(b Cairo, 13 Dec 1899; d Venice, 7 April 1961). Egyptian composer. Born into a wealthy landed family of upper Egypt, he studied the violin (oriental style) as a boy under Sami El Shawwa and Mansour Awad, and learnt Western technique in Cairo with the Austrian violinist Rosdoll. He graduated as a lawyer in 1926 but practised for only a few months before turning his attention to music, later taking lessons in harmony and composition mainly with Josef Hüttel, the Czech conductor of the Egyptian radio orchestra. He then began to compose in the style and forms of Western music. In this he was, with Khaïrat and Rasheed, a pioneer of the new Egyptian school, whose aim was the creation of a national style based on Western techniques. Their lack of academic training was more than balanced by their enthusiasm, and they achieved a certain measure of success, each in an individual manner, thus opening up a new path in Egyptian music.
Greiss lived at a time of strong patriotic feeling, which culminated in the 1919 Revolution. He is said to have been involved in that rising, commemorated in his symphonic poem Masr (‘Egypt’, 1932), whose concluding funeral march was dedicated to those who fell in the Revolution. This work, the first orchestral piece composed by an Egyptian, was first performed in Alexandria in 1932, and Greiss went on to compose three more symphonic poems and two symphonies, also leaving numerous pieces for the piano, violin (some unaccompanied), cello and flute, and some songs. His music does not draw directly on folk or traditional art music; its national quality is rather a spontaneous expression of his oriental feeling and background. The melodies have a frankly Eastern flavour, enhanced by a melismatic tendency; the harmonic style is a somewhat simple adaptation of classical models, eventually including a place for parallel 5ths (as in the passage evoking the desert in Masr); the texture is usually sparse and the form free and rhapsodic.
In 1942 Greiss was a founder member of the Egyptian Amateur Music Association, which was influential in spreading musical culture by organizing free concerts of Western classical and new Egyptian music; one of its objectives was the introduction of European vocal works in Arabic translation. Greiss had a difficult life; his music was little played in Egypt until the late 1950s, and his importance was fully recognized only after his death, and still in narrow circles.
|
Orch: Le galérien, 1932; Sym. no.1 ‘Masr’ [Egypt], 1932; Al-fallāhah [The Peasant Girl], vc, orch, 1933; Al-Badawī [The Bedouin], 1934 [orch of org prelude]; Sym. no.2, 1942; Taraneem misriyyah [Egyptian Incantations], sym. poem, 1944; Ahram al-Fara'inah [Pyramids of the Pharaohs], 1960; Sym. no.3, 1960; Hāmilat al-garrah [The Girl Carrying Water], vn, orch; Nahwa dayrin fi'l sahraa‘ [Towards a Monastery in the Desert], sym. poem; Al-Nīl wa'l warda [The Nile and the Rose], sym. poem |
|
Pf: 3 Preludes, op.28, 1932; Hams al nakleel [Whisper of palms], 1947; other short pieces |
|
6 songs, S/Bar, pf, 1943–4; 14 short vn pieces incl. Abu'l-hoal wal Kamān [The Sphinx and the Violin], Bint al-Ahrāmāt [Daughter of the Pyramids]; 18 short pieces, vn, pf; works for vc; vc, pf; fl; org |
Z. Nassār: Al musīqā al Misriyya al mutatawwirah [Egyptian art music] (Cairo, 1990), 30–45
S. El Kholy: Al qawmiyyah fi musīqa al qarn al-’ishreen’ [Nationalism in the music of the 20th century] (Kuwait, 1992), 298–304
S. El-Kholy, ed.: Tārīkh al-ta'līf al-mūsīqi fi Misr: maqrou ‘wa masmou’ [The history of musical composition in Egypt: for reading and listening], i (forthcoming) [incl. CD of Greiss's music]
SAMHA EL KHOLY