Re: Jewish Classical Composers

[Eric Goldberg <ericgoldie...>]

>I'm afraid to use the very word "classic" but can name a few good American
>names like Ernst Bloch, Joseph Ahron, Aaron Coplend, Lazare Saminsky,
>Irving Berlin... Besides the US you can remember a lot -- Meyerber, Halevy,
>Mendelssohn,  Bruch, Offenbach, Gustav Mahler, Dukas, Arnold Schoenberg,
>Darius Milhaud, Kurt Weill; Anton Rubinstein, Mikhail Gnesin and Osip
>Dunaevsky (Russia)...  Let others will add!
>
>Enjoy!
>
>Izaly

Izaly's list is a good start but Max Bruch was NOT Jewish at all. His
Rhapsody for cello and orchestra based on Kol Nidre is so good that it
might be hard to imagine a non-Jew writing a piece like it, but that is the
case. This lack of Jewish blood should not deter the lover of good music
from investigating his compositions beside Kol Nidre, and the Violin
Concerto in g minor.

Other Jewish composers of 'classical music' as opposed to Broadway include
David Amram, Ursula Mamlok, yours truly Eric Goldberg, David Diamond,
William Shuman, Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, George Rochberg, Ralph Shapey
(A great composer of music with Jewish content. Very thorny stuff but
incredibly powerful) Meyer Kupferman, Marc Lavry, Gunther Schuller, Harold
Shapero. Irving Fine, Mark Koptyman, Paul Ben-Haim and almost every Israeli
composer, the list goes on and on, at least for composers of the 20th
Century.

Eric Goldberg