Ernst Levy, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Ernst Levy

Swiss composer and conductor (1895-1981)

Date of Birth: 18-Nov-1895

Place of Birth: Basel, Basel-Stadt, Switzerland

Date of Death: 19-Apr-1981

Profession: composer, conductor, pianist, musicologist

Nationality: Switzerland

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio

Ernst Levy (born Basel, Switzerland 18 November 1895, died Morges, Switzerland 19 April 1981) was a Swiss musicologist, composer, pianist and conductor. He studied with Egon Petri and Raoul Pugno.
David Dubal describes him as an "unusual and powerful pianist" who made "grandly conceived" recordings of the late Beethoven sonatas and captured "the very essence of the Faustian Liszt".
His work as a musicologist and teacher brought him to the United States, where he taught at colleges including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago and the New England Conservatory; he also became a United States citizen.
In 1966 he retired from academia and returned to his native Switzerland where he spent the remainder of his life. Levy's book A Theory of Harmony was published in 1985 and, among other modern compositional concepts, describes the composer's concept of harmonic "undertones". Levy's son is composer and cellist Frank Ezra Levy (1930-2017).