Vally Weigl

1894 Wien - 1982 New York
Vally Weigl, born September 11, 1894 in Vienna as the oldest daughter of lawyer Dr. Josef Pick and Charlotte Pick, née Rubinstein, pianist,teacher, composer, music therapist. Her sister Dr. Marianne Katharina Pick, after her marriage well known as Kaethe Leichter (born 1895 Vienna- murdered 1942 Berndorf), was an important social democratic unionist and women's rights campaigner. Vally Weigl took private piano lessons with Bertha Loew, assistant of Theodor Leschetitky, Leonie Gombrich and Richard Robert as well as composition, harmonics and counterpoint with her later husband Karl Weigl (1881-1949). In 1913 she recieved her piano teachers degree and studied musicology at the University of Vienna with Guido Adler. Forced to earn her livelihood after the Great War, she moved to Amsterdam, where she worked as multilingual secretary to Edo Fimmen in der International Transport Workers Union in Amsterdam. Her savings later on enabled an escape from Nazi Austria. Back in Vienna in 1921 she worked as piano teacher, répétiteur and assistent to Karl Weigl, whom she had married that same year. In 1938 she went into exile to the USA together with her husband and son Wolfgang Johannes (John), where she supported her husband as a composer and teacher and started to teach herself in 1939 at the Institute for Avocational Music in New York, 1942-49 at Friends’ Westtown School Pennsylvania and 1950-1951 at Hunter College, New York. After an injury of the shoulder from 1951 to 1953 she studied at Teachers College of Columbia University, graduating with a MA in Recreation and Rehabilitation), and improvisation at the Dalcroze School in New York. From 1955 to 1969 she works as music therapist at the Roosevelt Cerebral Palsy School in Roosevelt, N.Y.; after 1966 at the Jewish Home for the Aged in New York. from 1974 to 1976 teaching music therapy at the New School for Social Research in New York. Besidees she has always worked as a composer and active as a human rights campaigner. Vally Weigl has passed away in New York December 25, 1982. Selection of works: 1944 'Hymn for 5 part choir a capella'; 1955 'New England Suite' for clarinet, violin and piano; 1956 'Lyrical Suite'; 1960 'Requiem for Allisson'; 'Adagio for Strings'. Update Primavera Driessen Gruber September 9, 2015.