Ernst Levy (18 November 1895 – 19 April 1981) was a Swiss musicologist, composer, pianist and conductor.

Life

Born in Basel, Switzerland, Levy studied with Hans Huber, Egon Petri and Raoul Pugno. David Dubal describes him as an "unusual and powerful pianist" who made "grandly conceived" recordings of the late Beethoven sonatas and captured "the very essence of the Faustian Liszt". His work as a musicologist and teacher brought him to the United States, where he taught at colleges including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago and the New England Conservatory; he also became a United States citizen. His students included composer Hazel Ghazarian Skaggs. In 1966, he retired from academia and returned to his native Switzerland where he spent the remainder of his life. He died in Morges. Levy's book A Theory of Harmony was published in 1985 and, among other modern compositional concepts, describes the composer's concept of harmonic "undertones". Levy's son was composer and cellist Frank Ezra Levy (1930–2017).

Selected compositions

Academic works