American composer, conductor and singer of Czech birth, son of Adolph
Joseph Weisgal, a composer of synagogue music (1885-1981). Hugo
Weisgall's family emigrated to the USA in 1920, settling in Baltimore;
he became a naturalized American citizen in 1926. He wrote his
dissertation on primitivism in 17th-century German poetry (Ph.D. in
1940 from Johns Hopkins University).