San Francisco Classical Voice

David Sheinfeld, a composer, violinist, teacher and conductor, died at his home of cancer on Saturday afternoon, June 8. He had lived in San Francisco since 1945 when he joined the San Francisco Symphony, playing in it until 1971, and the Opera orchestra from which he retired in 1964. His brilliantly colored, unorthodox compositions and forceful personality impressed generations of Bay Area audiences and students.

Sheinfeld's music was played by the San Francisco Symphony and by orchestras across the United States under such renowned conductors as Pierre Monteux, William Steinberg, Seiji Ozawa and Kent Nagano. Although all of his works were commissioned, he did not receive official recognition until late in life. He said of himself "At a certain point in my life, I could have chosen to become a ‘famous' composer, or to write just the kind of music that I wanted to write, but I chose to let my music speak for itself."

In 1993, at age 87, he received the prestigious Award in Composition from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which called him "an incomparable master of the orchestra, . . . (whose) works derive from a free-ranging and exuberant fantasy—under the control of a superb and masterful craftsman." After 1964, when Sheinfeld renounced all but two of his previous compositions, his music reflected a polymath's desire to compose music for "an Einstein world," in which tonality and atonality and simultaneous differing rhythms and tempos are combined in one context.

In an 1981 interview he stated "When I think about structuring music, I think of structures as they exist in the whole cosmos—the motions of stars and galaxies and their interaction—their freedom from each other and yet the fact that they are all part of one cosmos. These ideas gave me the feeling of having all kinds of different types of musical rhythms and motions and meters going on at the same time. In an Einstein world, this is what would happen."

While Mr. Sheinfeld did not write "program music", his titles reflected the structure and content of the music in such pieces as "Patterns" (1962) for harp; "Dialogues" (1966) for chamber orchestra; and "Confrontations" (1969) for electric violin and guitar, saxophone and orchestra. Later, as his vision broadened and his technique became both more complex and more refined, he wrote pieces entitled "Memories of Yesterday and Tomorrow" (1971) for piano trio with electric violin and cello and muted piano, "The Earth is a Sounding Board" (1978) for orchestra and small chorus, "Dreams and Fantasies" (1981) for orchestra.

His last pieces were "Dear Theo" (1996) for baritone and chamber ensemble, a meditation on life and art through settings of Van Gogh's letters to his brother; "E = MC2" for string quartet and orchestra, his final expression of the "Einstein world." The final work, a symphony-concerto for percussion solo and orchestra, promising "newer and bolder ideas," was completed in July 2000, and was written for the Berkeley Symphony and Maestro Kent Nagano, who will give its premiere in September, 2001.

David Sheinfeld was born in 1906 in St. Louis, Mo., to a recently arrived family of immigrants from the Ukraine, who later moved to Chicago. He began studying the violin at age seven and at age thirteen, started studies in harmony and counterpoint and became interested in composition. His father gave him the choice of attending high school or enrolling in the Chicago Conservatory. Sheinfeld chose the Conservatory, but also taught himself high school subjects, including higher mathematics, at the public library.

In 1929, Ottorino Respighi offered him a scholarship at the Academia Santa Cecilia in Rome and Florence, where he studied composition in a master class until 1931. On his return to Chicago, he began working as a violinist and writing music for the ballet and for WPA theatrical productions. In 1944, he moved to New York where he studied conducting with Pierre Monteux and played in the Pittsburgh Symphony under conductor Fritz Reiner. In 1945, Monteux invited him to join the first violin section of the San Francisco Symphony. He also played in the San Francisco Opera Orchestra until 1964.

In 1964, cataracts and glaucoma threatened to end his career as a performer. He said of this period "I could see either the conductor or the music but not both," but with characteristic determination he kept on playing, saying "I decided I would just look at the conductor, and so I played the music for an entire season from memory." After an operation, which left him with limited (but accurate) vision, he continued to play in the Symphony's second violin section until his retirement in 1971.

The San Francisco Symphony premiered or subsequently played eight of his twelve orchestral compositions under maestros Monteux, Jordá, Ozawa, De Waart, and the composer himself. Other pieces were played by the Chicago Symphony, Monteux conducting, and the Pittsburgh Symphony under William Steinberg, the Oakland Symphony, Berkeley Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra. His chamber and solo works were played by Anshel Brusilow, the Francesco Trio, Marcella DeCray, Aristid von Würtzler, Ludwig Altman, Roy Malan, Robert Sayre, Rolf Persinger, David Abel and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. His two string quartets were commissioned and played by the Kronos Quartet and will be recorded by the Alexander Quartet in 2001.

In addition to composing and performing, Mr. Sheinfeld was a very highly regarded teacher, but only of composition and related subjects. Lessons were given one-on-one in his second-floor study on 24th Avenue. There were no textbooks, only the music that illustrated the particular aspect of composition he was teaching. He often said "I studied music with Bach, Mozart and Beethoven" and his pupils studied with them as well.

After retiring from the San Francisco Symphony, he gave as many as twenty hour-long lessons a week, his students ranging from professional musicians, jazz artists, and rock performers to absolute beginners. Some moved to San Francisco from other parts of the US, Canada and Europe to study with him.

David Sheinfeld married Dorothy Jaffe in 1942. Their exceptionally happy marriage lasted until her death in 1995. He is survived by two sons, Paul, of San Rafael, Calif., and Daniel of Baldwin Park, Calif., and three grandchildren. An oral biography of David Sheinfeld has been published by The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Further biographical information and an index of his works are available on-line at creativefilms.com/DS.index/DSbio.htm