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Louis Gruenberg ( ; June 10, 1964) was a Russian-born American
pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...
and prolific composer, especially of operas. An early champion of Schoenberg and other contemporary composers, he was also a highly respected Oscar-nominated film composer in Hollywood in the 1940s.


Life and career

Louis Theodor Gruenberg was born near
Brest-Litovsk Brest ( be, Брэст / Берасьце, Bieraście, ; russian: Брест, ; uk, Берестя, Berestia; lt, Brasta; pl, Brześć; yi, בריסק, Brisk), formerly Brest-Litovsk (russian: Брест-Литовск, lit=Lithuanian Br ...
(now in Belarus but then in
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
), to Abe Gruenberg and Klara Kantarovitch. His family emigrated to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...
when he was a few months old. His father worked as a violinist in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. Young Louis had a talent for the piano, and by the age of eight Gruenberg was taking piano lessons with Adele Margulies at the National Conservatory in New York (then headed by
Antonín Dvořák Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czech composer. Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example ...
). Gruenberg played both solo concerts and in ensembles from the beginning, and in his early twenties he went to study in Europe with
Ferruccio Busoni Ferruccio Busoni (1 April 1866 – 27 July 1924) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor, editor, writer, and teacher. His international career and reputation led him to work closely with many of the leading musicians, artists and literary ...
at the Vienna Conservatory. Before World War I, Gruenberg taught students and toured, both as an accompanist and soloist. In 1919, Gruenberg wrote ''The Hill of Dreams'' for orchestra, which gained him the highly acclaimed Flagler Prize and enabled him to devote himself more completely to composition. As Gruenberg began to make his mark as a composer, he showed his fascination with jazz, composing works with strong jazz and ragtime influences. He joined the
International Composers' Guild The International Composers' Guild was an organization created in 1921 by Edgard Varèse and Carlos Salzedo. It was responsible for performances and premieres of works by Béla Bartók, Alban Berg, Erik Satie, Carlos Chávez, Henry Cowell, Charles ...
(ICG which had been founded by
Edgard Varèse Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse (; also spelled Edgar; December 22, 1883 – November 6, 1965) was a French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States. Varèse's music emphasizes timbre and rhythm; he coined ...
and
Carlos Salzedo Carlos Salzedo (6 April 1885 – 17 August 1961) was a French harpist, pianist, composer and conductor. His compositions made the harp into a virtuoso instrument. He influenced many composers with his new ideas for the harp's sounds through his w ...
in 1921. on 19 February 1922 the ICG scheduled the first of their first series of concerts in
Greenwich Village Theatre Greenwich Village Theatre was an arts venue in Greenwich Village, New York which opened in 1917 and closed for the last time in 1930. Herman Lee Meader was the architect and it was located in Sheridan Square at 4th Street and Seventh Avenue. It w ...
. Gruenberg's ''Polychromatics'' received its world premiere that night. Then, on February 4, 1923, Gruenberg conducted the American premiere of ''
Pierrot Lunaire ''Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds "Pierrot lunaire"'' ("Three times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud's 'Pierrot lunaire), commonly known simply as ''Pierrot lunaire'', Op. 21 ("Moonstruck Pierrot" or "Pierrot in the Moonlight"), is a me ...
'' by
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
at the
Klaw Theatre The Klaw Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 251–257 West 45th Street (now a part of George Abbott Way) in Midtown Manhattan. Built in 1921 for producer Marcus Klaw, the theater was designed by Eugene De Rosa. Rachel Crothers' '' Ni ...
in another concert organised by the ICG. Shortly after this performance, he and other members of the league left over disagreements with Varèse and formed the
League of Composers The League of Composers/International Society for Contemporary Music is a society whose stated mission is "to produce the highest quality performances of new music, to champion American composers in the United States and abroad, and to introduce Ame ...
. In its 1933 season, the
Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is operat ...
premiered his expressionistic opera ''
The Emperor Jones ''The Emperor Jones'' is a 1920 tragic play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill that tells the tale of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured African American and a former Pullman porter, who kills another black man in a dice game, is jailed, ...
'', based on the major experimental the play by
Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...
which had already triumphed on Broadway with Paul Robeson playing the title role of an African-American who declares himself emperor on a Caribbean island. In the opera, the title role was created by baritone
Lawrence Tibbett Lawrence Mervil Tibbett (November 16, 1896 – July 15, 1960) was an American opera singer and recording artist who also performed as a film actor and radio personality. A baritone, he sang leading roles with the Metropolitan Opera in New York ...
, performing in blackface. It was performed at the Met for the 1934 season as well, and featured on the cover of Time Magazine receiving much critical acclaim. Paul Robeson's 1936 film ''
Song of Freedom ''Song of Freedom'' is a 1936 British film directed by J. Elder Wills and starring Paul Robeson. Two of the film's pivotal elements are the character of an opera composer, Gabriel Donizetti, presumably suggested by historical opera composer ...
'' also features a scene from the opera with Robeson singing the role of Jones. (This has sometimes resulted in a confusion that the 1933 film of O'Neill's play is a film of the opera.) Between 1933 and 1936, Gruenberg headed the composition department of Chicago Musical College (now part of
Roosevelt University Roosevelt University is a private university with campuses in Chicago and Schaumburg, Illinois. Founded in 1945, the university was named in honor of United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The univ ...
). He collaborated with a man nicknamed "Roosevelt's filmmaker,"
Pare Lorentz Pare Lorentz (December 11, 1905 – March 4, 1992) was an American filmmaker known for his film work about the New Deal. Born Leonard MacTaggart Lorentz in Clarksburg, West Virginia he was educated at Buckhannon High School, West Virginia Wesle ...
to create '"The Fight for Life," a semi-documentary film about childbirth in Chicago slums, on which John Steinbeck also collaborated. In 1937, he moved with his family to
Beverly Hills Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Bev ...
, California, where fellow League members Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky also now lived (though they never spoke). There he worked at merging music with visual media and film, and also composed for Hollywood films.


Film composer

Gruenberg worked on the musical scoring for John Ford's masterpiece ''Stagecoach'' (1939), incorporating folk songs; the four other composers who worked with him are named on the Academy Award Stagecoach won for Best Music Scoring in that legendary year - against such tough competition as Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Korngold and Aaron Copland—but Gruenberg, inexplicably, is not on the list of nominees. One wonders, since Gruenberg heads the list of the five-man team who worked on the score in the official credits and was soon well known in the industry as having worked on Stagecoach's Oscar-winning score —if he perhaps took his name off at nomination time, not wanting to be reduced to a team of five that wrote background music for a Western after having his opera on the cover of Time Magazine. After all, no one knew Stagecoach was going to be a masterpiece, let alone win two Oscars; up until then, no Western had ever been a masterpiece. It was also John Ford's first Western with sound. And Schoenberg and
Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...
, not to mention
Rachmaninoff Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of ...
, were all in a three-mile radius. But that is just a guess. Gruenberg soon composed an original film score under his sole credit for
So Ends Our Night ''So Ends Our Night'' is a 1941 drama directed by John Cromwell and starring Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan and Glenn Ford. The screenplay was adapted by Talbot Jennings from the novel ''Flotsam'' by German exile Erich Maria Remarque, who rose ...
(1941) adapted from famous German exile Remarque's fourth novel, starring Oscar-winner
Fredric March Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 1940s.Obituary ''Variety'', April 16, 1975, p ...
,
Margaret Sullavan Margaret Brooke Sullavan (May 16, 1909 – January 1, 1960) was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan began her career onstage in 1929 with the University Players. In 1933, she caught the attention of film director John M. Stahl and ha ...
and a very young
Glenn Ford Gwyllyn Samuel Newton "Glenn" Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006) was a Canadian-American actor who often portrayed ordinary men in unusual circumstances. Ford was most prominent during Hollywood's Golden Age as one of the biggest box-off ...
as desperate exiles whom Nazi Germany's rise has rendered stateless. Knowing well the Vienna in which much of the film takes place, Gruenberg composed an enormous breadth of source music, a loving homage to the world of Austrian and German music he had grown up in, now lost to Nazi madness. The constant presence of music becomes a kind of tone poem of the deep nostalgia the frantic exiles feel for their former lives, from characters who whistle a few bars of Beethoven that trigger another character's memory of his mother at the piano, to raucous jazz bands, to tuneless calliopes at the Vienna fairground, to phonograph records in a stranger's apartment. Gruenberg was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Original Score The Academy Award for Best Original Score is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by t ...
, his fellow musical members of the Academy doubtless particularly enjoying his witty musical quote of Richard Strauss' famous descending 6-note "sigh" from
Der Rosenkavalier (''The Knight of the Rose'' or ''The Rose-Bearer''), Op. 59, is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel ''Les amours du chevalier de Faublas'' ...
whenever the virginal 19-year-old character of Glenn Ford gazes longingly at his new love, 32-year-old Margaret Sullavan (on her third marriage in real life, as they all knew). In 1942, Gruenberg was again nominated for his next film, along with Columbia's head of music, Morris Stoloff, for Best Dramatic Score for
Commandos Strike at Dawn ''Commandos Strike at Dawn'' is a 1942 war film directed by John Farrow and written by Irwin Shaw from a short story entitled "The Commandos" by C. S. Forester that appeared in '' Cosmopolitan'' magazine in June 1942. Filmed in Canada, it starre ...
(1942), directed by
John Farrow John Villiers Farrow, KGCHS (10 February 190427 January 1963) was an Australian film director, producer, and screenwriter. Spending a considerable amount of his career in the United States, in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for B ...
and starring Paul Muni in a story of a secret Allied attack on the Nazi-occupied Norwegian coast. Originally, Stoloff had convinced his boss, Harry Cohn, to hire Stravinsky for this job, since the Russian genius happened to be sitting out the war in Los Angeles. Stravinsky's wife, Vera, discovered some Norwegian folk songs in a used LA book shop, and Stravinsky set to work adapting these with his usual speed. When the prolific composer finished his score before a single frame of film had been shot; Stoloff ruefully paid Stravinsky and gave the work back. Months later, Stoloff brought Gruenburg on to compose to the completed film, as was the usual practice. Stravinsky, never one to let work go to waste, refashioned his unused score into "Four Norwegian Moods," and Gruenberg was nominated for another Oscar. His next film job, An American Romance, was a heart-breaking failure for its director,
King Vidor King Wallis Vidor (; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose 67-year film-making career successfully spanned the silent and sound eras. His works are distinguished by a vivid, ...
, a $3 million Technicolor tale of a steel industrialist that nobody saw; an uncredited composer was brought in to patch up the half-hour that was lopped out of it after its first screenings, before it lost a million dollars. It ended director King Vidor's long career at MGM.


Gruenberg violin concerto

But Gruenberg had happier things to worry about, for in 1944, the greatest violinist in the world,
Jascha Heifetz Jascha Heifetz (; December 10, 1987) was a Russian-born American violinist. Born in Vilnius, he moved while still a teenager to the United States, where his Carnegie Hall debut was rapturously received. He was a virtuoso since childhood. Fritz ...
, commissioned and premiered Gruenberg's Violin Concerto, Op. 47 with
Eugene Ormandy Eugene Ormandy (born Jenő Blau; November 18, 1899 – March 12, 1985) was a Hungarian-born American conductor and violinist, best known for his association with the Philadelphia Orchestra, as its music director. His 44-year association with ...
and the
Philadelphia Orchestra The Philadelphia Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the " Big Five" American orchestras, the orchestra is based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where it performs its subscription ...
, and recorded it with
Pierre Monteux Pierre Benjamin Monteux (; 4 April 18751 July 1964) was a French (later American) conductor. After violin and viola studies, and a decade as an orchestral player and occasional conductor, he began to receive regular conducting engagements in ...
and the
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra The San Francisco Symphony (SFS), founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Fra ...
in 1945. It is a lively work in three movements (''Rhapsodie - With simplicity and warmth - Lively and with good humour''), and lasts 38 minutes (in Heifetz's performance). Originally recorded for RCA Victor on shellac 78 RPM discs, it's considered a legendary performance of the master at the height of his powers, and is frequently re-issued on LP paired with Heifetz's 1937 recording of the Prokofiev Violin Concerto. As one of that celebrated conductor's earliest recordings, it can also be found in the collected works of Pierre Monteux, re-issued by Sony Classics.


Postwar film composing

Back on the payroll in LA, Gruenberg was brought in to score the taut, well-received one-room drama of a Russian soldier holding a group of German soldiers,
Counter-Attack A counterattack is a tactic employed in response to an attack, with the term originating in " war games". The general objective is to negate or thwart the advantage gained by the enemy during attack, while the specific objectives typically see ...
(1945), written by soon-to-be-blacklisted
John Howard Lawson John Howard Lawson (September 25, 1894 – August 11, 1977) was an American writer, specializing in plays and screenplays. After starting with plays for theaters in New York City, he worked in Hollywood on writing for films. He was the first pres ...
. His next score was for a blacklisted writer who was already working without credit,
Dalton Trumbo James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including ''Roman Holiday'' (1953), ''Exodus'', ''Spartacus'' (both 1960), and ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) ...
, in a low-budget Film Noir, The Gangster (1947). Arch of Triumph (aka Arc of Triumph) (1948) based on Erich Remarque's fifth novel, revisited suffering refugees, with Charles Boyer,
Ingrid Bergman Ingrid Bergman (29 August 191529 August 1982) was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films, television movies, and plays.Obituary ''Variety'', 1 September 1982. With a career spanning five decades, she is often ...
and Charles Laughton as a Nazi-in-hiding. Another prestigious flop, it cost $5 million to make but made less than a million at the box office. No one, it seemed, wanted to revisit a Paris where the Nazis had yet to be beaten. But Gruenberg's soaring brass-filled opening music is quite wonderful.
All The King's Men ''All the King's Men'' is a 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren. The novel tells the story of charismatic populist governor Willie Stark and his political machinations in the Depression-era Deep South. It was inspired by the real-life story of U.S. ...
(1949), the Pulitzer-Prize-winning fictional story of Huey Long, was a tremendous success, winning three top Oscars among many other prizes. Louis Gruenberg was nominated for Best Score in the newly minted Golden Globe Awards. Gruenberg's last Hollywood score was for Mickey Rooney and Peter Lorre in the film noir
Quicksand Quicksand is a colloid consisting of fine granular material (such as sand, silt or clay) and water. It forms in saturated loose sand when the sand is suddenly agitated. When water in the sand cannot escape, it creates a liquefied soil that ...
(1950), directed by veteran Irving Pichel, and considered by many to be the adult Rooney's best work. Again, the orchestral opening under the credits has a powerful use of brass, and as Rooney descends into his life of petty crime, a sinewy jazz score emerges.


Later years

Louis Gruenberg's film composing career stops in 1950, and it seems a fair premise that, having worked with blacklisted writers (Trumbo and Lawsen), blacklisted directors (Irving Pichel and John Cromwell), and left-wing tainted actors (Ingrid Bergman, Fredric March), he either abandoned Hollywood at this moment in American cinema history or was abandoned by it. There is very little information on the impact of the blacklist on film composers, who tend to be overlooked in the best of times, and 1950 was not the best of times. During the last twenty years of his life, Gruenberg also became increasingly isolated from the concert music world. He did maintain a close friendship with
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
, by now a permanent resident of Los Angeles as well as a music professor at UCLA, until the latter's death in 1951. Louis Gruenberg composed continually until his death in 1964 in Beverly Hills. Besides other works, he wrote five symphonies, four full length operas (''Volpone'', ''Jack and the Beanstalk'', ''Antony and Cleopatra'' and ''The Dumb Wife'') and the lengthy oratorio ''A Song of Faith''.


Rediscovery

The violinist
Koh Gabriel Kameda Koh Gabriel Kameda (Japanese: 亀田 光; born January 14, 1975) is a German and Japanese concert violinist and violin teacher. Early life Koh Gabriel Kameda was born in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, the son of a German woman, Margarita and a ...
reintroduced the almost forgotten concerto to the public with a premiere of the work in Japan in 2002 with the New Japan Philharmonic under the direction of
Gerard Schwarz Gerard Schwarz (born August 19, 1947), also known as Gerry Schwarz or Jerry Schwarz, is an American symphony conductor and trumpeter. As of 2019, Schwarz serves as the Artistic and Music Director of Palm Beach Symphony and the Director of Orche ...
. He was the first violinist who has ever played the concerto after Heifetz. In 2009 Kameda made another premiere of the concerto in Mexico with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Mexico City under Edwin Outwater. Gruenberg's diverse range of film scores also deserve further recognition; happily, a more feasible goal now that his 1940s films are becoming available on home video and online. His wonderful work on those intrepid films that contributed to the battle of filmmakers against pro-Fascist, isolationist America, will also be acknowledged one day, along with the other celluloid warriors, so unsung and so brutally punished by the blacklist.


Works


Operas

* ''The Bride of the Gods'', libretto by Busoni, translated by C. H. Meltzer (1913) * ''The Dumb Wife'', libretto after ''The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife'' by
Anatole France (; born , ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie França ...
after Rabelais (1923) * ''Jack and the Beanstalk'', libretto by John Erskine (1931) * ''
The Emperor Jones ''The Emperor Jones'' is a 1920 tragic play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill that tells the tale of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured African American and a former Pullman porter, who kills another black man in a dice game, is jailed, ...
'', libretto by the composer (working alone), after a play by
Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...
(1931) *''Witch of Brocken'', with J. Lilian Vandevere and Emil Ferdinand Malkowsky (1931) * ''Queen Helen'' (1936) * ''Green Mansions'' (
radio opera Radio opera (German: 'Funkoper' or 'Radiooper') is a genre of opera. It refers to operas which were specifically composed to be performed on the radio and is not to be confused with broadcasts of operas which were originally written for the stage. ...
), libretto after a novel by
William Henry Hudson William Henry Hudson (4 August 1841 – 18 August 1922) – known in Argentina as Guillermo Enrique Hudson – was an Anglo-Argentine author, naturalist and ornithologist. Life Hudson was the son of Daniel Hudson and his wife Catherine (), ...
(1937) * ''Helena's Husband'', libretto by P. Moeller (1938) * ''Volpone'', libretto by the composer after
Ben Jonson Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (c. 11 June 1572 – c. 16 August 1637) was an English playwright and poet. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for t ...
(1945) * ''One Night of Cleopatra'', libretto by the composer after T. Gautier * ''The Delicate King'', libretto by the composer after
Alexandre Dumas, père Alexandre Dumas (, ; ; born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie (), 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas père (where '' '' is French for 'father', to distinguish him from his son Alexandre Dumas fils), was a French writer ...
(1955) * ''Antony and Cleopatra'', libretto by the composer after
Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
(1955)


Orchestral

* ''The Hill of Dreams'', 1919 * ''The Daniel Jazz'', 1925 * Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 47, 1944 * 5 symphonies


Films

* ''Quick Sand'', 1950 * ''All the King's Men'', 1949. (Golden Globe nomination for Best Score, 1950) * ''Smart Woman'', 1948 * ''Arc of Triumph'', 1948 * ''The Gangster'', 1947 * ''Counter-Attack'', 1945 * ''An American Romance'', 1944 * ''The Nazi-Strike'' Documentary Short, 1943 * ''Commandos Strike at Dawn'', 1942 (Nominated for Academy Award for Best Dramatic Score, 1943) * ''So Ends Our Night'', 1941 (Nominated for Academy Award for Best Dramatic Score, 1942) * ''The Fight for Life'', 1940 * ''Stagecoach'', 1939. (uncredited Academy Award for best music scoring, 1940)


External links

*
Louis Gruenberg Papers, 1900-1988
Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. * http://www.musicweb-international.com//Classpedia/Gruenberg.htm


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gruenberg, Louis American classical pianists American male classical pianists American male composers American composers Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Pupils of Ferruccio Busoni Belarusian Jews American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Jewish American classical musicians 1884 births 1964 deaths Roosevelt University faculty 20th-century classical pianists 20th-century American male musicians 20th-century American pianists