Jewish Composers Research Articles

David Fligg. Don’t Forget About Me: The Short Life of Gideon Klein, Composer and Pianist (Review)

Book Review. Gideon Klein (1919–1945) was a Jewish composer and pianist who was interned, and later murdered, by the Nazis during World War II. Klein is often overshadowed by his Theresienstadt peers. Fligg sets out to ‘present the first comprehensive evaluation of Gideon’s childhood in Prague, Přerov, and his engagement with the artistic milieu of Prague’ before ‘[unravelling] the complex circumstances surrounding his murder’.

Sefer Yeṣirah’s Dating, Geographic Provenance and the Open Question of Its Composer’s Religious Affiliation and Identity

Abstract In 2018, Weiss has ended centuries of speculation about the enigmatic Hebrew Sefer Yeṣirah’s dating and geographical provenance, demonstrating with a high level of confidence (specifically on the basis of Sefer Yeṣirah’s Syriac grammarian loanwords) a seventh-century C.E. Syrian origin. Weiss and others have also shown that Sefer Yeṣirah’s closest parallels are in Syriac Christian grammarian and theological sources. Given that abundant evidence points to a Rabbinic form of Judaism present in ancient Syria, the theory of a Jewish composer is odd because of the text’s non-Rabbinic character. Similarly, the theory of a Syriac Christian or “Jewish-Christian” author is odd in view of the text’s composition in Hebrew instead of Syriac. It remains for future research to solve this final enigma of the religious identity of Sefer Yeṣirah’s composer.

Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms by Kira Thurman

Reviewed by: Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms by Kira Thurman Kathryn Agnes Huether Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. By Kira Thurman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021. Pp. 368. Hardcover $32.95. ISBN 978-1501759840. In the field of musicology, several key studies have examined how categories of “Germanness” and “Otherness” have been constructed and negotiated in musical discourse, ranging from such topics as the musical practice of Martin Luther’s aesthetic reform, or the revival of J. S. Bach’s work under the auspices of the Enlightenment-era German Jewish patron Sarah Levy. The rise in antisemitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found its way into music criticism, with composers and music critics—such as Rudolf Louis and Richard Wagner—frequently attacking German Jewish composers such as Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler for the supposed aural “tainting” and eastern “accents” of their music. The Third Reich escalated racist musical stereotypes by defaming certain music as “entartet,” including Jewish composers, African American jazz, and Roma traditions. Now, musicologist [End Page 326] Kira Thurman brings attention to another important but heretofore overlooked topic in the history of the construction and policing of “Germanness” in German classical music, specifically the prominent role that Black classical musicians have played in the performance of that music from the late nineteenth century to the recent past. In Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Thurman follows a chronological three-part trajectory: Part I: 1870–1914; Part II: 1918–1945; and Part III: 1945–1961. In Part I, Thurman conveys that the “music of Reinecke and other German composers floated freely out of the windows of chapels [and] concert halls in the 1890s [America]” (22). Black Americans’ drive to educate themselves in the music of Reineke and others, in addition to other academic approaches, was a mass movement that “promised to cultivate new generations of politically minded, culturally sophisticated, and socially aware Black citizens to advance their rights in a nation that still refused to recognize them” (23). German classical music, in its own immigrant journey to America, found a place in the lives of African Americans. But there was also movement in the other direction. Thurman presents a series of case studies on Black migration to, and venture within Germany— including Will Marion Cook, William H. Tyers, J. Elmer Spyglass, and Portia Washington— to name a few. Thurman is careful to explain the unique components of each individual’s transatlantic travel. Even across the ocean, Thurman unveils how Jim Crow still haunted African American lives in Germany, predominantly at the hands of white Americans who also found themselves in Germany. Thurman dedicates an entire chapter to a discussion of how transatlantic notions of race influenced white listening experiences of Black classical musicians in German, emphasizing the aesthetic component of this construction, which forced white listeners to confront the juxtaposition of the visual and aural. In Part II, Thurman emphasizes the heightening of racial propaganda that led toward starker forms of discrimination in the 1920s, specifically the “Black Horror on the Rhine” campaign. The author tracks how these racial slurs then impacted the reception of Black musicians in Germany. Despite the exceptional mastering of the German Lieder by Black musicians in this period, Thurman finds, in her scrutiny of the archive of German music reviews, that critics “revisited their definitions of Blackness and whiteness in response to Black performers’ musical erasures of the Black-white binary” (158). Part III focuses largely on the process of denazification and the role that Black musicians played in it. Thurman shows that the US State Department saw in them the “best asset in the reorientation of Germans” (196), a role that I view as far more nuanced and difficult than Leonard Bernstein’s “Mahler revival” in Vienna. In her closing chapters, the author demonstrates the continuation of racial discrimination and the push for Black musicians to carry an agency that was simultaneously denied to them by their own government. [End Page 327] As a scholar of the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism, I personally see a...

Music in the Third Reich

Music played a prominent role in the formation of Nazi culture in Germany and was widely used in propaganda and indoctrination throughout the country; the Nazi party combined music and politics and sought to shape their ideal culture by elevating their ideas of pure music to the highest status and outlawing what they defined as inferior. The translation of the scholarly article examines Hitler’s specific views on music and explores some of the factors and personalities that contributed to his views and were directly rooted in the Nazi party, as well as how the Nazis used music to spread their propaganda, what was considered ‘pure’ music, and what influence the idea of ‘pure’ art had on Jewish musicians and composers. Hitler considered himself an artist and believed that art and music were a vital part of life and culture. He was deeply influenced by both Wagner’s views and his music, and Hitler saw many parallels between Wagner’s conception of Germany and the stories the composer used in his operas. The Nazi Party used music to a great extent to reinforce its political activities and indoctrinate individual citizens. Not only music, but Nazi doctrine played a significant role in the fate of Jewish composers and performers and was used to portray Nazi ideology. Many Jewish musicians lost their jobs and were excluded from major cultural and musical organizations. Arnold Schoenberg is a prime example of the influence of Nazi ideology on the music and perception of a Jewish composer, and Wagner is a perfect example of a composer who conformed to Nazi criteria of pure Aryanism. This study attempts to examine these historical facts in an attempt to promote a better understanding of the socio-cultural aspects of the Third Reich in the hope that an informed person will ensure that such views never penetrate society again.

Was Max Steiner a Jew?

Max Steiner is regularly identified as a “Jewish composer” despite his protests to the contrary. Others claim he had a crisis of Jewish identity: although he did not explicitly embrace his Jewish lineage, his allegiance was expressed through charitable giving and his score for A Symphony of Six Million (1932). Both assumptions deny Steiner the agency of self-definition. This paper seeks to differentiate between the passive category “Jew” and the active adjective “Jewish,” and between the social climates of Vienna and Hollywood, which informed Steiner’s self-understanding.

Max Steiner’s Jewish Identity and Score to Symphony of Six Million (1932)

Max Steiner was one of a significant group of Jewish composers who flourished during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Steiner’s Jewish heritage is rarely discussed in connection with his film music. However, his original underscore for Symphony of Six Million (1932) is revealing. In this essay, I consider how Steiner dealt with Jewish identity when presenting an “insider’s view” of the Lower East Side to a mainstream American audience. Steiner may have used Jewish musical materials for “local color” in a manner typical of evocations of musical exoticism in Hollywood. While aspects of this score border on melodramatic pastiche, a searching analysis reveals that Steiner drew from Jewish sacred and secular musical materials to create a trenchant, intertextual context. Steiner’s relationship to his Jewish identity is enigmatic. The Steiner family envisioned themselves as completely assimilated and thoroughly Viennese. Even so, one could not help but have a Jewish identity in fin de siècle Vienna. Steiner’s words, music, and philanthropy reveal a complex Jewish identity.

THE MUSIC OF ERNST BLOCH

The aim of this study is to present information about the life, works and composition of composer and music educator Ernest Bloch. In this context, in this research designed as a qualitative study, the information obtained from the literature review in Turkish and English about the composer's life, style and works were compiled by making descriptive analysis. As a result of the research; Although Ernest Bloch was born in Switzerland, he is known as an American composer because he spent the most productive years of his artistic life in America, he consciously used Jewish cultural elements in his music and thought that a composer should not be independent of his own roots, that he was a good music educator besides his composing. It has been seen that he has articles on education, in addition to the influence of his national identity in music style, he uses descriptiveness as a harmonic language, he uses various styles such as tonal sets, serial and modal harmony, the use of harmony with percussion, and he uses independent forms as a form style, being aware of the traditional. It is thought that this study will be a source for other studies about Ernest Bloch, since no other source can be found in Turkish about the composer. Keywords: Ernest Bloch, American composer, Jewish composer, composing style, contemporary period

The ethnical factor in european literature for the organ in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries based on works by british, italian and Jewish Composers

The article presents examples of the emphasised ethnical factor in works belonging to the European organ literature of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, found in pieces written by British, Italian and Jewish composers. In case of British composers, significant were the proposals of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who primarily saw folk songs as the tool for expressing a national style. Among the composers who wrote music inspired by traditional songs or quoting them directly (which was an important novelty in the British organ literature) were: Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Percy Whitlock, Cyril Bradley Rootham, Geoffrey Turton Shaw, Harold Carpenter Lumb Stocks, and more. The influence of national elements on Italian organ literature is not as strong but it seems justified to assume that some composers might have been influenced by the romanità myth which identified the features of the Italian nation with the ideas allegedly drawn from the traditions of ancient Rome. These composers were Giuseppe Corsi and Alfredo Casella. It is worth paying attention to the phenomenon of writing organ masses which preceded the popularisation of that myth. In this context, composers of Jewish organ music attempted to emphasise the ethnical factor in their works in the clearest, most consequent and most comprehensive ways possible. Abraham Zevi Idelsohn summed up their ideological programme, indicating that music meant for being performed in synagogues, including Jewish organ music, should be based on traditional melodies and scales, at the same time using tonal harmonic systems, which was supposed to allow for introducing prayerful atmosphere and concentration of the audience as well as understanding it properly. This group of composers included Louis Lewandowski, David Nowakowski, Arno Nadel, and others.

Jewish Composers of Polish Music after 1939: A Story in Lists and Numbers

Jewish Composers of Polish Music after 1939: <i>A Story in Lists and Numbers</i>

The Sound of the Unsayable: Jewish Secular Culture in Arnold Schönberg and Aharon Appelfeld

This article examines the use of central elements of the Jewish religious repertoire and transcendental realm, such as prophecy or revelation, within the aesthetic secular realm of musical avant-garde and modern Hebrew literature. By focusing on two case studies, I attempt to shed new light on the question of Jewish secular culture. Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), an Austrian Jewish composer, was born into an assimilated Viennese family and converted to Protestantism before returning to Judaism in the 1930s while escaping to the United States. Aharon Appelfeld (1932–2018), an Israeli Jewish writer, was born in Czernowitz to assimilated German-speaking parents, survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Israel in 1946. My claim is that in their works both composer and author testify to traumatic experiences that avoid verbal representation by: (1) subverting and transgressing conventional aesthetic means and (2) alluding to sacred tropes and theological concepts. In exploring Schoenberg’s opera Moses und Aron and Appelfeld’s Journey into Winter among others, this article shows how the transcendent sphere returns within the musical and poetic avant-garde (musical prose, 12-tone composition, prose poem, non-semantic or semiotic fiction) as a “sound” of old traditions that can only be heard through the voices of a new Jewish culture.

The Bible Retold by Jewish Artists, Writers, Composers and Filmmakers. The Bible in the Modern World, 71

The Bible Retold by Jewish Artists, Writers, Composers and Filmmakers. The Bible in the Modern World, 71

‘Like Seeing Normal Life’: children’s opera Brundibár in Theresienstadt (1943–1944) and the power of scenographic metaphors

ABSTRACTCzech architect-scenographer František Zelenka was a well-known pre-war designer for the National Theatre in Prague, deported by the Nazis to the Theresienstadt ghetto, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, where he participated extensively in the inmates’ theatrical activity. Among his works in the ghetto, the children’s opera Brundibár, designed and directed by Zelenka, stands out. Brundibár was originally created in 1938 by the Czech Jewish composer Hans Krása and the librettist Adolf Hoffmeister in Prague. Despite the harsh living conditions, 55 performances are known to have been held in Theresienstadt between 1943 and 1944. The staging of Brundibár consisted of visual statements that were an integral part of the scenography and acquired meaning in the context of the ghetto. This article analyses Zelenka’s scenography by focusing on the visual metaphors embedded in the stage images he created, and offers an insight on the multiple roles of Brundibár’s original scenography and its impact. The aim is to underscore the power in creating and reading scenographic images under coercive conditions, with Brundibár as a paradigmatic example. It demonstrates the ways in which scenography may serve as a reminder of normality for children dealing with issues that cannot otherwise be confronted. The article concludes with a brief commentary on contemporary adaptations of the opera.

Saying Hello to the Lunatic Men: A Critical Reading of ‘Love is Lost’

Pierrot the clown is a recurring figure in David Bowie’s oeuvre. In this article we examine Bowie’s use of Pierrot in his self-directed homemade video for the single release of ‘Love is Lost’ (2013). The article demonstrates how an understanding of Pierrot (and all he represents), as well as Bowie’s engagement with avant-garde Jewish composers and artists, is vital to interpreting ‘Love is Lost’. We provide a reading of Bowie’s use of Pierrot as an avatar for everyman, for creativity and for the struggles over identities.

Ernest Bloch, Richard Wagner, and the Myth of Racial Essentialism

Composer Ernest Bloch’s Jewish identity is ironically rooted in the notoriously anti-Semitic writings of Richard Wagner. Rather than an indication of self-loathing, Bloch’s assimilation of Wagner's ideas into his own thinking exemplifies the seductiveness of racial essentialist thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An examination of the effects of racial essentialism and Jewish assimilation in post-Emancipation Europe puts Bloch’s identity as a Jewish composer in context. Next, a biographical sketch of Bloch’s life sheds light on how he grappled with Judaism in his music. Finally, a discussion of Bloch’s relationship with Judaism shows the danger of defining Jewish music in racial terms.

Sonatina Op. 49 (1950–1951), Revised as Sonata Op. 49b (1978) Composed by Mieczyslaw Weinberg

The music of Polish-Russian composer and pianist Mieczyslaw Weinberg has received international acclaim since his death in 1996, especially during recent years. Although many of his solo piano works were published, performed and recorded during his lifetime, including his 6 solo piano sonatas and 17 Easy Pieces, there were several solo piano compositions in his archives which have remained unpublished, unperformed and unrecorded for many years. Peermusic Classical in Hamburg, Germany obtained pdf copies of these compositions, which were subsequently included as part of the recordings of “Mieczyslaw Weinberg – Complete Piano Works Volumes I–IV” on Grand Piano/Naxos Records. Sonatina Op. 49 (1951) and its subsequent revised version as Sonata Op. 49b (1978) are two such works. There are interesting comparisons to be made between the compositional techniques Weinberg employedin each version, i. e. how he used the original material from the Sonatina in the Sonata revision, what changes he made and how he made them, including quotations from previous solo piano works inserted into the latter versions. It is also a notable fact that Weinberg, himself a virtuoso pianist, had ceased to compose for solo piano after 1960. The Sonata Op. 49b, “Can-Can” in Honor of Rastorguyev (1965), and Two Fugues (1983) present the sole exceptions, of these Sonata Op. 49b being the most compositionally substantial work. Keywords: Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Moisei Vaynberg, Dmitry Shostakovich, Jewish composers in the Soviet Union, Polish/Soviet composers in the 1950’s, Piano music in the Soviet Union during the 1950’s, folk music influences, Children’s Notebook.

Mixing Musics: Turkish Jewry and the Urban Landscape of a Sacred Song

Mixing Musics: Turkish Jewry and the Urban Landscape of a Sacred Song

Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis

Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis

Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe by Joy H. Calico (review)

Arnold A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe. By Joy H. Calico. (California Studies in 20thCentury' Music, no. 17.) Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. [xv, 254 p. ISBN 9780520281868 (hardcover); ISBN 9780520957701 (e-book), $60.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. Ten years ago, in the context of an essay about the collaborative cantata A Jewish Chronicle (1961) and Holocaust commemoration in the postwar Germanys, Joy Calico raised intriguing questions about Arnold reputation in Europe during that and why his A Survivor from Warsaw (1947), a clear predecessor to A Jewish Chronicle, was entirely omitted from critical commentary about the latter work (Jiidische Chronik: The Third Space of Commemoration between East and West Germany, The Musical Quarterly 88, no. 1 [Spring 2005]: 95-122). Calico clearly felt that the constellation of interrelated yet imperfectly understood issues that clouded the West German reception of A Survivor from Warsaw in this period (ibid., p. 108) deserved further attention; the present volume makes great strides toward a deeper definition and understanding of those very issues within and well beyond West and East Germany. Although A Survivor forms the heart of this book, it is by no means a study of the composition itself; readers are offered a succinct, though sufficient, analysis, and are referred elsewhere (especially to David M. Schiller, Joe R. Argentino, and Amy Lynn Wlodarski) for more in-depth examinations of the and text. Instead, in a rather refreshing departure from traditional Schoenberg studies, Calico uses examples of A Survivor's performance and reception history as a lens through which to explore the larger ideas of cultural mobility and remigration (specifically, symbolic or noncorporeal remigration) during the first half of the Cold War. She traces the life of the work through six meticulously researched and documented microhistories, each telling the story of the work's premiere in a particular context. Beginning with the West German premiere in August 1950 (a substantial revision of Calico's earlier publication on the same topic, Schoenberg's Symbolic Remigration: A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar West Germany, The Journal oj Musicology 26, no. 1 [Winter 2009]: 17-43), Calico proceeds chronologically: Austria (April 1951); Norway (March 1954); East Germany (April 1958); Poland (September 1958); and Czechoslovakia (February 1963). Taken together, these histories reveal surprising threads of similarity and difference that go beyond the typically accepted East-West dichotomy during the immediate postwar era. Each setting harbored its own complications and its own reactions to the work, but in every case, A Survivor rubbed up against common anxieties about Jews, culpability for the Holocaust, lingering antiSemitism, remigration, antifascism, and modernism. Why choose A Survivor for this type of study? Precisely because of how its aesthetic and topical multivalence lent it to a wide range of interpretations, and because of how perfectly suited the work was to provoke every potential anxiety. Calico's introduction begins with her contention that A Survivor, which runs only seven minutes, seemed designed to irritate every exposed nerve in postwar Europe. A twelve-tone piece in three languages about the Holocaust, it was written for an American audience by a Jewish composer whose oeuvre had been the Nazis' prime exemplar of entartete (degenerate) music (p. 1). Although Calico's book focuses on the European reaction, A Survivor was distinctly American: Schoenberg had, of course, been living in the U.S. since 1933 (as an American citizen since 1941); the work was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and premiered by the Albuquerque Symphony; and the Sprechstimme narration, notated but essentially spoken-told from the perspective of a survivor of Treblinka (presumably) after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising-is predominantly in English, likely in a gesture toward intelligibility. …

On Sutak’s &lt;em&gt;Cinema Judaica: The War Years, 1939–1949&lt;/em&gt;

On Sutak’s Cinema Judaica: The War Years, 1939–1949 Stephen J. Whitfield (bio) Cinema Judaica: The War Years, 1939–1949. By Ken Sutak. New York: Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion Museum/CCAR Press, 2012. 106pp., ISBN 978-1-884300-25-7 (ebook). US $9.99. Perhaps no decade in modern Jewish history—perhaps no decade since the destruction of the Second Temple—has been so packed with significance as the ten years that began in 1939. The horrifically unimaginable was followed by the thrillingly unpredicted. No catastrophe like the Holocaust can be said to have been redeemed. But the birth of a Jewish state, however much historians of the Yishuv can trace the achievement of sovereignty to forces independent of the shock of the Final Solution, cannot in retrospect be removed from the same cataclysmic decade as the torment of the refugee crisis, the plight of Diasporic Jewry beleaguered by anti-Semitism hardly limited to the distinctive terror of the Third Reich, the impact of totalitarianism, and the momentum of decolonization and nationalism. How did such extraordinary historical experiences register in the past century’s supreme medium of mass communication? One answer is reflected in movie poster exhibits that were mounted in the spring of 2007 and then again in the spring of 2008 at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York City. This seductive, lovingly designed, and informative volume stems from those exhibits, which Ken Sutak very ably produced. Cinema [End Page 192] Judaica constitutes an impressive feat of archeology, of an era that begins with a feature film like Warner Bros.’ Confessions of a Nazi Spy (Anatole Litvak, USA, 1939), starring Edward G. Robinson, and ends with a quartet of obscure movies set during Israel’s fight for independence. The phrase that serves as the title of this book, Sutak writes, may have originated in Los Angeles, “to promote revival screenings of Jewish-themed films” (99), and to attract audiences to concerts where the film scores by Jewish composers were performed. The author gives no exact dates, however. Nor is his own definition of a “Jewish-themed” movie unduly rigid. The Stranger (Orson Welles, USA, 1946), for example, includes documentary footage of concentration camps. But none of the major characters (portrayed by Orson Welles, who also directed the film, Loretta Young, and the ubiquitous Edward G. Robinson) is Jewish; and the Nazis were not too finicky about whom they chose to imprison and torture in the camps. What makes The Stranger Jewish is therefore dubious. Cinema Judaica even includes a Disney cartoon, Education for Death (Clyde Geronimi, USA, 1943). Or take The House I Live In (Mervyn LeRoy, USA, 1945). Perhaps no nine-minute short in the history of Hollywood has enjoyed more acclaim. This movie won a special Academy Award for “Tolerance Short Subject,” as well as a Golden Globe Award for “Best Film for Promoting International Good Will.” These prizes, in the immediate aftermath of the Final Solution, signaled a shift in the zeitgeist. But the kid Frank Sinatra protects from young bigots in the film is bullied because of his different “religion”; it is not explicitly mentioned as Judaism. During a decade when prejudice was widely believed to be indivisible, as though anti-Semitism and racism were interchangeable, and when universalistic values were often considered the best refuge for an embattled people, it was prudent not to be too specific. The House I Live In was scripted by Albert Maltz, and Lewis Allan (the pseudonym used by Abel Meerepol) is co-credited with writing the title song. Two years after RKO’s short subject was released, Maltz would be subpoenaed to testify as a member of the Hollywood 10 before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Eight years after Sinatra introduced this musical plea for pluralism, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would be electrocuted; and Meerepol would adopt their orphaned sons. Despite the marvelous evocation of the decade that the visual artifacts in Cinema Judaica achieve, it misses something crucial, which is the politics of many of the filmmakers themselves. The struggle against anti-Semitism was largely a leftist struggle, just as the New Deal had enhanced [End...

Michael Haas, Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis

Michael Haas, <i>Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis</i>