Born in the Russian Empire, and later moving to Berlin and then to Mandatory Palestine, Engel has been called "the true founding father of the modern renaissance of Jewish music.

Engel studied law at the Kharkiv National University, and later, at the urging of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who heard his compositions, entered the Moscow Conservatory.

[6] After graduating the conservatory, Engel worked as the music critic of the influential Russian newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti.

Several stars of musical life at the time, including violinists Jascha Heifetz (then a child prodigy) and Joseph Achron, pianist Leopold Godowsky and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, participated in these concerts.

This concert stimulated the young Petersburg composers in the following period to the creation and performance of a whole series of Jewish song settings.

This was one of the first uses of the phonograph in ethnomusicological research, a technique pioneered by Béla Bartók in Hungary and Slovakia four years earlier.

Engel supported himself by working as a music teacher in a Jewish school outside of Moscow, where he developed a distinctive pedagogical approach.

[10] "There is no need—and is boring to everyone—... to teach that a second is dissonant and a third is consonant... Rather we need... to let [children] listen to good music, ... to learn to love, enjoy, and live it," he wrote.

Juwal became the main publisher for composers of the society, printing editions of songs and chamber works in the new Jewish style.

Yet, despite his intense activity in Germany as a composer, publisher and impresario, Engel was dissatisfied, and decided to move to Palestine.

He was offered a position teaching theory at the Shulamit music school, and there was some discussion of setting up a full conservatory under his direction.

He wrote incidental music for the original play "Neshef Peretz", which toured the Jewish settlements of Palestine.

[15] "Occasionally, one encounters major or minor; but more common are modes that are not written in our modern text books, and could be called 'eastern'."

[16] Aside from the Dybbuk suite, for string orchestra and clarinet, Engel wrote no orchestral music, and no large-scale works (symphonies, operas, concertos, and so on).

He frequently used innovative combinations for his chamber music; for example, "Adagio Mysterioso", opus 22, is scored for violin, cello, harp and organ.