Hugo Weisgall

Hugo David Weisgall (October 13, 1912 – March 11, 1997) was an American composer and conductor,[1] known chiefly for his opera and vocal music compositions.

Hugo Weisgall was born in Ivančice, Moravia (then part of Austria-Hungary, later in his childhood Czechoslovakia) and moved to the United States with his parents in 1920 at the age of eight.

After the war he became a professor, and taught at Queens College, the Juilliard School, and the Jewish Theological Seminary, all in New York City.

Weisgall came from a family of several generations of cantors, and maintained a lifelong interest in both sacred and secular Jewish music.

In 1992 he was commissioned by the Friends of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary to write a song cycle, Psalm of the Distant Dove, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.