(b. Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh, Cairo, 4 March 1921)
Composer, ethnomusicologist, and educator Halim El-Dabh is internationally
recognized as Egypt's most important living composer of classical music.
His numerous musical and dramatic works have been performed in Egypt, Sudan,
Ethiopia, Israel, Nigeria, Japan, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Mexico, the
United States, Canada, and throughout Europe. Among his compositions
are eleven operas, four symphonies, numerous ballets, concertos, and orchestral
pieces, works for band and chorus, film scores, incidental music for plays,
chamber and electronic works, and works for various combinations of African,
Asian, and Western instruments. His ethnomusicological researches,
conducted on several continents, have led to unique creative syntheses in
his works, which, while utilizing contemporary compositional techniques and
new systems of notation, are frequently imbued with Near Eastern, African,
or even Ancient Egyptian aesthetics.
Born into a musical family in Cairo on March 4, 1921, El-Dabh learned piano
and derabucca (Egyptian drum) from his brothers, and began composing music
at an early age. Although trained for a career as an agricultural engineer,
his musical talent and immersion in Egypt's cosmopolitan musical life (including
village drumming, local festivals, and the jazz clubs of Alexandria) increasingly
led him toward a life in music. In 1942, he entered the Egyptian Opera
House's music competition, winning first prize in both the composition and
piano categories. In 1944, the Egyptian Radio's broadcast of his composition
Homage to Mohammed Ali-El-Kabir brought El-Dabh's music to the attention
of both the Egyptian listening public as well as the royal family.
In 1946, he composed the score for the Hussein Helmy film Azhar wa Ashwaq,
and he continued writing works for various instrumental combinations.
In February 1949, El-Dabh's performance of his piano composition It is
Dark and Damp on the Front at the Music Center of the All Saints Cathedral
in Cairo created a sensation, and marked a turning point in the young composer's
career. Literally overnight, he was being referred to as a “world famous
composer” by the press. Realizing that he could no longer resist the
pull of music in his life, El-Dabh (to the dismay of his family) quit his
lucrative job at the agriculture firm and began to pursue music as a full-time
career. In the spring of 1949, his performance at the Oriental Hall
of the American University in Cairo attracted the attention of the the U.S.
cultural attaché, who encouraged him to apply for a Fulbright grant
to study music in the United States. El-Dabh was one of only seven
Egyptians (out of 500 applicants) to receive this grant.
Coming to the United States in the summer of 1950 (and later acquiring U.S.
citizenship), El-Dabh traveled to the Aspen Music Center in Colorado, where
he met composer Igor Stravinsky. After studies of Native American music
in the American Southwest, he began studies with the American composers Aaron
Copland and Irving Fine at the Berkshire Music Center in Massachusetts.
Later, in New York's vibrant musical scene, he developed close associations
with such prominent composers as Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Henry
Cowell, John Cage, Alan Hovhaness, Leonard Bernstein, Edgard Varèse,
Ernst Krenek, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Lukas Foss.
By now a well known composer in his own right, in 1959, El-Dabh played the
solo part in the premiere of his Fantasia-Tahmeel (a concerto for
derabucca and string orchestra), with the American Symphony Orchestra under
the direction of the legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski. He also
worked closely with the renowned American choreographer Martha Graham, composing
four ballets for her, including the opera-ballet Clytemnestra (1958),
which remained in the Graham repertoire for decades. His orchestral/choral
score for Sound and Lights of the Pyramids of Giza, composed in 1960
at the request of Gamal-Abdel Nasser and first presented in 1961, continues
to be performed daily at the site of the Great Pyramid. His Opera
Flies (1971) is the only opera to have been composed on the theme of
the Kent State tragedy of May 1970.
In his works, El-Dabh frequently draws on the deep wellspring of his Egyptian
heritage, as in his works Mekta' in the Art of Kita' (1955), Kleopatra
(One More Gaudy Night) (1961), The Eye of Horus (1967), Ptahmose
and the Magic Spell (1972), Ramesses the Great (Symphony no. 9)
(1987), and many others. He has created his own systems of notation
for the derabucca, and has revived interest in ancient Egyptian forms of
musical notation. His ethnomusicological research has taken him to
all corners of Egypt, as well as to Ethiopia (where he was employed by Emperor
Haile Selassie I from 1962 through 1964, and formed the Orchestra Ethiopia,
the first ever pan-Ethiopian traditional instrument orchestra) and many other
African nations. Many of his works from the 1960s on are heavily influenced
by West African traditional musics, such as Black Epic (1968) and
Kyrie for the Bishop of Ghana (1968). El-Dabh is also considered
an expert on the subject of traditional Egyptian and African puppetry.
From 1974 through 1981, El-Dabh served as a cultural and ethnomusicological
consultant to the Smithsonian Institution's Folklife Program.
Also a pioneer in the field of electronic music, El-Dabh began early sonic
experiments with wire recorders at the Middle East Radio Station of Cairo
in 1944. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he was invited to work at
the famed Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York, where he
created a number of significant works, such as Leiyla and the Poet
(1959-60), which are today considered classics of the electronic music genre.
A compact disc recording of many of these pioneering electronic works, entitled
Crossing Into the Electric Magnetic, was released in November 2001
by Without Fear Recordings, and is receiving favorable reviews from around
the world.
El-Dabh's recent works include the ballet score In the Valley of the Nile
(1999), composed for the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Company; the piano concerto
Surrr-Rah (2000), composed for pianist Tuyen Tonnu; and Ogún
(2001), for soprano and chamber ensemble. His most recent project,
the large-scale opera/theater piece Blue Sky Transmission: A Tibetan
Book of the Dead, was presented in September 2002 at the Cleveland Public
Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio and in December 2002 at La MaMa ETC in New York.
El-Dabh has served on the faculty of Kent State University's Hugh A. Glauser
School of Music since 1969, and has also taught at Haile Selassie University
in Ethiopia, Kinshasa University in Zaire (Congo), and Howard University
in Washington, D.C. He is one of only eight Kent State University faculty
members to hold the title of University Professor, Kent State's highest faculty
distinction, and is a recipient of Kent State's Distinguished Teaching Award
(1988). Retiring in 1991, Emeritus Professor El-Dabh continues to teach
and compose prolifically for all media, in addition to conducting workshops
for children. Presently, El-Dabh is an adjunct professor at Kent State
University's Department of Pan-African Studies, where he teaches a course
entitled African Cultural Expression. In this course, students are
immersed in and participate in a holistic experience of music, art, song,
dance, and drama as it is found in the environment of a pristine African
village (which El-Dabh experienced during his years of living in villages
while traveling throughout Africa). In the year 2001, the composer
celebrated his eightieth birthday with a festival of his music, which included
more than 15 concerts and lectures, both in the United States and around
the world. In August 2001, he was the guest of honor at a symposium
on African music at Cambridge University in England. In March 2002
he was invited to celebrate his eighty-first birthday with a series of four
concerts of his compositions at the recently reconstructed Bibliotheca Alexandrina
(Library of Alexandria) in Alexandria, Egypt, the first ever such concert
series ever held in the composer's native country.
Halim El-Dabh is featured in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera,
Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, The Harvard Biographical Dictionary
of Music, International Dictionary of Black Composers, The Garland Encyclopedia
of World Music, International Who's Who in Music, and Who's Who in American
Music, and his work is discussed in books by Akin Euba, Adel Kamel, and Gardner
Read. El-Dabh's biography, recently completed by Kent State University
professor Denise Seachrist, will be published (in both English and Arabic)
by the Kent State University Press in April 2003.
Halim El-Dabh's music is published by C. F. Peters, and his works have been
recorded by the Columbia, Folkways, Egyptian Ministry of Culture and National
Guidance, Auricular, Pointless Music, Luna Bisonte, Zentrum für Kunst
und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, NCG, Without Fear, Tedium House (Bananafish),
and Innova labels.
El-Dabh holds degrees from Cairo University, the New England Conservatory
of Music, and Brandeis University. He served as a consultant to the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. from 1974 to 1981. His
numerous grants and awards include two Guggenheim Fellowships (1959-60 and
1961-62), two Fulbright Fellowships (1950 and 1967), two Rockefeller Fellowships
(1961 and 2001), the Cleveland Arts Prize (1990), a Meet-the-Composer grant
(1999), and an Ohio Arts Council grant (2000). In May 2001 he received
an honorary Ph.D. degree from Kent State University.
-- David Badagnani
Halim El-Dabh works
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