Ingolf Dahl (June 9, 1912 – August 6, 1970) was a German-born American composer, pianist, conductor, and educator.

Biography

Dahl was born Walter Ingolf Marcus in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

, Germany, to a

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

father, attorney Paul Marcus, and his Swedish wife Hilda Maria Dahl. He had two brothers, Gert Marcus (1914–2008; a noted Swedish artist and sculptor, and a recipient of the

Prince Eugen Medal The Prince Eugen Medal ( sv, Prins Eugen-medaljen) is a medal conferred by the King of Sweden for "outstanding artistic achievement". The medal was established in 1945 by the then King of Sweden, Gustaf V, in connection with the eightieth birthd ...

), and Holger, and one sister Anna-Britta. In Hamburg, Dahl studied piano under Edith Weiss-Mann, a harpsichordist, pianist, and a proponent of early music. Dahl studied with

Philipp Jarnach Philipp Jarnach (26 July 1892 17 December 1982 in Börnsen) was a German composer of modern music ("Neue Musik"), pianist, teacher, and conductor. Jarnach was born in Noisy-le-Sec, France, the son of a Spanish sculptor and a Flemish mother. Besi ...

at the

Hochschule für Musik Köln ' (, plural: ') is the generic term in German for institutions of higher education, corresponding to ''universities'' and ''colleges'' in English. The term ''Universität'' (plural: ''Universitäten'') is reserved for institutions with the right to ...

(1930–32). Dahl left Germany as the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

was coming to power and continued his studies at the

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

, along with

Volkmar Andreae Volkmar Andreae (5 July 1879 – 18 June 1962) was a Swiss conductor and composer. Life and career Andreae was born in Bern. He received piano instruction as a child and his first lessons in composition with Karl Munzinger. From 1897 to 1900, ...

and . Living with relatives and working at the

Zürich Opera Zürich Opera (Oper Zürich) is a Swiss opera company based in Zürich. The company gives performances in the Zürich Opera House. History The first performance at the current theatre occurred on 30 September 1891, with a production of Wagner's ' ...

for more than six years, he rose from an internship to the rank of assistant conductor. He served as a vocal coach and chorus master for the world premieres of Alban Berg's ''

Lulu Lulu may refer to: Companies * LuLu, an early automobile manufacturer * Lulu.com, an online e-books and print self-publishing platform, distributor, and retailer * Lulu Hypermarket, a retail chain in Asia * Lululemon Athletica or simply Lulu, ...

'' and

Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...

's '' Mathis der Maler''. Since Switzerland became increasingly hostile towards

Jewish refugees This article lists expulsions, refugee crises and other forms of displacement that have affected Jews. Timeline The following is a list of Jewish expulsions and events that prompted significant streams of Jewish refugees. Assyrian captivity ; ...

(including people of partial Jewish parentage) and Dahl's role at the Opera was restricted to playing in the orchestra, he emigrated to the United States in 1939. There he used the name Ingolf Dahl, based on his original middle name and his mother's maiden name. He consistently lied about his background, claiming to be of Swedish birth and denying his

Jewish heritage Jewish culture is the culture of the Jewish people, from its formation in ancient times until the current age. Judaism itself is not a faith-based religion, but an orthoprax and ethnoreligion, pertaining to deed, practice, and identity. Jewi ...

( Marcus being a recognizably

Jewish surname Jewish surnames are family names used by Jews and those of Jewish origin. Jewish surnames are thought to be of comparatively recent origin; the first known Jewish family names date to the Middle Ages, in the 10th and 11th centuries CE. Jews have ...

). He claimed to have emigrated a year earlier than he actually had. He settled in Los Angeles and joined the community of expatriate musicians that included

Ernst Krenek Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...

Darius Milhaud Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...

, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, and

Ernst Toch Ernst Toch (; 7 December 1887 – 1 October 1964) was an Austrian composer of classical music and film scores. He sought throughout his life to introduce new approaches to music. Biography Toch was born in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, into the family ...

. He had a varied musical career as a solo pianist, keyboard performer (piano and harpsichord), accompanist, conductor, coach, composer, and critic. He produced a performing translation of Schoenberg's ''

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 m ...

'' in English and translated, either alone or with a collaborator, such works as Stravinsky's ''Poetics of Music''. He performed many of Stravinsky's works and the composer was impressed enough to contract Dahl to create a two-piano version of his '' Danses concertantes'' and program notes for other works. In 1947, with

Joseph Szigeti Joseph Szigeti ( hu">Szigeti József, ; 5 September 189219 February 1973) was a Hungarian violinist. Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on ...

he produced a reconstruction of Bach's Violin Concerto in D minor. He also worked in the entertainment industry, touring as pianist to Edgar Bergen and his puppets in 1941 and later for comedian Gracie Fields in 1942 and 1956. He produced musical arrangements for

Tommy Dorsey Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. (November 19, 1905 – November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-toned trombo ...

and served as arranger/conductor to

Victor Borge Børge Rosenbaum (3 January 1909 – 23 December 2000), known professionally as Victor Borge ( ), was a Danish-American comedian, conductor, and pianist who achieved great popularity in radio and television in the North America and Europe. His ...

. He gave private lessons in the classical repertoire to Benny Goodman as well. He performed on keyboard instruments in the soundtrack orchestras for many films at Fox, Goldwyn Studios, Columbia,

Universal Universal is the adjective for universe. Universal may also refer to: Companies * NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company ** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal ** Universal TV, a ...

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...

, and

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

, as well as the post-production company

Todd-AO Todd-AO is an American post-production company founded in 1953 by Mike Todd and Robert Naify, providing sound-related services to the motion picture and television industries. For more than five decades, it was the worldwide leader in theater s ...

. He also worked on the television show ''

The Twilight Zone ''The Twilight Zone'' is an American media franchise based on the anthology television series created by Rod Serling. The episodes are in various genres, including fantasy, science fiction, absurdism, dystopian fiction, suspense, horror, sup ...

''. Though grateful for the income this work provided, he complained while working on ''

Spartacus Spartacus ( el, Σπάρτακος '; la, Spartacus; c. 103–71 BC) was a Thracian gladiator who, along with Crixus, Gannicus, Castus, and Oenomaus, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprisin ...

'' how pointless it was "to tinkle a few notes on the celeste" when the notes are also doubled by several other instruments, all for a passage presented to the audience under sound effects and actors' voices. Dahl conducted the soundtrack to ''The Abductors'' (1957) by his pupil Paul Glass and performed both second and third movements of Beethoven's '' Pathétique Sonata'' in the 1969 animated film '' A Boy Named Charlie Brown''. Among his compositions, the most frequently performed is the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Orchestra commissioned and premiered by

Sigurd Raschèr Sigurd Manfred Raschèr (pronounced 'Rah-sher') (15 May 190725 February 2001) was an American saxophonist born in Germany. He became an important figure in the development of the 20th century repertoire for the classical saxophone. Early life ...

in 1949. The piece went through several major revisions and re-scorings during Dahl's lifetime, but the original version was restored by

Paul Cohen Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician. He is best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, for which he was award ...

and recorded in 2021. Dahl later completed commissions for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Koussevitzky and Fromm foundations. His final work, complete and partly

orchestrated Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orch ...

at his death in 1970, was the ''Elegy Concerto'' for violin and chamber orchestra. In 1999, one critic reviewing a recording of Dahl's works called him a "spiffy composer", "a cross between Stravinsky and Hindemith". He legally changed his name to Ingolf Dahl in February 1943 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in September of that year. In 1945 he joined the faculty of the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8.1 ...

Thornton School of Music The USC Thornton School of Music is a private music school in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1884 only four years after the University of Southern California, the Thornton School is the oldest continually operating arts institution in Los An ...

in Los Angeles, where he taught for the rest of his life. In 1952 he was appointed the first head of the

Tanglewood Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the ...

Study Group, a program that targeted not professionals but "the intelligent amateur and music enthusiast, also the general music student and music educator". His most prominent students included the conductor

Michael Tilson Thomas Michael Tilson Thomas (born December 21, 1944) is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of ...

and the composers

Harold Budd Harold Montgomory Budd (May 24, 1936December 8, 2020) was an American composer and poet. Born in Los Angeles and raised in the Mojave Desert, he became a respected composer in the minimalist and avant-garde scene of Southern California in the ...

and

David Cope David Cope (born May 17, 1941 in San Francisco, California) is an American author, composer, scientist, and former professor of music at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). His primary area of research involves artificial intellige ...

. In 1957 he co-directed the

Ojai Music Festival The Ojai Music Festival is an annual classical music festival in the United States. Held in Ojai, California (75 miles northwest of Los Angeles), for four days every June, the festival presents music, symposia, and educational programs emphasizi ...

in partnership with

Aaron Copland Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...

and served as its music director from 1964 to 1966. Among Dahl's honors were a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 1951, two Huntington Hartford Fellowships, an Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Southern California, the ASCAP Stravinsky Award, and a grant from the

National Institute of Arts and Letters The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headqu ...

in 1954. He died in

Frutigen Frutigen is a municipality in the Bernese Oberland in the canton of Bern in Switzerland. It is the capital of the Frutigen-Niedersimmental administrative district. History The area around Frutigen may have been settled since possibly the Bro ...

, Switzerland, on August 6, 1970, just a few weeks after the death of his wife on June 10.

Personal life

From his teenage years, Dahl was initially bisexual, but from then onward, "his preference and partiality...remained with men".Linick, 528 He had his first homosexual experiences at the age of 16 with the painter

Eduard Bargheer Eduard Bargheer (25 December 1901 – 1 July 1979) was a German painter and printmaker. His early oeuvre had a close affinity to Expressionism. Life and work Eduard Bargheer was born in Finkenwerder, Hamburg as son of Karl Bargheer, a prim ...

. He kept his sexual orientation secret in his professional life, even as he cataloged in his diaries a wide variety of infatuations, affairs, trysts, and relationships. After coming to America, Dahl married Etta Gornick Linick, whom he had met in Zürich. She accepted his homosexuality, helped him to keep it hidden, and shared his affection with a lover that Dahl had met on a trip to Boston, and occasionally visited there. He maintained an intimate, though never exclusive, relationship for the last fifteen years of his life with Bill Colvig, whom he met on a Sierra Club hiking trip. Notations in his manuscripts show he sometimes found inspiration in his male companions for his compositions. ''Hymn'' (1947) was inspired by Dahl's year-long affair with an art student he met at U.S.C. and movements of ''A Cycle of Sonnets'' (1967) carry the initials of two others. His step-son, Anthony Linick, only learned of his homosexuality in a letter of condolence the step-son received upon Dahl's death. He assessed the relationship between Dahl's private and public sides in these words:

His social life and his compositions never seemed to acquire that ease of communication that sustain many gifted creators, those titans whose ability to tap into the well-springs of their being allow them to produce a copious and enviable body of artistic endeavor. Ingolf labored under levels of repression that were antithetical to such a process. He did not choose to be who he was, nor did he choose to make his true self available to the wider world. He lived and died without the luxury of candor.

Later recognition

Dahl's music has been recorded on the Boston Records, Capstone, Centaur, Chandos Records, CRI, Crystal, , MKH Medien Kontor Hamburg, Nimbus, and Summit labels. Among Dahl's students are the American conductors

, Lawrence Christianson, William Hall, William Dehning, Frank A. Salazar, the pianist William Teaford, and the composers

Morten Lauridsen Morten Johannes Lauridsen (born February 27, 1943) is an American composer. A National Medal of Arts recipient (2007), he was composer-in-residence of the Los Angeles Master Chorale from 1994 to 2001, and is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus ...

, Williametta Spencer, Norma Wendelburg, and

Lawrence Moss Lawrence Kenneth Moss (November 18, 1927 – June 24, 2022) was an Americans, American composer of contemporary classical music. He was born in Los Angeles. He held a B.A. degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. from the Eas ...

. Tilson Thomas assessed him this way: "Dahl was an inspiring teacher; over and above the subject matter, he showed his students about the practical value of humanism. That is, how to let humanistic concerns infuse your daily existence." The Music Library of the University of Southern California (USC) holds the Ingolf Dahl Archive. It includes scores, manuscripts, papers, and tapes. Dahl also kept a diary in annual volumes from 1928 until his death in 1970. In 2012 his stepson, Anthony Linick, who wrote an extensive biography of Ingolf, donated these to USC. The West Coast chapters of the

American Musicological Society The American Musicological Society (AMS) is a musicological organization which researches, promotes and produces publications on music. Founded in 1934, the AMS was begun by leading American musicologists of the time, and was crucial in legitim ...

present the Ingolf Dahl Memorial Award in Musicology annually. Recently there has been a revival of interest in the history of the Marcus–Dahl family, its flight from Hamburg, and the cultural contributions of Ingolf Dahl and his brother, the sculptor Gert Marcus. In 2017 residents of Groß Borstel founded a new society, "Initiative Marcus und Dahl", with the goal of reviving interest in the work of Gert Marcus and Ingolf Dahl as well as other artists living or working, or having lived or worked, in Gross-Borstel. "Initiative Marcus und Dahl" has been responsible for a number of projects. Among these one can cite the production of a new CD in 2018 of Ingolf Dahl's chamber music – ''Intervals'' – under the direction of Volker Ahmels. In 2019, Melina Paetzold produced a German language biography of Ingolf Dahl.

List of works (partial)

*''Allegro and Arioso'' (1943, woodwind quintet) *''Aria Sinfonica'' (1965, revised 1968, orchestra, 4 movements) *''Cello Duo'', aka ''Duo'' (1946, revised 1949, 1959, and 1969, cello and piano) *''Concerto a Tre'' (1947, violin, cello, and clarinet); premiered by Benny Goodman, clarinet, with Eudice Shapiro, violin, and Victor Gottlieb, cello *''A Cycle of Sonnets'' (1968, baritone and piano) *''Divertimento for Viola and Piano'', aka ''Viola Divertimento'' (1948) *''Duettino Concertante'' (1966, flute and percussion) *''Elegy Concerto'' (1970, violin and chamber orchestra) *''Five Duets'' (1970, two clarinets) *''Hymn and Toccata for Solo Piano'', later ''Hymn'' (1947, solo piano, 2 movements, later each movement performed alone) *''

I.M.C. The Institute of Consolata Missionaries ( la, Institutum Missionum a Consolata), commonly called the Consolata Missionaries is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of Pontifical Right for men. Its members add the nominal I.M.C. after their n ...

Fanfare'' (1973, three trumpets and three trombones) *''Intervals'' aka ''Four Intervals'' (1967, fourth movement added 1969, string orchestra; later piano four hands) *''Little Canonic Suite'' (1969, violin and viola) *''Music for Brass Instruments'', aka ''Brass Quintet'' (1944, two trumpets, horn, two trombones, and optional tuba) *''A Noiseless Patient Spider'' (1970, women's chorus and piano) *''Notturno'' (1953, a movement excerpted from ''Cello Duo'', cello and piano) *Piano Quartet (1957, revised 1959, 1961, string trio and piano) *''Quodlibet on American Folktunes: The Fancy Blue Devil's Breakdown'' (1953, two pianos, eight hands; 1966, version for orchestra) *Saxophone Concerto (1948, alto saxophone and concert band; 1959, revised for alto saxophone and wind ensemble) *Serenade for Four Flutes (1960) *Sinfonietta for Concert Band (1961) *Sonata da Camera (1970, clarinet and piano) *''Sonata Pastorale'' (1959, piano solo) *''Sonata Seria'' (1953, revised 1962, piano solo) *Symphony Concertante (1952, later revised, two clarinets and orchestra) *''Three Songs to Poems by '' (1933, soprano and piano) *''The Tower of Saint Barbara: A Symphonic Legend in Four Parts'' (1955, revised 1960, orchestra, 4 movements, ballet) *''Trio'' (1962, piano, violin, cello) *''Variations on a French Folk Tune'' (1935, flute and piano) *''Variations on a Swedish Folk Tune'' (1945, solo flute; 1970, revised for flute and alto flute) *''Variations on an Air by Couperin'' (alto recorder and harpsichord or flute and piano)Premiered at Tanglewood in 1956 by

Doriot Anthony Dwyer Doriot Anthony Dwyer (; March 6, 1922 – March 14, 2020) was an American flutist. She was one of the first women to be awarded principal chair for a major U.S. orchestra (following hornist Helen Kotas, who was appointed principal horn of the C ...

. Dahl first heard the Couperin melody played by Bill Colvig on a hiking trip the year before. Linick, 276–277, 297, 582

Written works

* "Notes on Cartoon Music" in Mervyn Cooke, ed., ''The Hollywood Film Music Reader'' (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Notes

Sources

* * Anthony Linick, ''The Lives of Ingolf Dahl'' (Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2008) * *