Werner Eric
Werner Eric
Werner Eric Austrian-American musicologist; b. Lundenberg, near Vienna, Aug. 1,1901; d. N.Y., July 28, 1988. He studied composition with Kornauth in Vienna and with Schrecker and Busoni in Berlin, and also took courses at the univs. of Graz, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Göttingen, and Strasbourg, receiving his Ph.D. in 1928 from the Univ. of Strasbourg. He held teaching positions at the Saarbrücken Cons. (1926-33) and the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary (1935-38). In 1938 he went to the U.S. He was a prof. at the Hebrew Union Coll. (later merged with the Jewish Inst. of Religion in N.Y.) in Cincinnati (1939-67), then chairman of the musicology dept. at the Univ. of Tel Aviv (1967-72). He was an authority on Jewish and early Christian music.
Writings
In the Choir Loft: A Manual for Organists and Choir Directors in American Synagogues (N.Y., 1957); The Sacred Bridge: Liturgical Parallels in Synagogue and Early Church (2 vols., N.Y., 1959,1984); Hebrew Music (Cologne, 1961); From Generation to Generation: Studies on Jewish Musical Tradition (N.Y., 1962); Mendelssohn: A New Image of the Composer and His Age (N.Y., 1963); A Voice Still Heard: The Sacred Songs of the Ashkenazic Jews (Philadelphia, 1976).
Bibliography
J. Cohen, Bibliography of the Publications ofE. W.(Tel Aviv, 1968).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire