Jacob Gilboa

Jacob Gilboa was born in 1920 in Košice

Jacob Gilboa was born Erwin Goldberg in Košice, Czechoslovakia, in 1920. He grew up in Vienna, where he learned to play the piano.

In 1938 he moved to the Land of Israel with a scholarship to study at the Technion in Haifa. He studied music on his own and then with Josef Tal, and later took private orchestration lessons with Paul Ben-Haim from 1953 to 1956.

He joined the Palmach in 1947 and served in the War of Independence. After the war he worked as an accountant for the Tel Aviv municipality.

His early works were in a post-Romantic Mediterranean style. Courses in Cologne under Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1963 and 1964 led him toward clusters, quarter tones, electronics and unusual instrument groups, and he formed a style joining the avant-garde with Middle Eastern elements. His works include Twelve Glass Windows of Chagall in Jerusalem (1966) and Cedars (1972), first performed by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta.

In 1980 he retired and gave all his time to composing. He died in Tel Aviv in 2007.