Secular Jewish music

Around the 15th century, a tradition of secular (non-liturgical) Jewish music was developed by musicians called kleyzmorim or kleyzmerim by Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe. They draw on devotional traditions extending back into Biblical times, and their musical legacy of klezmer continues to evolve today. The repertoire is largely dance songs for weddings and other celebrations. They are typically in Yiddish. The term "klezmer" was a derogatory term referring to low class street musicians. Often the klezmer performed with non-Jewish musicians and played for non-Jewish functions. As a result of this "mixing" the music constantly evolved through the fusing of styles. This practice still plays a major role in the development of musical style to include Jazz, as evident in Benny Goodman's music and even Texas music as evident in the music on the modern Austin Klezmorim.

Sephardic/Ladino

Sephardic music is the unique music of the

These song traditions spread from Spain to Morocco (the Western Tradition) and several parts of the

Mizrahi

Mizrahi music usually refers to the new wave of

Deriving from Biblical traditions, Jewish dance has long been used by Jews as a medium for the expression of joy and other communal emotions. Each Jewish diasporic community developed its own dance traditions for wedding celebrations and other distinguished events. For Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, for example, dances, whose names corresponded to the different forms of klezmer music that were played, were an obvious staple of the wedding ceremony of the shtetl. Jewish dances both were influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. "Nevertheless the Jews practiced a corporeal expressive language that was highly differentiated from that of the non-Jewish peoples of their neighborhood, mainly through motions of the hands and arms, with more intricate legwork by the younger men."^[3] In general, however, in most religiously traditional communities, members of the opposite sex dancing together or dancing at times other than at these events was frowned upon.

Not Jewish in form

This article may contain excessive or irrelevant examples. Please help improve the article by adding descriptive text and removing less pertinent examples. (April 2011)

The below two sections address instances in which Jews have contributed musically using originally non-Jewish forms or the forms used by the mainstream culture,

Jews in mainstream and jazz music

Jews have also contributed to popular music, primarily in the United States and Israel, and in some specific forms of popular music have become or are dominant. This is true to a lesser extent in Europe, but some of the first influential Jewish popular songwriters in the US were actually immigrants from Europe, such as Irving Berlin and Sigmund Romberg, or children of immigrants. The most visible early forms of American popular music in which Jews have contributed are the popular song and musical theater. Approximately half of the members of the Songwriters Hall of Fame are Jewish.^[4] However, the latter especially has been dominated by Jewish composers and lyricists throughout its history and to a certain extent still today.

While Jazz is primarily considered an art form with African-American originators, many Jewish musicians have contributed to it including clarinetists Mezz Mezzrow, Shep Fields,^[5][6] Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw (the latter two swing bandleaders made significant contributions in bringing racial integration into the American music industry^[7][8]), saxophonists Michael Brecker, Kenny G, Stan Getz, Benny Green, Lee Konitz, Ronnie Scott and Joshua Redman, trumpeters and cornetists Randy Brecker, Ruby Braff, Red Rodney and Shorty Rogers, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs, drummers Buddy Rich, Mel Lewis, and Victor Feldman, and singers and pianists Billy Joel, Al Jolson, Ben Sidran and Mel Tormé. Some artists such as Harry Kandel were famous for mixing Jazz with klezmer as is modern Texas klezmer Bill Averbach. Since a great deal of Jazz music consisted of musical cooperation of Jewish and African-American musicians or black musicians funded by Jewish producers, the art form became "the racist's worst nightmare".^[9]

Although the early rock and roll performers were mostly either African Americans or Southern Whites, Jewish songwriters played a key role: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, and nearly all of the other Brill Building songwriters were Jewish, as was Phil Spector. With the mid-1960s rise of the singer-songwriter, some (King, Diamond, Sedaka) became performers; others (such as Burt Bacharach) managed to continue to work primarily as songwriters.

Many worked with a mix of

"Popular" music in Europe during the early 20th century would have been considered to be lighter classical forms such as operetta and entertainments like cabaret, and in these Jewish involvement was very large, especially in Vienna and Paris. Jacques Offenbach, a Roman Catholic convert, was an ethnically Jewish composer of operettas in the second half of the 20th century. Serge Gainsbourg was one of the dominant figures in the evolution of cabaret music.

Popular

Israel has, since 1973, participated in the annual event

Jews in classical music

The Jewish musical tradition, for instance, was far older than anyone else's in Europe. Music remained an element in Jewish services, and the cantor was almost as pivotal a figure in local Jewish society as the rabbi. But Jewish musicians, except as converts, had played no part in European musical development. Hence the entry, in considerable numbers, of Jewish composers and performers on the musical scene in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was a phenomenon, and a closely observed one.^[12]

Likewise, music historian David Conway notes that

At the start of the nineteenth century there were virtually no Jewish professionals in music and the standard of music in Jewish synagogues was generally appalling. Yet by the end of the same century throughout Europe Jews held leading positions as conductors,

Meyerbeer ] was the most successful opera composer of the century, and the Jews were commonly held, what would have seemed nonsensical a hundred years earlier, to be a 'musical people'.^[13]

However, the issue in both cases is not so simple: although his father urged him to drop the name "Mendelssohn" in concert programs to purge any reference to his Jewish past, Felix "retained the name... despite his father's protests, and though undoubtedly a sincere Lutheran, retained a respect for his Jewish history. His professional and social success may have emboldened him to be more forthrightly pro-Jewish than other converts".[30] Mahler wrote what have been perceived as Jewish references in his works, including klezmer-like passages in the third movement of the First Symphony and first movement of the Third; in addition, the previously mentioned fifth movement of the Second Symphony includes a passage that many believe imitates shofar blasts with a programmatic text resembling the Unetanneh Tokef prayer.

The most compelling reason why Mendelssohn and Mahler are commonly considered Jewish composers are because they have been repeatedly identified as such both by

He [Gustav] was not a man who ever deceived himself, and he knew that people would not forget he was a Jew.... Nor did he wish it forgotten.... He never denied his Jewish origin. Rather he emphasized it.[34]

Regarding Wagner himself, it often seems ironic to some that many of the most influential and popular interpreters of his work have been Jewish conductors such as the aforementioned Mahler and Bernstein, as well as Daniel Barenboim, Arthur Fiedler, Asher Fisch, Otto Klemperer, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, Hermann Levi (who was chosen by Wagner to conduct the premiere of Parsifal^[35] Lorin Maazel, Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, Sir Georg Solti, George Szell and Bruno Walter. It has been noted that there is a "love of contemporary Jewish conductors for Wagner".^[36] While much has been written about Wagner's anti-Semitism in his writings and music, and the Nazi appropriation of his music, research in recent years has analyzed the possibility that Wagner was himself of Jewish ancestry, and explored Wagner's interaction with and attitude towards the Jews through a multi-sided perspective.^[37]

Much less complex and disputed is the Jewishness of

Both Mahler and Schoenberg were Jewish composers who converted to a form of Christianity to avoid anti-Semitism, but were still attacked by the anti-Semitic elements of Viennese society as fundamentally Jewish and therefore a corrupting and perverse influence. According to Paul Johnson,

The feeling of cultural outrage was much more important than anti-Semitism as such; or rather, it turned into anti-Semites, at any rate for the moment, people who normally never expressed such feelings. It was he Jew-as-Iconoclast which aroused the really deep rage... Mahler had begun it; Schönberg carried it on; both were Jews, and they corrupted young Aryan composers like Berg – so the argument went.^[38]

Again, although these critics meant their identifications of Mahler and Schoenberg as Jewish in an offensive way, this context provides a legitimate reason to claim them as Jewish composers today, though now in a neutral or positive sense. Despite the three above examples, however, a majority of Jewish artists and intellectuals in Austria, Germany and France during the 19th century and early 20th century assimilated culturally either by keeping the Jewish religion but living a mainstream European lifestyle (as Moses Mendelssohn had wished in earlier decades) or renouncing religion in favor of secularism, but retained at least the identification of Jewishness. It is the dual existence of people who disassociated themselves with Judaism yet remained affiliated with the Jewish people, and those who wished to retain the Jewish religion but eliminate any distinct Jewish culture by blending into Gentile society in this region and period (as opposed to Eastern Europe at the same time, where both the Jewish peoplehood and religion were preserved) that show the complexities of both Judaism and secular Jewish culture.

See also

• Jewish music
• Secular Jewish culture
• List of Jewish musicians

References