Reba Paeff Mirsky
American musician and writer (1902–1966)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reba Paeff Mirsky (May 25, 1902 – November 22, 1966) was an American classical musician and children's writer. A 1953 Guggenheim Fellow, she wrote three books on the fictional Zulu girl Nomusa: Thirty-one Brothers and Sisters (1952), Seven Grandmothers (1955), and Nomusa and the New Magic (1962).
- Classical musician
- children's writer
Reba Paeff Mirsky | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 25, 1902 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | November 22, 1966 (aged 64) New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupations |
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| Employer | The New School for Social Research |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1953) |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | Classical |
| Instruments |
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Biography
Reba Paeff was born on May 25, 1902, in Boston.[1] She was one of six children of Louis Paeff, a Jewish emigrant from Minsk who later became a local businessman.[2] She began learning to play musical instruments as a young child, starting with the piano and soon teaching it to others.[3] She then obtained a BA and Phi Beta Kappa status from Radcliffe College in 1921 and was a graduate student at Harvard University from 1921 to 1922.[1][3]
Mirsky performed for Amor Musicae, the New School Recorder Ensemble, and the New York Recorder Ensemble, and she played clavichord, harpischord, and the virginals, as well as flute and recorder.[3] John Briggs of The New York Times said that her clavichord performance of Johann Kuhnau's The Fight between David and Goliath at a 1958 Amor Musicae concert "sounded like an over-sized guitar played by an extra-ordinarily gifted performer with two right hands and two left hands".[3][4]
Mirsky taught music at the City and Country School and The New School for Social Research and worked as music director (1943–1949) at Ethical Culture Fieldston School.[1] She worked at Hargail Music Press as an editor from 1944 to 1952.[1]
In addition to music, Mirsky was a children's writer. In 1952, she published her children's book Thirty-one Brothers and Sisters, inspired by her experiences with befriending Zulu girls; she won the Charles W. Follett Award for that book.[3] In 1953, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship "for studies of the lives of children in Zulu and Toro society",[1] allowing her to travel to the homeland of the Zulu people and publish two more sequels for that book: Seven Grandmothers (1955) and Nomusa and the New Magic (1962).[3] She also wrote several composer biographies aimed at children, with subjects including Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.[3]
Mirsky's husband was molecular biologist Alfred Mirsky.[3] She had two children, including Jonathan Mirsky.[3][5] Her sister was sculptor Bashka Paeff and her brother-in-law was Louis Lazarus Silverman.[2][3] At the time of her death, she had lived at 350 Central Park West.[3]
Mirsky died on November 22, 1966, at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, aged 64.[3]