Halim El-Dabh

Composer, ethnomusicologist, and educator Halim El-Dabh is internationally recognized as Egypt's most important 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, led to unique creative syntheses in his works, which, while utilizing contemporary compositional techniques and new systems of notation, were 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 1958, 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.

El-Dabh frequently drew 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 created his own systems of notation for the derabucca, and revived interest in ancient Egyptian forms of musical notation. His ethnomusicological research took 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 were heavily influenced by West African traditional music. 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 later 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. 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 served on the faculty of Kent State University's Hugh A. Glauser School of Music from 1969 to 1991, and also taught at Haile Selassie University in Ethiopia, Kinshasa University in Zaire (Congo), and Howard University in Washington, D.C. He was one of only eight Kent State University faculty members to hold the title of University Professor, Kent State's highest faculty distinction, and was a recipient of Kent State's Distinguished Teaching Award (1988).

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.

El-Dabh held 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.

biography: David Badagnani