Elkus, Albert I. (Albert Israel), 1884-1962

Composed 1922. First performance by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco, February 9, 1923, Alfred Hertz conducting.--Cf. Fleisher Collection.

Teacher, pianist, and composer, Elkus was on the faculty of the Music Department of the University of California, Berkeley, from 1931 to 1959, and was chairman of the department from 1937 to 1951. It was under the chairmanship of Elkus that the Music Department rose to world prominence. He also taught at San Francisco Conservatory, Dominican College of San Rafael, and Mills College of Oakland, California.

Albert Israel Elkus (1884-1962) was a pianist, composer, conductor, and educator. He served as Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley, 1935-1951.

Biography

Albert Israel Elkus came from a family outstanding in the musical, commercial, and public life of Sacramento. His mother, Bertha Kahn Elkus, was a distinguished pianist and patroness of music; his father, Albert Elkus, was a prominent businessman and several times mayor of the city.

Professor Elkus was born in Sacramento on April 30, 1884, and began there in 1896 his career as pianist and composer. His teachers were first his mother, then Hugo Mansfeldt and Oscar Weil in San Francisco, Harold Bauer in Paris, Hugo Kahn, Joseph Lhevinne,and Georg Schumann in Berlin, Carl Prohaska and Robert Fuchs in Vienna. He was a graduate of the University of California, receiving the degrees Bachelor of Letters in 1906 and Master of Letters of 1907.

From 1916 to 1928 he was conductor of choral societies in Sacramento and San Francisco, and in 1923 he began the long series of academic associations that were to continue until his death in Oakland on February 19, 1962. He was head of the Theory Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1923 to 1925, and again from 1930 to 1937; Teacher of Music Theory and Composition at Dominican College, San Rafael, from 1924 to 1931; Lecturer in Music at Mills College from 1929 to 1933, and from 1933 to 1944 Instructor in Piano there; Lecturer at Stanford University in the summer of 1933.

Professor Elkus joined the faculty of the University of California in 1931 as Lecturer in Music, becoming Conductor of the University Symphony Orchestra in 1934. In 1935 he was appointed Professor of Music and in 1937, Chairman of the Department, in which post he continued until his retirement in 1951, a tenure of fourteen years.

For Professor Elkus it was a period of intense concentration and activity, during which he gave his energy to the realization of his own vision of a university music department, a vision larger in its scope than perhaps he himself realized.

During the decades immediately preceding this period, the position of the arts in American universities had become perceptibly ambiguous, with the creative aspects of the arts under considerable pressure from the more obviously and enticingly academic historical studies. The University of California became deeply involved in this issue and took a lead in resolving it. Professor Elkus aligned himself firmly with those bent on demonstrating that all aspects of an art are academically compatible and, indeed, mutually fructifying.

But, although his voice was strong in administrative councils of the University, Professor Elkus was not content to establish his point of view by argument alone. Within the Department of Music he secured the appointment of a series of men of international renown, but of very different casts of mind: Randall Thompson, Arthus Bliss, Manfred Bukofzer, Ernest Bloch, Roger Sessions . He encouraged younger colleagues to broaden their interests at the same time they cultivated their specialties. And he strove constantly toward an ideal curriculum that would offer not only maximum value to the students but also maximum opportunity to the faculty. So it was that a historian might teach a course in musical theory and a composer a course in history, For Professor Elkus believed implicitly in the value of the contribution that the one might make in the field of the other.

While beset with the increasing administrative burden in a rapidly expanding department, Professor Elkus continued as long as possible his activity as a performer and teacher. He reluctantly gave up the conductorship of the University Symphony Orchestra in 1946, after twelve years in which he had established his view of the threefold responsibility of such an organization: to the players, for the experience of great works in the mainstream of musical development; to the department, for works newly composed; and to the musical public for works they might otherwise not hear.

In Music 27, which he taught from 1938 to 1950, Professor Elkus presented to thousands of general students his own mature and balanced view of the art of music. In his later years, in places remote from Berkeley, people would approach him, identify themselves as former students, and express their gratitude for his instruction.

In 1951, reaching the University retirement age, Professor Elkus became Emeritus, and he immediately assumed the directorship of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a post he held for six years. He retired in 1957. Accepting the invitation of the Department of Music, he returned to active service on a part-time basis, and in the fall of 1958, in his seventy-fifth year, taught a course in counterpoint, a discipline in which he had taken abiding delight since his student days, and in which he has masterly skill.

On Charter Day, March 20, 1959, during ceremonies inaugurating Glenn T. Seaborg as Chancellor of the Berkeley campus, a grateful University conferred on him the honorary degree, Doctor of Laws.

Until his death, Professor Elkus continued to teach piano at the Conservatory and to lecture in University Extension.

During his whole professional life, Professor Elkus was active in the musical milieu of San Francisco and contributed greatly to forming it. He was from 1933 a member of the Board of Governors of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and served on an enormous variety of governing boards, executive boards, and advisory and administrative committees at all levels--campus, regional, state, and national. His friends in San Francisco were legion, and the confidence inspired by his presence on the Berkeley campus resulted in generous gifts to music at the University of California.

Professor Elkus was a commanding and beloved figure in the musical world of two continents. During his life a constant procession of young musicians sought him out for help and counsel, which they received from an open and untiring hand.

Professor Elkus came out of the Romantic Period of music, and remained deeply devoted to the music of that period. His gods were Beethoven, whose creative processes he studies throughout his life; Wagner; Chopin; Verdi; and Brahms. But he also had great love for the music of the Renaissance and Baroque composers and took a vigorous part in furthering the music of his own time. Whatever form his musical activity, as composer, performer, or teacher, he sought beauty as he understood it, and his understanding was neither restricted by shibboleths of idiom nor clouded by fad.

As a performer, whether pianist of conductor, he was a true poet, equally at home in concepts of grandeur, delicacy, or drama. Even after the demands of administration had made regular practice impossible, his skill as a pianist was such that he made the most casual classroom illustration an arresting experience and a brilliantly lighted glimpse into his musical world.

He virtually ceased to compose after he became Chairman of the Department of Music, channeling his creative energy into the tasks at hand. Of his works one, Impressions from a Greek Tragedy, received the Juilliard Award in 1935 and his found a place in the repertory of many orchestras throughout the world.

Professor Elkus is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Britton Elkus, whom he married in 1929, and two sons, Jonathan Britton Elkus and Benedict Britton Elkus .

Professor Elkus had a warm, generous nature, and a natural grace in all his human relationships. It would be hard to separate in his countless students the influence of the man from the influence of the musician and artist. A loyal and devoted friend, he evoked loyalty and devotion in his friendships. In a very real sense he survives in every student he taught, every colleague he worked with, and every friend he made, for there is not of them who has not been in some degree changed as a result of the association.

A paragraph from his official correspondence as Chairman of the Department of Music gives a quick insight into his whole personality, for it reveals him as he affirms ingratiatingly his secure faith in the intellectual dignity of the artistic processes:

I venture to emphasize a point of view of performance which, it seems to me, you have not estimated at its proper value--a serious and adequate production of a major work of musical literature involves certain professional techniques only as a means to an end. The end is highly creative, for the translation of a complex score (the notation of which is laid out with the care of an architectural plan) into sound involves an analytic and critical study of the work in relation to its character, time and period. Such interpretations of major works are properly to be considered as essays in criticism.

Taken from University of California, "In Memoriam," April 1963

Biography

Elkus, Albert Israel (b Sacramento, CA, 30 April 1884; d,Oakland, CA 19 Feb 1962). Teacher, pianist, and composer. He received early training from his mother, Bertha Kahn Elkus, and then studied piano with Hugo Mansfeldt in Sacramento and San Francisco from about 1894 to 1906 and attended the University of California, Berkeley (BLitt 1906, MLitt 1907). A gifted pianist, he gave many public recitals during this period throughout northern California, particularly with the Saturday Club of Sacramento. In 1907-1908 he studied theory and composition with Hugo Kaun in Berlin, and on his return to the Bay area in 1909, with Oscar Weil. He again went abroad for three years (1912-1914) and studied privately with Harold Bauer (piano) in Paris, Josef Lhivinne (piano) and Georg Schumann (composition) in Berlin, and Robert Fuchs (composition), Karl Prohaska (counterpoint and composition), and Franz Schalk (conducting) in Vienna. In 1915 he joined the faculty of the Jenkins School of Music in Oakland, and he went on to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory (1923-1925, 1930-1937), returning as director from 1951 to 1957. He also taught at Dominican College, San Rafael (1924-1931), and Mills College (1929-1944). His association with the music department at Berkeley extended from 1931-1959; as chairman (1937-1951), he brought in such distinguished musicians as Bloch, Sessions, Arthur Bliss, Bukofzer, and the Griller Quartet.

As a composer Elkus was not prolific, yet his music is well constructed and effective, written in a conservative, post-Brahmsian tonal style with emphasis on chromatic harmonies tinged with impressionism. His works have been performed by symphony orchestras in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London, and elsewhere. With Fora Arnstein and Stewart Young he edited The Letters and Papers of Oscar Weil (1923). --New Grove Dictionary of American Music