Jaromír Weinberger

Jaromír Weinberger (8 January 1896 – August 8, 1967) was a Bohemian-born Jewish subject of the Austrian Empire, who became a naturalized American composer. Biography Weinberger was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary, into a family of Jewish origin. He heard Czech folksongs from time spent at his grandparents’ farm as a youth. He started playing the piano aged 5, and composing and conducting aged 10. He began musical studies with Jaroslav Křička, and later teachers included Václav Talich and Rudolf Karel. Between 1922 and 1926 he was professor of composition at the Ithaca Conservatory (now the music school of Ithaca College), New York. When he returned to Czechoslovakia he was appointed director of the National Theater in Bratislava, and later received appointments in Eger, Hungary, and Prague. In 1926 Weinberger completed Schwanda the Bagpiper (Švanda Dudák), which became highly successful, with thousands of performances in hundreds of theatres including the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. In later life, he developed cancer of the brain. This, together with money worries and the neglect of his music, prompted him to take a lethal sedative overdose in August 1967. His wife, Jane