The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh

Book excerpt: Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh has studied with the giants of 20th-century musical composition and conducting, including Leopold Stokowski, Irving Fine, and Leonard Bernstein. In the late 1950s El-Dabh worked with electronic music pioneers Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. He was commissioned by choreographer and modern dance innovator Martha Graham to write the music for Clytemnestra and Lucifer. Although this biography focuses on his career from his arrival in the US in 1950 to his retirement from the faculty of Kent State University in 1991, his life in Egypt, its influence on him musically, and his creative life after retirement is also covered. In March 2002 El-Dabh presented a concert of his electronic and electro-acoustic works and three concerts of his orchestral chamber music in collaboration with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina String Orchestra at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the famous Library of Alexandria of antiquity). The accompanying CD features excerpts of this programme.