Family genealogy
Classical music
Classical Music and Jewishness
In the Baroque era , only Salomone Rossi (1570-1630), "el Ebreo del Mantova", made a name for himself by publishing in Venice, in 1622, the superb Canticles of Solomon, for 5 voices (The Solomon in question is Rossi himself, not the King of Israel!).
He also composed instrumental music but recordings are currently few in number (Listen to Sonata quarta sopra l'aria di Ruggiero or this amazing "live" recording from Saint Petersburg of the Sonata in dialogo).
Then, it was not until the 19th century that other notable Jewish composers appeared, although still few in number:
1) in Germany, ETA Hoffmann (1776-1822), Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer, alias Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), Félix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and his sister Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847), Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885, Symphony in E minor), Karl Goldmark (1830-1915, Violin Concerto);
2) in France, Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-1888, 12 Etudes opus 35 which foreshadow Chopin) and Benjamin Godard (1849- 1895, Symphonie Orientale);
3) in Russia, Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894)
While it remains true that Jewish composers were rare until the approach of the 1900s, a more serious explanation is to be found in the weight of traditions linked to Jewish worship.
A little bit of history (and perspective) can't hurt at this stage.
Born in Geneva on July 24, 1880 and died on July 15, 1959 in Portland (United States), Ernest Bloch was a Swiss composer, violinist, conductor and pedagogue who became a naturalized American citizen, whose work is deeply marked by his Jewish identity.
The Two Hebrew Melodies are melodies for voice and piano by Maurice Ravel, composed in 1914 based on traditional Hebrew songs.
Here is a transposition for cello
Then, a succession of tragic events forced Jewish (musicians) to emigrate again; one was linked to the Bolshevik Revolution and the other to the rise of National Socialism (One could add the desertion of the countries of the Soviet bloc during the Cold War).
These exoduses took place towards the continental West, then, when that was not enough, towards Great Britain and especially towards the USA .
These incessant movements promoted secularization which gained momentum during the first decades of the 20th century: intensive musical practice became possible which in fact never stopped.
Before establishing themselves as composers, Jewish musicians distinguished themselves as performers.
From the end of the 19th century, they formed a contingent of instrumentalists capable of supplying the great American orchestras then in full formation.
Then the best among them established themselves as soloists to such an extent that from 1945 onwards, it became easier to find a great Jewish performer than a non-Jewish one, consider this:
- On violin : Joseph Joachim, Fritz Kreisler, Henryk Wieniawski, Yehudi Menuhin, Joseph Szigeti, Jascha Heifetz, Joshua Bell, Leonid Kogan, Nathan Milstein, Henryk Szeryng, David Oistrakh, Isaac Stern, Gidon Kremer, Itzhak Perlman, Gil Shaham, Maxime Vengerov, Pinchas Zukerman, .
- On piano : Arthur Rubinstein, Arthur Schnabel, Clara Haskil, Vladimir Horowitz, Emil Gilels, Hephzibah Menuhin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lazar Berman, Glenn Gould, Rudolph Serkin, Daniel Barenboim, Hélène Grimaud, Evgeny Kissin, Radu Lupu, Murray Perahia, András Schiff, ...,
- On cello : Jacqueline du Pré, Gregor Piatigorsky, Mstislav Rostropovich, Emanuel Feuerman, Steven Isserlis, Misha Maisky, .
- Conducting : Jascha Horenstein, Victor de Sabata, Bruno Walter, Felix Weingartner, Otto Klemperer, Fritz Reiner, Pierre Monteux, Karel Ancerl, Eugene Ormandy, Serge Koussevitzky, Erich Leinsdorf, Georg Solti, George Szell, Leonard Bernstein, Antal Dorati, Mariss Jansons, Istvan Kertesz, Paul Kletzki, Kyril Kondrashin, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, André Previn, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, ...!
Who can say better?
A similar evolution has occurred in composition, and an inventory of the best Jewish contributors to the Western repertoire is now possible based on available recordings.
Two discographic series, consistently released by Naxos, are particularly valuable,
The Milken Archive of Jewish Music and American Classics.
In the second half of the 19th century, an interest in popular and exotic music developed in Europe.
With the emergence of world's fairs and the expansion of British and French colonial empires, Orientalism became fashionable.
Debussy was the first to draw inspiration from oral tradition music to invent a music that broke with classical Western language.
He greatly influenced the composers of the following generation ( Bartók, Stravinsky, de Falla, etc.), who based their own musical language on the popular music of their regions.
We also know of Ravel 's attachment to the popular music of different cultures.
Thus, in 1910, Ravel set to music seven popular songs – including one in Yiddish: Mejerke, main Suhn (Meyerke, my son) – as part of a competition organized by the House of the Lied in Moscow.
Also at the beginning of the 20th century , Russian Jewish musicians and researchers became interested in popular Jewish music.
From 1900 onwards, Joël Engel (1868-1927) began to record and perform Jewish folk songs in concert.
Encouraged by the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, this movement attracted young Jewish musicians – such as Lazare Saminsky, Solomon Rosowsky , Aleksandr Krein, and Joseph Achron – and culminated in 1908 with the founding of the
"Jewish Popular Music Society" in St. Petersburg.
For Shalom An-Ski (writer, journalist, and ethographer, 1863–1920), the essential element is not so much the materials used, but the way the bricks are arranged to build either a church or a synagogue. In other words, for An-Ski, the (Jewish) content takes precedence over the (non-Jewish) form.
This idea was taken up by Ernest Bloch, often considered the champion of Jewish art music.
Between 1912 and 1916, Bloch composed, among other works, Three Jewish Poems (1913), Three Psalms (1912-1914), a symphony Israel (1912-1916), Schelomo, a Hebrew rhapsody for cello and orchestra (1916).
Bloch does not consider himself an archaeologist of Jewish music. He writes music nourished by the Hebrew spirit and a love of the Bible.
Darius Milhaud, who defined himself as "French, born in Aix and of Jewish faith," was also the author of an important body of Jewish work. Notable examples include: Jewish Poems (1916), the opera Esther de Carpentras (1925-1927), his 6 Hebrew Folk Songs (1925), the Sacred Morning Service of the Sabbath (1947), the oratorio David composed for the third millennium of Jerusalem in 1955, and finally his last work, the cantata Ani Maamin (1974) on a text by Elie Wiesel, which recounts the horrors committed at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek.
This historic recording was made in 1992 on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Darius Milhaud (1892-1974).
Ani maamin is the last work of this prolific composer (443 works in his catalogue!) who defined himself as a "Frenchman born in Aix and of Jewish faith".
This cantata, which is based on a text by Elie Wiesel, deported at the age of fifteen to Auschwitz, describes the horror of the extermination camps and the martyrdom of the Jews (the father killed in front of the son, the child strangled in the arms of his mother…).
But it is also the expression of a faith that opens onto eternal questions, which everyone asks and tries to resolve in their own way: the responsibility of a god, the responsibility of men.
And contemporary ballet
My sister and I recently discovered choreographers from the Batsheva Dance Company, founded in 1964 by Martha Graham and Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild in Israel. The company has produced many internationally renowned choreographers, including Ohad Naharin, Hofesh Schechter, and Sharon Eyal.
We saw his staging of a Passover song "E'had mi Yodéa", an enumerative song (one, who knows), at the Ganier Opera.
These three choreographers are now in the repertoire of the Paris Opera.