Vally Weigl

Vally Weigl (11 September 1894 – 25 December 1982) was an Austrian-American composer and music therapist. Biography Valerie Weigl (née Pick) was born in Vienna, Austria. She was the first daughter of a Jewish couple, lawyer Josef Pick (1849, Náchod – 1926, Vienna) and his wife Charlotte “Lotte”, née Rubinstein (1871, Galați – 1939, Vienna). Her younger sister was an Austrian economist, women’s rights activist, journalist and politician Käthe Leichter. Vally took piano lessons in childhood and studied musicology at Vienna University. She studied piano under Richard Robert, composition under Karl Weigl and musicology under Guido Adler. Vally married Karl Weigl in 1921, and after the National Socialists took power in Austria in 1938, the couple emigrated with their son to the U.S. with assistance from the Quaker Society of Friends. In New York, Weigl worked as a music teacher and composer, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts allowed her to compose and record Nature’s Moods, New England Suite, and four song cycles. After receiving a master’s degree at Columbia University, she also worked as a music therapist and became chief medical therapist at New York Medical Colleg