Jewish art music
Encyclopedia
Jewish art music is music written using Western classical techniques, but with melodic, rhythmic and textual content taken from traditional Jewish folk or liturgical music. The Jewish art music movement began at the end of the 19th century in Russia, with a group of Russian Jewish classical composers dedicated to preserving Jewish folk music and creating a new, characteristically Jewish genre of classical music. The group founded the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music, a movement that spread to Moscow, Poland, Austria, and later Palestine and the United States. Although the original society existed formally for only 10 years (from 1908 to 1918), its impact on the course of Jewish music was profound. The society, and the art music movement it fostered, inspired a new interest in the music of Eastern European Jewry throughout Europe and America. It laid the foundations for the Jewish music and Klezmer
revival in the United States, and was a key influence in the development of Israeli folk and classical music
.
Jewish art music is a unique blending of traditional Jewish melodic constructs with the rich chromatic harmonies of late Russian romantic music.
With the outbreak of World War I and the rise of Communism in Russia, most of the composers active in the Jewish art music movement fled Eastern Europe, finding their ways to Palestine or America. There, they became leaders of the Jewish musical communities, composing for both synagogue and the concert hall.
and later Béla Bartók
undertook a massive project of recording and cataloging folk melodies, and incorporating them into their compositions. Other composers such as Antonín Dvořák
and Leoš Janáček
were increasingly seeking a uniquely national sound in their work. "Europe was impelled by the Romantic tendency to establish in musical matters the national boundaries more and more sharply," wrote Alfred Einstein. "The collecting and sifting of old traditional melodic treasures ... formed the basis for a creative art-music."
Parallel with this trend toward national music styles was an awakening of nationalist sentiment among the Jews of Russia
and Eastern Europe. Long subjected to severe restrictions on their lives, outbursts of violent antisemitic pogroms, and forced concentration in a segregated region of Russia called the Pale of Settlement
, Russian jewry developed an intense nationalist identity during the 1880s onward. This identity gave rise to a number of political movements - the Zionist movement
, which advocated emigration from Russia to Palestine, and the Bund, which sought cultural equality and autonomy within Russia. There was a flowering of Yiddish literature, with authors like Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Mocher Sforim
and others. A Yiddish theater movement started, and numerous Yiddish newspapers and periodicals were published.
In spite of the restrictions on residency and quotas on Jewish students in universities, many Russian Jews enrolled as music students at the St. Petersburg
and Moscow
Conservatories. These included violinist Joseph Achron
, composer Mikhail Gnesin
, and others. Many of the great violinists of the last century — Jascha Heifetz
, Nathan Milstein
, Efrem Zimbalist
, Mischa Elman, to name a few — were Jewish students of Leopold Auer
, who taught at the conservatory.
While many of these students came from orthodox Jewish backgrounds — Achron, for example, was son of a cantor — their studies of music at the conservatory were strictly of the western classical tradition. However, the rise of nationalism in Russian music also awakened an incipient interest in Jewish music. In 1895, Yiddish writer Y.L. Peretz started collecting lyrics of Yiddish folksongs. Abraham Goldfaden
, founder of the Yiddish theater in Russia, incorporated many folksongs and folk style music in his productions. In 1898, two Jewish historians, Saul Ginsburg and Pesach Marek, embarked on the first effort to create an anthology of Jewish folk music.
The main catalyzer of the movement for national Jewish music, however, was Joel Engel
. Engel, composer and music critic, was born outside the Pale of Jewish settlement, and was a completely assimilated Russian. A meeting with the Russian nationalist critic Vladimir Stasov inspired Engel to seek his Jewish roots. "(Stasov's) words struck Engel's imagination like lightning, and the Jew awoke in him," wrote friend and fellow composer Jacob Weinberg. Engel set out to study the folk music of the Jews of the Russian shtetl
s, spending the summer of 1897 traveling throughout the Pale, listening to and notating Yiddish songs. In 1900, he issued an album of ten Jewish songs, and presented a lecture concert of Jewish folk music.
In 1908, Engel and a group of like-minded musicians from the Petersburg conservatory, (including Lazare Saminsky
), founded the "St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music." The objectives of the society were to develop Jewish music "by collecting folksongs ... and supporting Jewish composers," and to publish compositions and research on Jewish music.
The society produced concerts, primarily of arrangements of folk melodies for various ensembles, and published arrangements and original compositions by its members. These included the composers Samuel Rosowsky, Alexander Krein, Michael Gniessen, and the violinist Joseph Achron.
With the growing nationalist and Zionist sentiment among the Jewish population, these concerts were received enthusiastically. In a concert in the Ukrainian city of Vinitse, for example, "the artists were met at the train and paraded through the Jewish part of the city with great ceremony and enthusiasm," recollected the local cantor. Among the artists performing in these concerts were violinists Jascha Heifetz and Efrem Zimbalist, cellist Joseph Press and the bass Feodor Chaliapin
.
In 1912, the society sponsored an expedition that included the Yiddish musician and educator Sussman Kisselgoff, to record Jewish folk music using the newly invented Edison phonograph. The group recorded more than 1000 wax cylinders. The collection is preserved in the Vernadsky Library of Ukraine, in Kiev.
This collection is one of the most important ethnographic resources of Jewish life in Ukraine from that period. Another important endeavor of the society was the publication of a "Song Collection for Jewish Schools and Home." This songbook was a monumental six volumes, and includes, in addition to folksongs collected by Kisselgoff and others, original art songs and a section on cantillation of religious texts.
The success of the society spread throughout Russia, and into eastern and central Europe. In 1913, a branch was founded in Khartov, and later in Moscow and Odessa. The advent of WorldWar I and the Russian Revolution put an end to the formal existence of the society, but its members continued their activities and influence in Russia and abroad. Polish Jewish musicians such as Janot Rotkin, inspired by the society, embarked on their own projects of gathering, arranging, and composing Jewish music. In 1928, the Society for the Promotion of Jewish Music was founded in Vienna.
With the onset of the Russian revolution, most of the leading members of the St. Petersburg society left Russia. Joel Engel moved to Berlin in 1922, where he established the Juwal Publishing house. There he republished many of the society's works. Two years later he moved on to Palestine, and started Jibneh, which continued the publishing work of Juwal. He died in Palestine in 1927. Lazare Saminsky emigrated to the U.S. in 1920, where he became a leading figure in the promotion of Jewish music. He was music director of the Temple Emanu-El reform congregation in New York, and one of the founders of Mailamm, an institute for the study of Jewish music that grew into the American Society for Jewish Music. Solomon Rosowsky moved to Palestine, and later to the United States, where he continued composing, teaching and researching Jewish music.
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
revival in the United States, and was a key influence in the development of Israeli folk and classical music
Music of Israel
The music of Israel is a combination of Jewish and non-Jewish music traditions that have come together over the course of a century to create a distinctive musical culture. For more than 100 years, musicians have sought original stylistic elements that would define the emerging national spirit...
.
Jewish art music is a unique blending of traditional Jewish melodic constructs with the rich chromatic harmonies of late Russian romantic music.
With the outbreak of World War I and the rise of Communism in Russia, most of the composers active in the Jewish art music movement fled Eastern Europe, finding their ways to Palestine or America. There, they became leaders of the Jewish musical communities, composing for both synagogue and the concert hall.
Origins
The interest in Jewish national music coincided with the nationalist trends in music throughout Eastern Europe. In Russia, composers led by Rimsky-Korsakov, were composing new works based on Russian folk themes. In Hungary, Zoltán KodályZoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.-Life:Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child....
and later Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
undertook a massive project of recording and cataloging folk melodies, and incorporating them into their compositions. Other composers such as Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
and Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janácek
Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and all Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by...
were increasingly seeking a uniquely national sound in their work. "Europe was impelled by the Romantic tendency to establish in musical matters the national boundaries more and more sharply," wrote Alfred Einstein. "The collecting and sifting of old traditional melodic treasures ... formed the basis for a creative art-music."
Parallel with this trend toward national music styles was an awakening of nationalist sentiment among the Jews of Russia
History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union
The vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest populations of Jews in the diaspora. Within these territories the Jewish community flourished and developed many of modern Judaism's most distinctive theological and cultural traditions, while also facing periods of...
and Eastern Europe. Long subjected to severe restrictions on their lives, outbursts of violent antisemitic pogroms, and forced concentration in a segregated region of Russia called the Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
, Russian jewry developed an intense nationalist identity during the 1880s onward. This identity gave rise to a number of political movements - the Zionist movement
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, which advocated emigration from Russia to Palestine, and the Bund, which sought cultural equality and autonomy within Russia. There was a flowering of Yiddish literature, with authors like Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Mocher Sforim
Mendele Mocher Sforim
Mendele Mocher Sforim , December 21, 1835 = January 2, 1836 , Kapyl — November 25, 1917 = December 8, 1917...
and others. A Yiddish theater movement started, and numerous Yiddish newspapers and periodicals were published.
Saint Petersburg Conservatory
The N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov Saint Petersburg State Conservatory is a music school in Saint Petersburg. In 2004, the conservatory had around 275 faculty members and 1,400 students.-History:...
and Moscow
Moscow Conservatory
The Moscow Conservatory is a higher musical education institution in Moscow, and the second oldest conservatory in Russia after St. Petersburg Conservatory. Along with the St...
Conservatories. These included violinist Joseph Achron
Joseph Achron
Joseph Yulyevich Achron, also seen as Akhron was a Russian composer and violinist of Jewish origin, settled in USA. His preoccupation with Jewish elements and his desire to develop a 'Jewish' harmonic and contrapuntal idiom, underscored and informed much of his work...
, composer Mikhail Gnesin
Mikhail Gnesin
Mikhail Fabianovich Gnesin was a Russian Jewish composer and teacher.-Life:Gnesin was born in Rostov-on-Don and came from a musical family. His sisters founded the Gnessin State Musical College , in Moscow in 1895. He studied at the St...
, and others. Many of the great violinists of the last century — Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...
, Nathan Milstein
Nathan Milstein
Nathan Mironovich Milstein was a Russian-born American virtuoso violinist.Widely considered one of the finest violinists of the 20th century, Milstein was known for his interpretations of Bach's solo violin works and for works from the Romantic period...
, Efrem Zimbalist
Efrem Zimbalist
Efrem Zimbalist, Sr. was one of the world's most prominent concert violinists, as well as a composer, teacher, conductor and a long-time director of the Curtis Institute of Music.-Early life:...
, Mischa Elman, to name a few — were Jewish students of Leopold Auer
Leopold Auer
Leopold Auer was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, conductor and composer.-Early life and career:...
, who taught at the conservatory.
While many of these students came from orthodox Jewish backgrounds — Achron, for example, was son of a cantor — their studies of music at the conservatory were strictly of the western classical tradition. However, the rise of nationalism in Russian music also awakened an incipient interest in Jewish music. In 1895, Yiddish writer Y.L. Peretz started collecting lyrics of Yiddish folksongs. Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays.Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.In 1876 he founded in...
, founder of the Yiddish theater in Russia, incorporated many folksongs and folk style music in his productions. In 1898, two Jewish historians, Saul Ginsburg and Pesach Marek, embarked on the first effort to create an anthology of Jewish folk music.
The main catalyzer of the movement for national Jewish music, however, was Joel Engel
Joel Engel (composer)
Joel Engel was a music critic, composer and one of the leading figures in the Jewish art music movement. Born in Russia, and later moving to Berlin and then to Palestine, Engel has been called "the true founding father of the modern renascence of Jewish music."As a composer, teacher, and...
. Engel, composer and music critic, was born outside the Pale of Jewish settlement, and was a completely assimilated Russian. A meeting with the Russian nationalist critic Vladimir Stasov inspired Engel to seek his Jewish roots. "(Stasov's) words struck Engel's imagination like lightning, and the Jew awoke in him," wrote friend and fellow composer Jacob Weinberg. Engel set out to study the folk music of the Jews of the Russian shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
s, spending the summer of 1897 traveling throughout the Pale, listening to and notating Yiddish songs. In 1900, he issued an album of ten Jewish songs, and presented a lecture concert of Jewish folk music.
The St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music
Lazare Saminsky
Lazare Saminsky, born Lazar Iosifovich Saminsky, was a performer, conductor and composer, especially of Jewish music.-Life:...
), founded the "St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music." The objectives of the society were to develop Jewish music "by collecting folksongs ... and supporting Jewish composers," and to publish compositions and research on Jewish music.
The society produced concerts, primarily of arrangements of folk melodies for various ensembles, and published arrangements and original compositions by its members. These included the composers Samuel Rosowsky, Alexander Krein, Michael Gniessen, and the violinist Joseph Achron.
With the growing nationalist and Zionist sentiment among the Jewish population, these concerts were received enthusiastically. In a concert in the Ukrainian city of Vinitse, for example, "the artists were met at the train and paraded through the Jewish part of the city with great ceremony and enthusiasm," recollected the local cantor. Among the artists performing in these concerts were violinists Jascha Heifetz and Efrem Zimbalist, cellist Joseph Press and the bass Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.During the first phase...
.
In 1912, the society sponsored an expedition that included the Yiddish musician and educator Sussman Kisselgoff, to record Jewish folk music using the newly invented Edison phonograph. The group recorded more than 1000 wax cylinders. The collection is preserved in the Vernadsky Library of Ukraine, in Kiev.
This collection is one of the most important ethnographic resources of Jewish life in Ukraine from that period. Another important endeavor of the society was the publication of a "Song Collection for Jewish Schools and Home." This songbook was a monumental six volumes, and includes, in addition to folksongs collected by Kisselgoff and others, original art songs and a section on cantillation of religious texts.
Jewish art music outside Russia
The success of the society spread throughout Russia, and into eastern and central Europe. In 1913, a branch was founded in Khartov, and later in Moscow and Odessa. The advent of World War I and the Russian Revolution put an end to the formal existence of the society, but its members continued their activities and influence in Russia and abroad. Polish Jewish musicians such as Janot Rotkin, inspired by the society, embarked on their own projects of gathering, arranging, and composing Jewish music. In 1928, the Society for the Promotion of Jewish Music was founded in Vienna.The success of the society spread throughout Russia, and into eastern and central Europe. In 1913, a branch was founded in Khartov, and later in Moscow and Odessa. The advent of WorldWar I and the Russian Revolution put an end to the formal existence of the society, but its members continued their activities and influence in Russia and abroad. Polish Jewish musicians such as Janot Rotkin, inspired by the society, embarked on their own projects of gathering, arranging, and composing Jewish music. In 1928, the Society for the Promotion of Jewish Music was founded in Vienna.
With the onset of the Russian revolution, most of the leading members of the St. Petersburg society left Russia. Joel Engel moved to Berlin in 1922, where he established the Juwal Publishing house. There he republished many of the society's works. Two years later he moved on to Palestine, and started Jibneh, which continued the publishing work of Juwal. He died in Palestine in 1927. Lazare Saminsky emigrated to the U.S. in 1920, where he became a leading figure in the promotion of Jewish music. He was music director of the Temple Emanu-El reform congregation in New York, and one of the founders of Mailamm, an institute for the study of Jewish music that grew into the American Society for Jewish Music. Solomon Rosowsky moved to Palestine, and later to the United States, where he continued composing, teaching and researching Jewish music.
External Links
- Songs with violin or viola written by composers of the society.
- History of the society and composer biographies.
- Archival recordings of Jewish art songs by Cantor Louis Danto.