Ingolf Dahl | |
|---|---|
 Dahlc. 1968 | |
| Born | June 9, 1912 |
| Died | August 6, 1970(1970-08-06) (aged 58) Frutigen, Switzerland |
| Occupation(s) | Classical composer, pianist, conductor, educator |
Ingolf Dahl (June 9, 1912 – August 6, 1970) was a German-born Americancomposer, pianist, conductor, and educator.
Dahl was bornWalter Ingolf Marcus[1] inHamburg, Germany, to aGerman 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 thePrince Eugen Medal), and Holger, and one sister, Anna-Britta.[2]
In Hamburg, Dahl studied piano underEdith Weiss-Mann, a harpsichordist, pianist, and a proponent ofearly music. Dahl studied withPhilipp Jarnach at theHochschule für Musik Köln (1930–32). Dahl left Germany as theNazi Party wascoming to power and continued his studies at theUniversity of Zurich, along withVolkmar Andreae andWalter Frey [de;es;fi;pl;ru]. Living with relatives and working at theZürich Opera 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 ofAlban Berg'sLulu andPaul Hindemith'sMathis der Maler.[1]
SinceSwitzerland became increasingly hostile towardsJewish refugees (includingpeople 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.[3] 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 hisJewish heritage (Marcus being a recognizablyJewish surname). He claimed to have emigrated a year earlier than he actually had.[4][5] He settled in Los Angeles and joined the community of expatriate musicians that includedErnst Krenek,Darius Milhaud,Arnold Schoenberg,Igor Stravinsky, andErnst Toch. 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'sPierrot lunaire in English and translated, either alone or with a collaborator, such works as Stravinsky'sPoetics of Music.[6] He performed many of Stravinsky's works and the composer was impressed enough to contract Dahl to create a two-piano version of hisDanses concertantes and program notes for other works. In 1947, withJoseph Szigeti he produced a reconstruction of Bach's Violin Concerto in D minor.[clarification needed][7]
He also worked in the entertainment industry, touring as pianist toEdgar Bergen and his puppets in 1941 and later for comedianGracie Fields in 1942 and 1956.[8] He produced musical arrangements forTommy Dorsey and served as arranger/conductor toVictor Borge. He gave private lessons in the classical repertoire toBenny Goodman as well.[9] He performed on keyboard instruments in the soundtrack orchestras for many films at Fox,Goldwyn Studios,Columbia,Universal,MGM, andWarner Bros., as well as the post-production companyTodd-AO. He also worked on the television showThe Twilight Zone.[10] Though grateful for the income this work provided, he complained while working onSpartacus 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.[11] Dahl conducted the soundtrack toThe Abductors (1957) by his pupilPaul Glass[12] and performed both second and third movements ofBeethoven'sPathétique Sonata in the 1969 animated filmA Boy Named Charlie Brown.[13]
Among his compositions, the most frequently performed is the Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Orchestra commissioned and premiered bySigurd Raschèr in 1949. The piece went through several major revisions and re-scorings during Dahl's lifetime, but the original version was restored byPaul Cohen and recorded in 2021.[14] Dahl later completed commissions for theLos Angeles Philharmonic and theKoussevitzky andFromm foundations.[15] His final work, complete and partlyorchestrated at his death in 1970, was theElegy Concerto for violin and chamber orchestra.[16] In 1999, one critic reviewing a recording of Dahl's works called him a "spiffy composer", "a cross between Stravinsky and Hindemith".[17]
He legally changed his name to Ingolf Dahl in February 1943[18] and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in September of that year.[19] In 1945 he joined the faculty of theUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThornton School of Music in Los Angeles, where he taught for the rest of his life. In 1952 he was appointed the first head of theTanglewood Study Group, a program that targeted not professionals but "the intelligent amateur and music enthusiast, also the general music student and music educator".[20] His most prominent students included the conductorMichael Tilson Thomas and the composersHarold Budd andDavid Cope.[21] In 1957 he co-directed theOjai Music Festival in partnership withAaron Copland and served as its music director from 1964 to 1966.
Among Dahl's honors were aGuggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 1951,[22] two Huntington Hartford Fellowships, an Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Southern California, theASCAP Stravinsky Award, and a grant from theNational Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954.[23]
He died inFrutigen, Switzerland, on August 6, 1970, just a few weeks after the death of his wife on June 10.[24]
From his teenage years, Dahl was initiallybisexual, but from then onward, "his preference and partiality...remained with men".[25] He had his first homosexual experiences at the age of 16 with the painterEduard Bargheer.[25] 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.[26] 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.[27][28] He maintained an intimate, though never exclusive, relationship for the last fifteen years of his life withBill Colvig, whom he met on aSierra Club hiking trip.[29]
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.[30]and movements ofA Cycle of Sonnets (1967) carry the initials of two others.[31][32]
His step-son,Anthony Linick, only learned of his homosexuality in a letter of condolence the step-son received upon Dahl's death.[33] He assessed the relationship between Dahl's private and public sides in these words:[34]
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.
Dahl's music has been recorded on the Boston Records, Capstone, Centaur,Chandos Records, CRI, Crystal,Klavier Music Productions [nl], MKH Medien Kontor Hamburg, Nimbus, and Summit labels.
Among Dahl's students are the American conductorsMichael Tilson Thomas, Lawrence Christianson, William Hall,William Dehning, Frank A. Salazar, the pianist William Teaford, and the composersMorten Lauridsen,Williametta Spencer,Norma Wendelburg, andLawrence Moss. 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."[35]
The Music Library of the University of Southern California (USC) holds the Ingolf Dahl Archive. It includes scores, manuscripts, papers, and tapes.[36] 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.[37]
The West Coast chapters of theAmerican Musicological Society present the Ingolf Dahl Memorial Award in Musicology annually.[38]
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 sculptorGert Marcus. In 2017 residents ofGroß 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.[39] "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.[40]
