RE: The opera "Central Park," German Jewry

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Elliot,

Thank SO SO SO very much for writing about these pre-war composers.  I know 
very little about them and will now try to do everything I can to advertise 
their works (as well as listen to them myself.)  I unfortunately didn't get 
to attend the conference in NY on this music a year or two ago and so 
missed all of this info.   Please send me whatever you can on music of this 
period for the Holocaust page I am doing.


Reyzl


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From:  eliott kahn [SMTP:elkahn (at) JTSA(dot)EDU]
Sent:  Monday, February 14, 2000 3:20 PM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:  Re:  The opera "Central Park," German Jewry

I just wanted to briefly clarify a few points.

First of all, I did see CENTRAL PARK on television. I regret that I missed
it in person and will try City Opera next year. The last two operas--not
the Wasserstein/Drattell--were the best ones in the triptych. The final one 
by Terrence McNally and Jack Beaser about a homeless woman in Central Park
trying to GIVE her baby away and no one taking it, was--to me--a work of
art. Just brilliant, and Dawn Upshaw as the woman was magnificent.

I very much enjoyed Wasserstein's libretto for the first opera--about
Tashlich ,and old, lost love in Central Park. Deborah Drattel's music did,
indeed, use some klezmer elements, but IMHO the music didn't breathe, and
the text was set too literally for the opera to really take off. I'm afraid 
in the battle of the composer and librettist, the librettist won--and the
opera lost.

RE: German-Jewish music between the Wars: there were a few composers who
wrote distinctly Jewish art music. Two important names were Hugo (Chaim)
Adler--father of American composer Samuel Adler--and Heinrich Schalit, whom 
I recently completed my doctoral essay on. (Please see bio below.)

The Juwal publishing co. founded by Joel Engel in Berlin ca. 1920-1922,
also published the music of composers from the St. Petersburg Folk Music
Society and gave concerts. He was one of many Russian Jews in Berlin's
Jewish quarter,  many of who eventually emigrated because of the
anti-semitism and harsh economic conditions of the inflation of 1923.

Not all Jews were the image we have of the upstanding German
"Yekke."  There were at least 10,000 German members of the Zionist party,
and a good number of people actively sought to build German-Jewish
institutions such as newspapers, museums, Jewish literature,  art and 
music.

For more info, please see: Brenner, Michael. The Renaissance of Jewish
Culture in Weimar Germany. NY: Columbia U. Press, 1994.

Schalit Bio.

Heinrich Schalit was born in Vienna on January 2, 1886 and died in
Evergreen, Colorado on February 3, 1976. During his long life, Schalit had
the misfortune of experiencing two world wars as well as being born a
European Jew in a time of great political upheaval. These circumstances
profoundly altered the course of his life and his style of musical 
expression.

Schalit was enrolled at Vienna's Konservatorium fur Musik und darstellende
Kunst, where he studied piano with Polish pianist Theodor Leschetizky
(1830-1915) and musical composition with Robert Fuchs (1847-1927)-- teacher 
of Gustav Mahler and Jan Sibelius.  Schalit graduated from the
Konservatorium in 1906 with a "superior" rating ("vorzuglich") and at the
end of the year won the prestigious Austrian State Prize for Composition
with his Klavierquartett in E moll (Piano Quartet in E Minor).

Schalit relocated to Munich in 1907, embarking upon a successful career
composing post- Romantic Lieder and chamber music. His Jugendland (Land of
Youth) solo piano pieces were performed throughout Europe by renowned
pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch (1878-1936).  His 6 Liebeslieder (Six Songs of
Love) was published in Vienna in 1921 by one of Europe's most prestigious
music publishing concerns, Universal Edition.

The carnage and privations of the first World War affected Schalit as they
would countless other young people. The continuance of German
antisemitism--in the form of a 1916 army census seeking to verify Jewish
service at the fronts--might also have deeply disturbed him. Whatever the
reasons, in 1916 he made a conscious decision to begin writing music of
"Jewish content and character."  This would align him with a small but
vibrant Jewish cultural movement that was an offshoot of the burgeoning,
early twentieth-century Zionist political movement.

  During the 1920s Schalit composed, performed, and published several
important pieces of German-Jewish art music. His Seelenlieder (Songs of the 
Soul) for voice with piano was published in Vienna by Universal Edition in
1921. His 1928 hymn In Ewigkeit (In Eternity) for chorus, organ, harp, and
violins was performed and well reviewed in Munich, Frankfurt, Augsburg,
Dresden, and Berlin. The texts of both works use German translations of
Hebrew poetry by medieval Spanish poet Judah ha-Levi (12thcent.).

Schalit's early Jewish works profoundly influenced two younger Jewish
musicians who studied at the State Academy for Music in Munich: renowned
Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim (nee Frankenburger, 1897-1984) and Herbert
Fromm (1905-1995), who became one of the most important creators of
American synagogue music in the twentieth century.

In September 1927 Heinrich Schalit assumed the post of organist and music
director at Munich's Hauptsynagoge (Great Synagogue). He remained there
until late 1933, when he and his family were forced to to leave Munich to
avoid Nazi persecution. At the Hauptsynagoge, Schalit worked under Cantor
Emanuel Kirschner (1857-1938) and also began to compose religious music. In 
1932 at the request of Alexander Weinbaum (1875-1943?), then organist and
music director at Berlin's Lutzowstrasse Synagoge, Schalit composed his
Eine Freitagabend-Liturgie. This synagogue work utilized contemporary modal 
techniques as well as traditional melodies discovered by Jewish
musicologist A.Z. Idelsohn (1882-1938). At its world premiere on September
16, 1932, the work was highly praised by German musicologists Alfred
Einstein, Hugo Leichtentritt, and Curt Sachs.

After living in Rome and London, the Schalit family arrived in Rochester,
N.Y. in August 1940. Schalit was music director at Rochester's Temple
B'rith Kodesh until 1943. He would then serve as music director at Temple
Beth El in Providence, Rhode Island until his resignation in 1948. His last 
full-time position was from 1949-1950 as organist at Temple Israel in
Hollywood, California.

Schalit, his wife, and  their two younger sons  relocated to Denver in
1948. In 1954, with their children grown, the Schalits purchased a plot of
land in the nearby mountains and over the course of a few years had an
additional room built on it. They moved up their permanently in 1958.

  In the 1960s Schalit received commissions to compose synagogue music for
Congregation Emanu-El in New York, N.Y.,  Temple E-manu-El of Dallas,
Texas, Temple B'rith Kodesh in Rochester, New York, and The Temple in
Cleveland, Ohio. He would continue publishing his newer and older,
revised  works throughout the 1970s. He was working on  Forget Thy
Affliction, a setting of an English translation of a Hebrew poem by
Medieval Spanish poet Solomon ibn Gabirol (1020-1027), when he died in
February 1976.

At 03:40 AM 2/13/00 -0500, you wrote:

> > ...and the music may/should sound "like the music of 1938 Germany"
> whatever
>that means. May/Should it sound like general Jewish-German of the period?
>Do we mean Kurt Weill type of Jewish-German music? etc.<
>
>I doubt that the more secular Jewish-German music from 20th century really
>sounded recognizably Jewish. Besides classical music, most people will 
have
>listened to Schlager, light classical music etc. Of course there were a 
lot
>of Jewish artists (Friedrich Hollaender, Comedian Harmonists, to name the
>most popular ones), but they were not performing/composing Jewish, or even
>Jewish-flavoured, music.
>Kurt Weill's different, but only became popular for his hit songs 
(Brecht).
>
>You most probably could find some cantorial recordings etc. at Jewish 
homes,
>but these were not specifically German-Jewish.
>Most Jewish-German families would strive after leading a perfect bourgeois
>life, and that goes with listening to classical European music, be the
>composer Jewish or not.
>
>CD
>
>---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+
>