Paula Eisenstein Baker

Born January 30, 1939 in New York City, the first child of Ruth Richards Eisenstein and Myron Eisenstein; died, age 85, December 27, 2024, Houston, TX

After attending the High School of Music & Art in New York City, Paula earned her first bachelor’s degree from Barnard College in 1960, her second in music education from Dominican College in Houston in 1975, and a master’s degree in classics from Yale University in 1961. 

From 1960-2001, she played the cello professionally, taught cello and gave several recitals at the University of St. Thomas (Houston), and organized chamber music for weddings and other events. A proud musicians’ union member, Paula performed in more than a dozen orchestras, frequently as principal cellist.

In 1985, she first came across the work of Leo Zeitlin­—a composition for cello and piano entitled Eli Zion. Zeitlin was a member of the St Petersburg School and the Society for Jewish Folk Music in czarist Russia and emigrated to the United States in 1923 and died in 1930. Eli Zion had been attributed to a Moscow violinist with the same name, but who never emigrated from the USSR. Paula identified and corrected this error, and was on her way to becoming a musicologist. She subsequently discovered, in the possession of Zeitlin’s daughter, a trunk full of Zeitlin’s musical scores, and became the world expert on Zeitlin. Much of the music Zeitlin wrote and performed, without Paula’s research would have simply been lost to music history.

Paula also published and presented at conferences about Zeitlin, about the St. Petersburg (Russia) early-20th-century Society for Jewish Folk [Ethnic] Music to which Zeitlin belonged, and about other aspects of music on Jewish motivic material. The Houston Ensemble for Jewish Music, which she organized and with which she performed, presented concerts of music by Zeitlin and other Society for Jewish Folk Music composers in Houston (1988-2000), Portland, Oregon (1991), Tulsa, Oklahoma (1992), Toronto, Canada (1997), St. Petersburg, Russia (1997), San Antonio, Texas (2000), London, UK (2000), Vilnius, Lithuania (2000), and New Orleans, Louisiana (2001). 

From 2003-04, Paula was a Vladimir and Pearl Heifetz Memorial Fellow at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. In 2017, she produced a full orchestra concert in Houston of compositions and arrangements by Zeitlin, including Eli Zion in its original orchestral setting, performed for the first time in more than a century. The concert also featured Palestina, an overture composed for the Capitol Theatre in New York; three songs for tenor and orchestra; and several other compositions and arrangements. The concert was conducted by Robert Linder using scores that Robert Nelson transcribed and edited from Zeitlin’s original scores, all of which were preserved in the trunk saved by his daughter and only discovered by Paula decades later.

Paula ultimately delivered more than 100 concerts, presentations, and publications on Zeitlin’s life and oeuvre. She produced an compilation of all of Zeitlin’s known chamber works, as well as an edition of Palestina, both of which were published by A-R Editions, edited by her and her colleague Robert Nelson. 

Her scholarly work on Zeitlin, the Society of Jewish Folk Music, other scholarly work and communications with other scholars and researchers, and material related to her musical performances will be archived at YIVO. Also included in the archive will be the contents of Zeitlin’s trunk: scores, clippings, photographs, advertising posters, and ephemera.

Quick witted, a fast reader, and an excellent stylist and editor (the daughter of an editor), she could spot a misplaced comma or misused word on the front page of The New York Times in a matter of seconds. She wrote elegant prose, and occasionally produced doggerel for someone’s birthday or anniversary.

Paula was highly literate (near native level) in French, and she spoke fluently with a charming American inflection, which was very useful when she sojourned in France in 1968, 1973, and 1981-82 with her husband, who was working in a research lab outside Paris, and with their daughters. There she found many friends, including musical companions with whom she played string quartets every week. During those academic years, she also did some editorial work for a curator at the Louvre, and ran the household.

For more than 50 years, she was an avid swimmer, usually with a small group of regular companions, with whom she chatted when using her kick board, and on the way to and from the pool.

Paula loved to read and sing to and with her daughters and grandchildren when they were going somewhere in the car (she called them “silly songs”), and made sure they attended the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas where she was a regular in the pit orchestra. She was delighted to see the grandchildren peering down at her from the edge of the pit while the orchestra was warming up and during intermission.

She is survived by her husband of 62 years, Stephen Denio Baker; daughters, Hannah Baker and Sarah Baker Topper (David); grandchildren, Leah Baker Topper, Rachel Batya Topper, Rebecca Madeline Topper, Noah Myron Hitzhusen, and Ruth Alana Hitzhusen; sister, Hester Eisenstein; and brother, Jethro M. Eisenstein.