Erwin Reuben Jacobi
musicologist (1909-1979)
Erwin Reuben Salomon Jacobi (born 21 September 1909 in Strasbourg; died 27 February 1978 in Zurich) was a French-Swiss harpsichordist, organist and musicologist.
Life and works
Born on 21 September 1909 in Strasbourg, the son of Arthur Eugen Jacobi (187-1933), engineer and manufacturer, and Margit Jacobi (née Schweitzer), Jacobi studied economics in Munich and Berlin. A German Jew, Jacobi and his family were forced to flee Nazi Germany. Jacobi went to Palestine, later Israel, where he lived from 1934 to 1952. His mother, Margit, was deported and murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
In 1951 and 1952, he studied with Frank Pelleg (harpsichord) and Paul Ben-Haim (music theory). He continued his musical education in New York with Curt Sachs (music history), Wanda Landowska (harpsichord) and at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with August Wenzinger (early music) and Eduard Müller (organ). After further studies at the University of Zurich with Paul Hindemith (music theory) and Antoine-Elisée Cherbuliez (1888-1964), he completed his doctorate in 1957 on “The development of music theory in England after the time of Jean-Philippe Rameau”. Jacobi lived in Switzerland from 1956 and worked as a performer and, from 1961, also as a lecturer at the Musicology Institute of the University of Zurich. He also held various guest professorships in the USA.
Jacobi researched primarily in the field of music theory and practice in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1326481. VIAF identifies the subject as 41968866. The Library of Congress control number is n85069590. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1909, 1978, 1933 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “Erwin Reuben Jacobi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.