Uri Eppstein Explained

Ferdinand-Uri (Ury) Eppstein (in Hebrew: אורי אפשטיין; Born 3 February 1925 in Saarbrücken, Germany) is a musicologist, music critic and professor of Japanese music and culture, a member of the Order of the Rising Sun.

Life

Childhood and immigration to Eretz Israel

Eppstein was born to Irwin Eppstein and Hertha Kahn in Saarbrücken. He immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1935 and lived with his parents in Haifa and then in Tel Aviv. He played the piano from his youth. He graduated from high school in 1943 and served as a Noter in the Jewish Settlement Police. In 1945 he began his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In the War of Independence, Eppstein was drafted into Haganah and specialized in a Military two-way radio position. He fought on the Jerusalem front and participated in an attempt to break into the Old City in May 1948. His younger brother Nathan-Herbert Samuel Eppstein[1] fell in the War of Independence.

Academic career

In 1949, Eppstein worked as a radio program editor and as a publications editor at the Jewish Agency. As a pianist he began studying at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. He received a scholarship for Japanese cultural studies from the Japanese government, arrived in Japan in 1958 and studied Japanese music at the Tokyo University of the Arts. He lectured in a class for teaching Hebrew founded by the brother of the emperor of Japan, Takahito, Prince Mikasa, who attended the classes as a student.

In 1963, Eppstein returned to Israel and worked at the Hebrew University editing publications and in the music department. In 1972 he began lecturing at Tel Aviv University (where he lectured until 1977) and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed his doctorate at Tel Aviv University in 1984 on the topic "The beginning of Western music in Japan during the Meiji era." His PhD was published by Tel Aviv University Press.

Eppstein was a visiting lecturer at the University of Copenhagen (1981), Lund University in Sweden (1986) and the University of Tokyo (1998).

Eppstein was the Jerusalem Post's music critic from the 1980s until 2022.

public activity

Decorations and honors

Family

In 1965 he married Kikue Iguchi (deceased in 2019), whom he met while studying in Japan, and they had two sons, Yitzhak and Benjamin Nathan.

Publications

academic writing

His research dealt with the introduction of Western music into Japan's education system. The study revealed the existence of conflicting tendencies in the early and late Meiji era. The reception of other Western cultural values in Japan, such as philosophy, the arts, the natural sciences and others, has been extensively studied, and Eppstein's research contributed to a topic that had not been studied until then.

Journalistic writing and editing

Translations

External links

Music review

(partial list)

Notes and References

  1. https://www.izkor.gov.il/%D7%A0%D7%AA%D7%9F-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%98%20%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%A9%D7%98%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9F/en_227e18f9e99eed14078f202e6a151d6f

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