Mordecai Seter

Mordecai Seter (1916-1994)

Composer. Born in Novorossiysk, Russia, Seter began studying the piano at age seven. He immigrated to Palestine with his family at age 10 and studied at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv. He continued his piano studies in Israel with Jacob Weinberg, Rivka Bornstein-Arber and Arie Avilea. In 1932, he went to further his musical education at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, where he studied composition with composer Paul Dukas and teacher Nadia Boulanger, theory with Georges Dandelot, and piano with Lazare Lévy. In addition, he also took some composition lessons with Igor Stravinsky.
Seter returned to Tel Aviv in 1937 and began composing while refining his unique style. In a few years, he began teaching at the local Music Teachers’ College. In 1951 he joined the faculty of the Tel Aviv Music Academy (later renamed the Samuel Rubin Israel Academy of Music, and currently the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University), where he taught until his retirement in 1985.
Seter composed the music for Sara Levi-Tanai’s Book of Ruth (1961), performed by Inbal Dance Company, and in 1962 he was invited by Martha Graham (together with Israeli set designer Dani Karavan) to compose the music for her Legend of Judith. Later on, he composed for the following Batsheva dances: Jephtah’s Daughter (1965), Women in a Tent (1966), and Dream (1974). He also composed for other dance companies.
Throughout the years, Seter received many awards, including two Engel Prizes (1945, 1954), MILO Prize (1961), Premio Italia Prize (1962), Israel Prize for Music (1965), and ACUM Prize for lifetime achievement (1983).

Mordecai Seter died in August 1994 in Tel Aviv.