Ida Halpern

Ida Halpern (née Ruhdörfer; July 17, 1910 – February 7, 1987) was a Canadian ethnomusicologist.

Halpern was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria). She arrived in Canada in order to flee Nazism in her native country (Anschluss), becoming a Canadian citizen in 1944. She worked among Native Americans of coastal British Columbia during the mid-20th century, collecting, recording, and transcribing their music and documenting its use in their cultures. Many of these recordings were released as LPs, with extensive liner notes and transcriptions. More recently, her collection has also been released digitally.

Biography

Born as Ida Ruhdörfer, Halpern was raised mostly by her mother, Sabine, as her parents had separated in her early years. She began to learn piano at age six, and was instantly fascinated by the instrument. Halpern was enrolled first in public school, and then later in a private high school, where she studied the classical languages and German literature, practiced gymnastics, and furthered her interest in music. She was able to slowly rebuild her career in music from there. In the fall of 1940, she opened her own music studio, where she would give piano lessons. Regardless of these absences, there is physical evidence of her contributions. In 1984 Halpern donated the bulk of her collection (which amounted to over 80 file boxes of textual records, publications, moving images, photographs, sound recordings and interviews to the Provincial Archives of British Columbia. The remainder was donated to the archives of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. for consideration for inscription on UNESCO’s International Memory of the World register. A new installation about the Halpern recordings is now on display in the Our Living Languages exhibition at the Royal BC Museum.