Jews make their mark in music

9 Comments / 59 Comments

1. The original post was so flip, suggesting the contribution was minimal, it needed an overwhelming answer. Should be an ongoing column somewhere. People have no idea. If we were removed from history, especially the history of music, there wouldn’t be much left. The world owes us a debt it can never repay.

2. @ Ted Belman:
   Put back the one about Polish Jewish music. It’s the most important one. The Jewish contribution was larger than anyone remembers.

3. @ Sebastien Zorn:
   You are over doing it. I removed many of your comments and don’t wish to see any more under this post.

4. “Stan Getz (born Stanley Gayetski; February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as “The Sound” because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman’s big band, Getz is described by critic Scott Yanow as “one of the all-time great tenor saxophonists”.[1] Getz performed in bebop and cool jazz groups. Influenced by João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim, he popularized bossa nova in America with the hit single “The Girl from Ipanema” (1964)….”
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Getz

5. “Serenata al Vento,” by Aldo Finzi:

   “The Jewish Opera Italy Couldn’t Bear to Hear
   It was canceled 80 years ago due to anti-Semitic laws. Now, it’s finally going mainstream—but so is the fascist ideology that blocked it in the first place.”

   https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/the-jewish-opera-italy-couldnt-bear-to-hear/562526/

6. Menotti wasn’t Jewish but “DEC. 12, 1987 12 AM”
   “In a week in which 200,000 American Jews and supporters marched in Washington, to demand that the Soviet Union allow the emigration of an estimated 400,000 Jewish refuseniks, Gian Carlo Menotti’s tear-jerker melodrama about repression in a police state, “The Consul,” assumed a special poignancy–even in such an earnest but unimaginatively acted version as given Thursday by the University of Southern California Opera…” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-12-12-ca-6487-story.html

7. “In the 13th century, France is a land of choice for Jews. In the south live the Oc language Jews, in the north those speaking the Oïl language. Influenced by local music and the poetry of troubadours and trouvères, the Jews adapt the songs of their time with lyrics that tell their lives. Sometimes noted, these Jewish songs have recently been the subject of several exciting musical renditions.

   But the Jewish song in France does not stop in the Middle Ages. Despite the numerous expulsions of Jews from France, it is found in the 18th century in the former Comtat Venaissin or in the Portuguese communities of south-western France. But it is really in the 19th and 20th century that the Jewish song knows success: Yiddish songs conveyed by Jews from Eastern Europe fleeing pogroms, songs in Judeo-Spanish or in Arabic by Jews from the Ottoman Empire or North Africa.

   Today, the Jewish song is living a real renaissance. Many artists have started a reconquest of this very rich repertoire. Between loyalty and creativity, they break the boundaries and insert Jewish songs into the mainstream of World Music….[you can listen to the songs] https://www.iemj.org/en/listen/route-of-the-jewish-song-in-france.html?lang=en

8. (RARE!) Voice of Tchaikowsky & Anton Rubinstein On Edison Cylinder ! (1890)
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DEEdFLjUiw

9. “What’s in a name” by Arnold Steinhardt, first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet, of whom 3 out of 4, including himself, are Jewish. Some other famous names listed. https://keyofstrawberry.com/whats-in-a-name/