Sergius Kagen
Sergius Kagen, born Sergei Isaevich Kagen, was an American composer and music educator of Russian origin. He was born in St. Petersburg into the family of Isaia Kagen, a newspaper worker, and Vera Livshits, a teacher.
He studied at the Berlin Academy of Music with Leonid Kreutzer and Pavel Juuon. From 1925 he continued his education at the Juilliard School, where his teachers included Carl Friedberg, Rubin Goldmark, and Marcella Sembrich. In the early 1930s he served as Sembrich's assistant, and later taught independently. His pupils included the conductor David Leibowitz and the singers Jan DeGaetani, Evelyn Lear, and Lorna Haywood.
Kagen prepared and published collections of selected songs and arias by George Frideric Handel, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Ernest Chausson, Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn, and Hugo Wolf, as well as the anthology 40 French Songs from Berlioz to Duparc. He wrote the widely read book On Studying Singing, first published in 1950 and revised in 1960. Later editions were prepared by his widow, the singer and writer Genevieve Greer Kagen. His instructional guide Music for the Voice: A Descriptive List of Concert and Teaching Material was also repeatedly reissued.
Kagen's compositional output belongs chiefly to the last decade of his life. It includes the opera Hamlet (1962), more than fifty songs and art songs, including settings of poems by James Joyce, and an unfinished second opera based on Molière's Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. He also occasionally appeared as a pianist, mainly as an accompanist for concert vocalists.
Kagen died in New York City on March 1, 1964.