Josef Tal (18/09/1910 - 25/08/2008), an Israeli composer, pianist, and professor of music, allowed Middle Eastern music to influence him, but stayed in the mainstream of contemporary European music, in which tradition he had been trained. He was born in Pinne, Germany (now Poland).
Josef Tal was born as Joseph Gruenthal on September 18, 1910 in Pinne (now Poland). Tal's teachers at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule fuer Musik in Berlin included Tiessen, Trapp, Hindemith, Sachs, Kreutzer and Saal. He emigrated to Eretz Israel in 1934 and taught composition and piano at the Jerusalem Academy of Music. He was Director of the Academy from 1948 until 1952. In 1965 he joined the faculty of Hebrew University and eventually became head of the musicology department.
Numerous among Tal's works were written on biblical subject or were influenced by the Bible or were based on epic events in Jewish history. However, in style, Tal remained faithful to his European background and was not affected by the trends which dominated most Israeli compositions in the 1940s and 1950s which, in the main, were based either on the folklore of the various Jewish communities in Israel or on the Eastern musical traditions of the region (the maqam). By that time, Tal was already deep into writing 12-tone music and with the passing years, his use of the dodecaphonic elements became less and less constrained.