Joel Engel (composer)
Encyclopedia
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 organizer, Engel inspired a generation of Jewish classical musicians to rediscover their ethnic roots and create a new style of nationalist Jewish music, modelled after the national music movements of Russia, Slovakia, Hungary and elsewhere in Europe. This style - developed by composers Alexander Krein
, Lazare Saminsky
, Mikhail Gnesin
, Samuel Rosowsky, and others - was an important influence on the music of many twentieth century composers, as well as on the folk music of Israel
. His work in preserving the musical tradition of the shtetl
- the 19th century Jewish village of eastern Europe - made possible the revival of klezmer
music today.
. Unlike most Jewish families of the period, he grew up outside of the Pale of Settlement
, the area designated by the Czar as legal for Jewish residence. His parents were secular Jews. Engel studied law at the Kharkiv National University, and later, at the urging of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
, who heard his compositions, entered the Moscow Conservatory
.
After graduating the conservatory, Engel worked as the music critic of the influential Russian newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti
. He became an influential figure in Russian musical life, supporting composers who wrote in the increasingly popular Russian nationalist style.
In the summer of 1900, Engel returned to his home in Berdyansk, and collected Yiddish folk melodies. The next year, he organized lecture-concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which included performances of the songs he had recorded and arranged.
Engel dedicated the next years to gathering and arranging Jewish folk music, presenting concerts, and encouraging other Jewish composers to rediscover their national roots and create a Jewish national musical style.
In 1908, Rosovsky, Saminsky and other associates of Engel founded the Society for Jewish Folk Music. Engel was instrumental in organizing their first concert, where many of his songs were performed. The society published the works of Engel and the other Jewish nationalist composers, and organized concerts throughout Russia. Several stars of musical life at the time, including violinists Jascha Heifetz
(then a child prodigy) and Joseph Achron
, pianist Leopold Godowsky
and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky
, participated in these concerts.
In an article of 1914, Saminsky recalled the first concert of Engel's music in St. Petersburg, given under the auspices of the Society on 12 April 1909.
In 1912 Engel joined S. Ansky
in an expedition through the Pale of Settlement to collect folk songs of the Jewish communities. The researchers recorded the folksongs on wax cylinders using Thomas Edison
's recently invented phonograph
. This was one of the first uses of the phonograph in ethnomusicological research, a technique pioneered by Béla Bartók
in Hungary four years earlier.
Engel wrote the incidental music for Ansky's play The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds. The play, about a young bride possessed by a spirit, was produced by the Habima Theatre, and became an international hit. The theater toured throughout eastern Europe with the play. Engel's score became well-known. He later worked the score into a suite for string orchestra and clarinet. It was Engel's first work for the stage, and his only large-scale work; his other compositions are songs and short instrumental pieces.
Further cooperation between Engel and Habima never materialized, as the theater company experienced political troubles under the new post-revolutionary Russian regime, and was forced eventually to emigrate (first to America, and later to Palestine, where it eventually became the national theater company). Engel supported himself by working as a music teacher in a Jewish school outside of Moscow, where he developed a distinctive pedagogical approach. Rather than concentrating on music theory, he instituted a "listening program". "There is no need - and is boring to everyone - ... to teach that a second is dissonant and a third is consonant... Rather we need... to let [children] listen to good music, ... to learn to love, enjoy, and live it," he wrote. The approach was the start of a revolution in music pedagogy.
In 1922, the Society sent Engel on a mission to Germany, to promote the new Jewish music movement in the German Jewish community. Engel organized a series of concerts in Berlin
and Leipzig
, including performances of songs and instrumental works by Engel, Krein, Gnesin, Rosowsky, and others. Among the performers in these concerts was Gregor Piatigorsky.
The following year, Engel opened the Juwal (Yuval) publishing house in Berlin. Juwal became the main publisher for composers of the society, printing editions of songs and chamber works in the new Jewish style. Yet, despite his intense activity in Germany as a composer, publisher and impressario, Engel was dissatisfied, and decided to move to Palestine.
By now a renowned composer in the Jewish world, Engel's arrival was awaited anxiously by the Jewish community in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. He was offered a position teaching theory at the Shulamit music school
, and there was some discussion of setting up a full conservatory under his direction. Engel moved to Palestine in 1924.
In Palestine, Engel devoted himself to teaching and to composing, primarily children's and folk songs. Concerned that children's songs at the time were either European tunes with new words in Yiddish or Hebrew, or Yiddish songs from the shtetl, Engel tried to create a new, indigenous style. "How can we sing the song of the Diaspora in the promised land?" he wrote in a letter. Many of his new songs were based on Yemenite melodies or motifs.
During his life in Palestine, Engel also became associated with the Ohel theater group, one of the first theaters in Palestine. He wrote incidental music for the original play "Neshef Peretz", which toured the Jewish settlements of Palestine. He organized and conducted the Ohel choir, and wrote many new songs for choir and solo. His songs were popular, and were sung throughout Palestine.
In spite of the warm reception he received, Engel had a difficult time adjusting to life in Palestine. "I was pampered in Moscow and Berlin," he wrote in a letter in 1924. "... Here no one knows what Engel the composer wrote then, and what he is writing now." His health gradually failed, and on February 11. 1927, he died in Tel Aviv.
, Mixolydian, and so on)," he wrote in 1900. "Occasionally, one encounters major or minor; but more common are modes that are not written in our modern text books, and could be called 'eastern'." This harmonic conception is apparent in Engel's compositions. For example, in the Dybbuk suite, opus 35, Engel uses an augmented fifth as the tonic chord, rather than a standard major or minor chord.
Aside from the Dybbuk suite, for string orchestra and clarinet, Engel wrote no orchestral music, and no large-scale works (symphonies, operas, concertos, and so on). His entire oevre is either piano solo, chamber works, or songs. He frequently used innovative combinations for his chamber music; for example, "Adagio Mysterioso", opus 22, is scored for violin, cello, harp and organ. He, like others of the Jewish art music movement, favored songs with obbligato string parts. The song "Ahava Rahya", for example, is scored for singer and violin, flute, viola and organ.
Many of Engel's songs are based on traditional Jewish folksongs. For example, his cradle song "Numi Numi Yaldaty" ("sleep, sleep my child"), is a variant of a traditional Yiddish lullaby. However, Engel often draws on sources other than Jewish traditional music, as well. Ahava Rahya, cited above, is based on an Arabic melody, and many of the tunes he composed in Palestine are based on Yemenite songs.
Engel's popular music, which during his lifetime dominated the popular music scene in Palestine, has been largely forgotten. Some of his songs, however, are still sung today. These include "Numi Numi", one of Israel's most popular lullabies; "Omrim Yeshna Eretz", the children's song "Geshem geshem mishamayim", and others.
Jewish art music
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...
."
As a composer, teacher, and organizer, Engel inspired a generation of Jewish classical musicians to rediscover their ethnic roots and create a new style of nationalist Jewish music, modelled after the national music movements of Russia, Slovakia, Hungary and elsewhere in Europe. This style - developed by composers Alexander Krein
Alexander Krein
Alexander Krein was a Russian composer of Jewish heritage.-Background:The Krein family was steeped in the klezmer tradition; his father Abram was a noted violinist...
, Lazare Saminsky
Lazare Saminsky
Lazare Saminsky, born Lazar Iosifovich Saminsky, was a performer, conductor and composer, especially of Jewish music.-Life:...
, 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...
, Samuel Rosowsky, and others - was an important influence on the music of many twentieth century composers, as well as on the folk music of Israel
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...
. His work in preserving the musical tradition of the 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...
- the 19th century Jewish village of eastern Europe - made possible the revival of klezmer
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...
music today.
Early life and work
Engel was born, (and named Yuliy Dmitrievich Engel) in Berdyansk, now in the UkraineUkraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
. Unlike most Jewish families of the period, he grew up outside of 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...
, the area designated by the Czar as legal for Jewish residence. His parents were secular Jews. Engel studied law at the Kharkiv National University, and later, at the urging of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
, who heard his compositions, entered the Moscow Conservatory
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...
.
After graduating the conservatory, Engel worked as the music critic of the influential Russian newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti
Russkiye Vedomosti
Russkiye Vedomosti — Russian liberal daily newspaper, published in Moscow from 1863 to 1918.Founded in Moscow in 1863 by N. F. Pavlov; edited by N. S. Skvortsov, 1866-1882, and by V. M. Sobolevsky, 1882-1912; after Sobolevsky's death, 1912, became the organ of the Right-Wing Kadets; suppressedby...
. He became an influential figure in Russian musical life, supporting composers who wrote in the increasingly popular Russian nationalist style.
Interest in Jewish music
According to Jacob Weinberg, composer and close associate of Engel's, Engel had no interest in Jewish music until a catalyzing meeting in 1899 with Vladimir Stasov, art critic and a leading proponent of Russian nationalism in art and music. According to Weinberg, Stasov shouted at Engel, "Where is your national pride in your own people?" Engel experienced an epiphany, and took a profound interest in his Jewish musical roots.In the summer of 1900, Engel returned to his home in Berdyansk, and collected Yiddish folk melodies. The next year, he organized lecture-concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which included performances of the songs he had recorded and arranged.
Engel dedicated the next years to gathering and arranging Jewish folk music, presenting concerts, and encouraging other Jewish composers to rediscover their national roots and create a Jewish national musical style.
The St. Petersburg Society and the Dybbuk
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 :...
(then a child prodigy) and 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...
, pianist Leopold Godowsky
Leopold Godowsky
Leopold Godowsky was a famed Polish American pianist, composer, and teacher. One of the most highly regarded performers of his time, he became known for his theories concerning the application of relaxed weight and economy of motion in piano playing, principles later propagated by Godowsky's...
and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky
Gregor Piatigorsky was a Russian-born American cellist.-Early life:...
, participated in these concerts.
In an article of 1914, Saminsky recalled the first concert of Engel's music in St. Petersburg, given under the auspices of the Society on 12 April 1909.
The young Jewish composers of St.Petersburg heard for the first time Engels's artistic arrangements of Jewish folksongs [...] and were greatly surprised that such cultural and national value could result from such an enterprise. This concert stimulated the young Petersburg composers in the following period to the creation and performance of a whole series of Jewish song settings.
In 1912 Engel joined S. Ansky
S. Ansky
Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport , known by his pseudonym S. Ansky , was a Russian Jewish author, playwright, and researcher of Jewish folklore....
in an expedition through the Pale of Settlement to collect folk songs of the Jewish communities. The researchers recorded the folksongs on wax cylinders using Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
's recently invented phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
. This was one of the first uses of the phonograph in ethnomusicological research, a technique pioneered by 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...
in Hungary four years earlier.
Engel wrote the incidental music for Ansky's play The Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds. The play, about a young bride possessed by a spirit, was produced by the Habima Theatre, and became an international hit. The theater toured throughout eastern Europe with the play. Engel's score became well-known. He later worked the score into a suite for string orchestra and clarinet. It was Engel's first work for the stage, and his only large-scale work; his other compositions are songs and short instrumental pieces.
Further cooperation between Engel and Habima never materialized, as the theater company experienced political troubles under the new post-revolutionary Russian regime, and was forced eventually to emigrate (first to America, and later to Palestine, where it eventually became the national theater company). Engel supported himself by working as a music teacher in a Jewish school outside of Moscow, where he developed a distinctive pedagogical approach. Rather than concentrating on music theory, he instituted a "listening program". "There is no need - and is boring to everyone - ... to teach that a second is dissonant and a third is consonant... Rather we need... to let [children] listen to good music, ... to learn to love, enjoy, and live it," he wrote. The approach was the start of a revolution in music pedagogy.
Berlin and Palestine
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, including performances of songs and instrumental works by Engel, Krein, Gnesin, Rosowsky, and others. Among the performers in these concerts was Gregor Piatigorsky.
The following year, Engel opened the Juwal (Yuval) publishing house in Berlin. Juwal became the main publisher for composers of the society, printing editions of songs and chamber works in the new Jewish style. Yet, despite his intense activity in Germany as a composer, publisher and impressario, Engel was dissatisfied, and decided to move to Palestine.
By now a renowned composer in the Jewish world, Engel's arrival was awaited anxiously by the Jewish community in Tel Aviv and Jaffa. He was offered a position teaching theory at the Shulamit music school
Ron Shulamit Conservatory
-History:Music education developed in Israel largely due to the pioneering efforts of Shulamit Rupin, who established the first conservatory in Yaffo, in 1910. Among the teachers were noted musicians such as Moshe Hupenko, a famous violinist from Geneva, invited from Europe for the express purpose...
, and there was some discussion of setting up a full conservatory under his direction. Engel moved to Palestine in 1924.
In Palestine, Engel devoted himself to teaching and to composing, primarily children's and folk songs. Concerned that children's songs at the time were either European tunes with new words in Yiddish or Hebrew, or Yiddish songs from the shtetl, Engel tried to create a new, indigenous style. "How can we sing the song of the Diaspora in the promised land?" he wrote in a letter. Many of his new songs were based on Yemenite melodies or motifs.
During his life in Palestine, Engel also became associated with the Ohel theater group, one of the first theaters in Palestine. He wrote incidental music for the original play "Neshef Peretz", which toured the Jewish settlements of Palestine. He organized and conducted the Ohel choir, and wrote many new songs for choir and solo. His songs were popular, and were sung throughout Palestine.
In spite of the warm reception he received, Engel had a difficult time adjusting to life in Palestine. "I was pampered in Moscow and Berlin," he wrote in a letter in 1924. "... Here no one knows what Engel the composer wrote then, and what he is writing now." His health gradually failed, and on February 11. 1927, he died in Tel Aviv.
Engel's music
Engel was one of the first - perhaps the first - musician to recognize that traditional Jewish music was not based on the major-minor tonal system that dominated classical and popular music of the period. "Most Jewish songs are built on the ancient modes (Aeolian, DorianDorian
The Dorians were one of the four major ethnē into which the Ancient Greeks, or Hellenes, of the Classical period considered themselves divided. Ethnos has the sense of ethnic group. Herodotus uses the word with regard to them...
, Mixolydian, and so on)," he wrote in 1900. "Occasionally, one encounters major or minor; but more common are modes that are not written in our modern text books, and could be called 'eastern'." This harmonic conception is apparent in Engel's compositions. For example, in the Dybbuk suite, opus 35, Engel uses an augmented fifth as the tonic chord, rather than a standard major or minor chord.
Aside from the Dybbuk suite, for string orchestra and clarinet, Engel wrote no orchestral music, and no large-scale works (symphonies, operas, concertos, and so on). His entire oevre is either piano solo, chamber works, or songs. He frequently used innovative combinations for his chamber music; for example, "Adagio Mysterioso", opus 22, is scored for violin, cello, harp and organ. He, like others of the Jewish art music movement, favored songs with obbligato string parts. The song "Ahava Rahya", for example, is scored for singer and violin, flute, viola and organ.
Many of Engel's songs are based on traditional Jewish folksongs. For example, his cradle song "Numi Numi Yaldaty" ("sleep, sleep my child"), is a variant of a traditional Yiddish lullaby. However, Engel often draws on sources other than Jewish traditional music, as well. Ahava Rahya, cited above, is based on an Arabic melody, and many of the tunes he composed in Palestine are based on Yemenite songs.
Engel's popular music, which during his lifetime dominated the popular music scene in Palestine, has been largely forgotten. Some of his songs, however, are still sung today. These include "Numi Numi", one of Israel's most popular lullabies; "Omrim Yeshna Eretz", the children's song "Geshem geshem mishamayim", and others.
External links
- Jascha Nemtsov's website on the new Jewish School in Music
- Discussion of songs with violin or viola written by Engel and other Jewish composers.
- Archival recordings of Jewish art songs by Cantor Louis Danto.