Harold Blumenfeld


Murray Harold Blumenfeld was an American classical composer. He wrote over thirty musical compositions. He was also a conductor, a music critic, and an educator, having taught in the Washington University Music Department for almost thirty years.

Biography

Blumenfeld was born in Seattle, Washington, to Herman and Margaret "Peg" Blumenfeld. He was the eldest of three children. His family traveled widely, especially during the Depression, when his father sought work in retail. Near the end of his high school years, the family settled in St. Louis. Blumenfeld was educated at the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Bernard Rogers, but his studies there were interrupted by World War II. He later earned the Bachelor of Music degree at Yale University in 1948 and the Master of Music in 1949. His primary mentor at Yale was Paul Hindemith. He studied at the University of Zurich in 1948. During the summers of 1949-52 he attended Tanglewood Music Center, where he trained as a conductor with Robert Shaw, Leonard Bernstein, and Boris Goldovsky.
Blumenfeld was director of Opera Theater in St. Louis from 1962 to 1966. He directed Washington University Opera Studio from 1960 to 1971.
One of his students at Washington University was African American composer John Elwood Price.

Works and bibliography

Musical compositions

Songs and song cycles

Prose