Background
Weinberg was born in Odessa, Ukraine, to Dora and Wolf Weinberg, a middle-class family. His father was a merchant and his uncle was Peter Weinberg, a prominent translator of Shakespeare and Heine into Russian.
Weinberg was born in Odessa, Ukraine, to Dora and Wolf Weinberg, a middle-class family. His father was a merchant and his uncle was Peter Weinberg, a prominent translator of Shakespeare and Heine into Russian.
Jacob completed law school at Moscow University, but he never practiced, preferring his piano studies. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory of Music under many prominent teachers and studied composition for a year in Vienna, under Sergei Taneyev.
He was one of the founders of the Jewish National Conservatory in Jerusalem before immigrating to the United States. where he became "an influential voice in the promotion of American Jewish music" from the 1940s until his death. Weinberg toured Russia as a pianist and also toured with Emil Rosenoff in their two-piano concerts from 1912-1916. He adapted Rachmaninoff"s works to create a two-piano piece he called Rachmaniana.
lieutenant was published and performed by Weinberg and Rosenoff.
He was also very interested in preserving the unique melodies and music scales of Jewish religious and secular folk tunes. When the Saint St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music was formed in 1908 by Joel Engel, Lazare Saminsky, and others, Jacob Weinberg and his Moscow-based peers formed the Moscow branch of this society.
Then he returned to Odessa, where he taught at the Odessa Conservatory of Music. There he composed the first Hebrew opera, The Pioneers (Hechalutz).
There was a performance in Jerusalem in April, 1925.
With the prize money of $1500, he took his family to New New York Weinberg produced concert versions of his opera The Pioneers at Carnegie Hall in 1941 and 1947, and at the Mecca Temple (now New York City Center) in the 1930s. In addition, there was a performance in Berlin, Germany in the 1930s, by the Kulturbund, the soprano Mascha Benya in one of the leading roles.
lieutenant was performed in a synagogue since the Nazis, coming to power, banned Jewish works, even masterpieces, from being performed in a proper concert hall.
His many other works include religious Jewish works. He set the Sabbath service to music in several versions.
These works are still performed at Temple Emanu-el, a prominent Reform synagogue in Manhattan. He also composed many non-religious works.
He was very interested in Lincoln"s Gettysburg Address and set it to music for a chorus and in three other non-singing versions.
Aaron Copland attended one of the Lincoln concerts prior to composing his own Lincoln Portrait. He joined the music faculty of the New York College of Music in 1929 where he taught for many years and later joined the faculty at Hunter College. Weinberg died of lung disease in New York on November 2, 1956 at the age of 77.