Discipline: Music Composition

Halim El-Dabh

Discipline: Music Composition
MacDowell Fellowships: 1954, 1956, 1957
Halim El-Dabh (1921–2017) was an Egyptian American composer, musician, ethnomusicologist, and educator, who has had a career spanning six decades. He is particularly known as an early pioneer of electronic music. In 1944 he composed one of the earliest known works of tape music, or musique concrète. From the late 1950s to early 1960s he produced influential work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

Studios

Sprague-Smith

Halim El-Dabh worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.

In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…

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