Jewish Composers

[San Antone]

Interestingly enough, the names of the most famous 19C Jewish composers all started with M: Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Moszkowski, Mahler. 

In this respect, Moritz Moskowski (double M!) produced an excellent bon mot. To Hans von Buelow's statement "Bach, Beethoven, Brahms! Tous les autres sont des cretins!" he retorted "Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Moszkowski! Tous les autres sont des Chretiens!" 

The other day I watched a documentary about Jewish composers and Broadway.  It was demonstrated that almost all of the composers of musical theater in New York were Jewish, with one notable exception of Cole Porter.  However, before Porter was ultimately successful he discovered that what his songs were missing was the "Jewish tinge" and if you analyze his most famous songs you can hear similarities between his melodies and traditional Jewish songs.

Jerome Kern
Irving Berlin
The Gershwins
Harold Arlen
Rodgers & Hart/Hammerstein
Alan Lerner and Frederick Loewe
Jerry Herman
Leonard Bernstein
Stephen Sondheim

The list is very long.

[Roy Bland]

https://www.academia.edu/8425010/Jewish_Musicians_in_the_Lands_of_Islam_An_Overview?email_work_card=title

[calyptorhynchus]

Was Peter Sculthorpe a jew? The reason I ask is that I vaguely remember noticing that he died in a Jewish hospital.

Answering this many moons later.... no he wasn't, it's just his local hospital was originally a Jewish hospital, now non-denominational.

[calyptorhynchus]

Minna Keal had an interesting life and returned to composition at an advanced age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minna_Keal

I like her Symphony and her Cello Concerto.

[Roy Bland]

I didn't know this disc


and

https://www.academia.edu/26166885/Israelism_Nationalism_Orientalism_and_the_Israeli_Five?email_work_card=title

[Roy Bland]

Yosla Rosemblatt

[Scion7]

Dutch composer Henriette Bosmans' (1895-1952) mother was a Jew, and due to that her music was banned from performance or broadcasting; during the Nazi occupation she lived off food from friends and was almost arrested at a clandestine performance.  Her mother was not yet shipped off to a camp when the war ended, and both were suffering from malnutrition and extreme exhaustion. She resumed composing in 1948.

[Roy Bland]

[Dima]

No one has named yet:
Henryk Wieniawski - my favorite of him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIkw1zWtTiQ
Imre Kalman - this is incredible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAOKIzzroZM

[Karl Henning]

My article

The interview which is my subject:

[Roy Bland]

[Roy Bland]

[Roy Bland]

[Roy Bland]

I impulse bought this in a shop last week and was delighted to discover it. Maurice Jacobson (1896-1976) is largely unknown but on the strength of this deserves to be heard. I liked all the piano pieces (performed by his son) but the highlights were the moving 'Lament' from 1941 and, above all the 'Theme and Variations' (1943-47) which was originally for orchestra and I'd love to hear the orchestral version too. This, at twenty minutes is by far the longest work on the CD and the most impressive. I have already listened to it three times with increasing enjoyment. The 'Lament' has a rather Bloch-like quality to it but elsewhere the music has echoes of the English pastoral tradition and admirers of Vaughan Williams and John Ireland might well enjoy it. Certainly worth exploring:
[asin]B00JWUX1G4[/asin]

Do you know what is contains? and why is so expensive?
https://www.amazon.it/Centanery-Concert-Maurice-Jacobson/dp/B005H6GHTK

[Daverz]

My article

The interview which is my subject:

I hope there will be a followup.  As I recall, you only made it up to 1958 or so.

[San Antone]

I just wanted to remind everyone of the Jewish American thread I started many years ago:

https://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,18101.msg495212.html#msg495212

In my first post I acknowledge that thread, but started this one for Jewish composers from other countires, as well.

I haven't cited one of my favorite composers Osvaldo Golijov, Argentinian Jewish composer. Here's an early work that has distinct Jewish influences.

Other notable works include:

Yiddishbbuk - written for the St. Lawrence Quartet on Tanglewood's Fromm Commission, is inspired by a line from an apocryphal psalm: "No one sings as purely as those who are in the deepest hell...." Its first movement commemorates three children who perished in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin.

Ayre - cycle of songs commissioned by Carnegie Hall for soprano Dawn Upshaw, which offers a tour of the Mediterranean, particularly in that mixture of Spanish, Jewish and Arabic influences that once coexisted (relatively ) quietly in Spain before the Reconquista.

Azul - cello concerto

Ainadamar or An Opera in Three Images (Arabic for 'Fountain of Tears') is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The libretto was written by American playwright David Henry Hwang and translated from English into Spanish by the composer. 

La Pasión según San Marcos - a contemporary classical composition by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. It was finished in 2000 and is amongst Golijov's most well known compositions. It is famous for combining several Latin and African musical styles.

Falling Out of Time - song cycle based on a book by Israeli author David Grossman.
"years ago, Osvaldo Golijov sat down on a park bench in Tel Aviv to read David Grossman's Falling Out of Time. Part play, part poem, part fable, the book narrates a journey "out of time" as parents grieve the death of their child, a quest to comprehend a loss with no name."

[vandermolen]

FAO Roy Bland:
You can get a S/H copy for £3.31 on Ebay:

[Roy Bland]

FAO Roy Bland:
You can get a S/H copy for £3.31 on Ebay:

I don't want to appear skeptical but are you sure they are the same pieces? , the question always remains why it is so expensive however  thanks

[vandermolen]

I don't want to appear skeptical but are you sure they are the same pieces? , the question always remains why it is so expensive however  thanks

I think so but not sure about the price issue.

[Roy Bland]

On composer Wiesemberg

https://www.mwm.co.il/