country train rides later provided the themes of a number of Jacobi's nature-inspired compositions.[1]

Musical training and career

When Frederick Sr. died in 1911, Frederick Jr. inherited the estate, which provided him enough wealth that he could devote his entire livelihood to music. In his twenties Jacobi studied music and composition under such masters as Isidore Philippe of the Paris Conservatory, Rafael Joseffy, Paolo Gallico, Ernest Bloch and Rubin Goldmark in New York, and Paul Juon in Berlin.[2]

From 1913 to 1917 he worked as a vocal coach and assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. It was during that time, on April 19, 1917, that he married Irene Schwarcz, a friend of many years, who, at the time, was studying piano at the New York Institute of Musical Art (which later became Juilliard). Irene would go on to become an accomplished concert pianist and would play piano parts in many performances and recordings of Jacobi's works.[3]

Jacobi enlisted in the army shortly after marrying Irene, where he served as a saxophone player in the Alcatraz Army Band. He was discharged in 1919, at which time he moved to New York to be in closer contact with the American composers of the time. His first large orchestral work, The Eve of St. Agnes, debuted the following year in New York. For the remainder of his life he published and performed new works nearly every year—sometimes several in the same year (see compositions section). Major American orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco symphonies performed Jacobi's orchestral compositions during the years of his life.[4]

In works from what has become known as Jacobi's Indian period (late 1920s and early 1930s), he incorporated rhythms and other elements from indigenous Native American music he had heard in his travels through the American southwest. Indeed, he spent the winter of 1927 with the Navajo and Pueblo of New Mexico studying their music.[4] In 1942-1944 Jacobi collaborated with Canadian playwright and librettist, Herman Voaden, to produce the opera, The Prodigal Son, which debuted at the American Opera Society of Chicago in May 1945.

Legacy

Jacobi is also known and best remembered as a composer of works with Judaic themes. His interest in this genre began with a 1930 commission from Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York for a sabbath evening service. Although he had not been religiously educated as a child, this experience affected him permanently, and thereafter the Bible influenced all of his music, secular and liturgical. He even taught himself Hebrew.[5] Although Jacobi's secular work is performed only infrequently today, his liturgical works continue to receive performances in synagogues.[4]

Jacobi's work largely rejects the polytonality and atonality that was popular with the avant-garde composers of his time. Instead he finds his influence in the classical and romantic periods. Baltimore Sun critic, Florestan Croche, described Jacobi's style as having "a sense of the drama which is always aristocratic, introspective, and personal, and never allowed to become theatrical. Harmonically ... his is a language of extreme chromaticism, one, however, which always appears to be tonally oriented."[6] New York Times critic, Olin Downes, described the aesthetics of Jacobi's music as "not so much of the 20th as of the 19th century."[4]

Awards and honors

Source: New York Times[7]

Quotes on musical composition and anecdotes

Discography

Hagiographia: Three Biblical Narratives for String Quartet and Piano. Irene Jacobi, piano; with the Coolidge Quartet: William Kroll, 1st violin; Nicolai Berezowsky, 2nd violin; Nicholas Moldavan, viola; Victor Gottlieb, cello
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. Andre Gertler and the Orchestra of the Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Franz Andre, conductor.
Two pieces for Flute and Orchestra: Night Piece and Dance. Francis Stoefs, flute and the Orchestra of the Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Franz Andre, conductor.
Concertino for Piano and String Orchestra. Irene Jacobi, piano and the Orchestra of the Institut Nationale Belge de Radiodiffusion, Franz Andre, conductor.
Ballade for Violin and Piano. Fredell Lack, violin; Irene Jacobi, piano
Fantasy for Viola and Piano. Louise Rood, viola; Irene Jacobi, piano
String Quartet No. 3. Lyric Art Quartet: Fredell Lack and George Bennett, violins; Wayne Crouse, viola; Marion Davies, cello
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. Guido Vecchi with members of the Oslo Phillharmonic Orchestra, William Strickland, conductor.
Hagiographia: Three Biblical Narratives for String Quartet and Piano. Irene Jacobi, piano; with the Claremont String Quartet: Mark Gottlieb and Vladimir Weisman, violins; Scot Nickrenz, viola; Irving Klein, cello.
Digitally remastered contents of CRI 146 and CRI 174, with the exception of the Fantasy for Viola and Piano.
Concerto for Violincello, and Orchestra. Alban Gerhardt, cello; Barcelona Symphony/National Orchestra of Catalonia, Karl Anton Rickenbacher, conductor.
Sabbath Evening Service (excerpts). Patrick Mason, baritone; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chorus, Joseph Cullen, conductor.
Hagiographia for String Quartet and Piano. Brian Krinke, violin; Perrin Yang, violin; George Taylor, viola; Stefan Reuss, cello; Joseph Werner, piano.
Ahavat Olam. Cantor Robert Bloch; New York Cantorial Choir; Aaron Miller, organ; Samuel Adler, conductor.
Two Pieces in Sabbath Mood. Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra; Samuel Adler, conductor

Compositions

Source: Anton Wagner, Frederick Jacobi and Herman Voaden[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Anton Wagner, Frederick Jacobi and Herman Voaden: The Prodigal Son
  2. ↑ The New Grove vol. 9
  3. ↑ New York Times obituaries, May 30, 1984
  4. 1 2 3 4 Frederick Jacobi at the Milken Archive
  5. 1 2 Correspondence with Fritz Jacobi (Frederick Jacobi's son)
  6. ↑ The Baltimore Sun, May 3, 1964
  7. ↑ New York Times obituaries, October 25, 1952
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