August 5, 1995
Composer Menachem Avidom dies at age 87.
He was born January 6, 1908, in Stanislav, Russia. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1925. A cousin of famed composer Gustav Mahler, he studied music and composition at the American University of Beirut and the Paris Conservatoire. After completing his studies, Avidom taught music at the Tel Aviv Teacher Training College and the Tel Aviv Conservatory. He also worked as a music critic. His time studying in Beirut, combined with a four-year stint in Egypt, later led him to look beyond European approaches to musical theory and composition.
Avidom began to work with “atonal” modes and in 1939 wrote musical arrangements for Yemeni Jewish singer Bracha Zefira. These arrangements sparked his interest in the fusion of Middle Eastern and European music theories, and in 1944 he began to write a series of pieces in the new style that defined the rest of his career as a composer. His compositions helped lay the groundwork for future Mizrahi and Sephardi musicians in Israel. The pieces of this era included “Flute Concerto” in 1944; Symphony No. 1, “Amamit” (Folk Symphony), in 1945; and Symphony No. 3, “Yam ha’Tichonit” (Mediterranean Symphony), in 1951.
In addition to his innovative work as a composer, Avidom served as the general secretary of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra from 1946 to 1952, an adviser on the arts to the Ministry of Tourism from 1952 to 1955, chairman of the Israeli Composers’ League from 1958 to 1971, and general director of ACUM, the Israeli Performing Arts Society, from 1955 to 1980. He received the Israel Prize for music in 1961.
