Three Strands of a Jewish Musical Tradition
By Thomas Wolf
The Jewish Musical Tradition: An Insider’s View
What do “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,” “Sleigh Bells,” “Have Yourself a Merry, Merry Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” have in common? Answer: These songs were all written by Jews.
Yet when we speak of a Jewish Musical Tradition, we need to go well beyond Christmas songs. What do we really mean when we speak of Jewish music?
On the one hand, there is Jewish liturgical music—music of the synagogue. On the other, there is Jewish secular music like that of the klezmorim (Jewish band music for popular occasions). But this description only scratches the surface. The Jewish diaspora (the departure of Jews from their homeland when they were a unified people) dates back at least six centuries before the birth of Christ. The musical traditions that followed were often borrowed from wherever particular Jews found themselves. Trying to locate a singular Jewish musical tradition is not really possible.
The Maine Jewish Museum in Portland. It was here that I was to deliver a pre-concert lecture on “The Jewish Musical Tradition.”
Yet, solving this conundrum was my dilemma once I, a Jewish musician myself, agreed to deliver a pre-concert lecture for the presenting organization Portland Ovations at the Maine Jewish Museum in early October of 2023. The Jerusalem String Quartet was to perform the music of Felix Mendelssohn, Paul Ben-Haim, and Claude Debussy and the title of my lecture was to be “The Jewish Musical Tradition: An Insider’s View.”
This dilemma was of my own making. As so often happens when one is invited to speak many months ahead of time, I did not give a lot of thought to the details of my talk. I knew Felix Mendelssohn’s grandfather was an important Jewish philosopher—clearly a good place to start—and it was obvious that both the concert performers that afternoon (the Jerusalem String Quartet) and the composer, Paul Ben-Heim, were Israelis. Furthermore, the concert was taking place at an important Jewish site where many in the audience were likely to be co-religionists. The topic seemed an obvious one. And as a special bonus, such a topic was likely to please the crowd. As to how Debussy would fit into my talk… well, I decided I could figure that out when the time came.
Abraham Mendelssohn, Felix’s father, who converted to Christianity and refused to have his son circumcised as would have been required by the Jewish faith. The drawing was by his son-in-law, the artist, Wilhelm Hensel.
But when the time did come and the talk was only two weeks away, I had to acknowledge that this topic may have been a stretch. It is true that Felix Mendelssohn’s grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, was Jewish. But the composer himself was a baptized Christian. His father, Abraham, had converted to Christianity and even refused to have Felix circumcised.
Mendelssohn’s string quartets were solidly in a mainstream European musical tradition—an example of early Romanticism that Mendelssohn himself described as “German.” And while I had lectured on the Debussy quartet on numerous occasions and loved the piece, there was no way I was going to describe the Frenchman or his compositional style as Jewish.
But as if to prove that necessity is the mother of invention, the haze began to clear as the day of the lecture approached and I found myself developing the skeleton of what was a coherent outline.
First, for something light and personal to introduce the talk, I had a nice anecdote prepared. When I chose the music for my wedding more than fifty years earlier—a wedding that took place in a synagogue—all the music (including the 45 minutes before the ceremony and the music in the ceremony itself) consisted of movements from Mendelssohn string quartets. I did not, at the time, think of the music as Jewish—though one Gentile at the gathering surprised my mother by asking whether this was traditional Jewish wedding music. Well, why not? I loved the idea though I had to confess that I had chosen the music simply because it seemed to fit perfectly with the beauty of the occasion and with the setting. When the wonderful cellist, Bonnie Hampton, agreed to assemble a group of colleagues to play the music, I didn’t hesitate. Yes, here was my introduction—Mendelssohn quartets in a synagogue—a perfect combination for a Jewish wedding.
Felix Mendelssohn—A pursuit of the harmonization of mind and heart through musical composition
Moses Mendelssohn, Felix’s grandfather, in a famous portrait by Anton Graff (1773). He was one of the most important Jewish philosophers and theologians of the German Enlightenment.
To get to more substance, I turned to a new book by Jeremy Eicher titled Time’s Echo.[i] In it, the author locates Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and his music squarely in a Jewish cultural milieu. Grandfather Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) was an important Jewish philosopher and theologian whose work positioned religious Judaism within the expansive ideas of a German-Christian world embracing the new ideas of the Enlightenment. It was Moses who first translated the holy Hebrew books into elegant modern German. Erudite, brilliant, highly respected both by Jews and Christians, his work integrated Jewish thought into mainstream philosophical trends of the time and this elevated music to a new pride of place.
While Moses’s son Abraham moved to Berlin, became a banker, and converted to Christianity, the influence of the older man as an educated and enlightened Jew was to have ramifications on both Abraham and Moses’ grandson, the composer. The period in which the Mendelssohns lived was characterized by a philosophy that championed the pursuit of knowledge through both reason on the one hand and a celebration of the senses on the other. The Jewish reverence for tradition, for knowledge, and for study combined with the paramount ideals of reason and culture would lead to a hot-house education for Felix and his siblings. Their home-schooling brought distinguished mathematicians, scientists, poets, philosophers, as well as painters, composers, and instrumentalists to the household to tutor the children.
But there was another element to this education. As a result of Abraham’s marriage into a prominent Jewish family, the Solomons, Felix tutelage would be influenced by his mother, a fine musician in her own right. He and his siblings would receive the benefit of a widely influential and educated circle that celebrated the arts and new ideas of freedom of expression and a more explicit recognition of the emotions. Their education went beyond music but also encompassed art, literature, and philosophy. Like so many parents from a Jewish heritage, the Mendelssohns believed that education and culture would set their children apart. Unlike their ghettoized Jewish forebears, they wanted their children to be fully accepted into the leadership of society. Music and culture more generally were seen as vehicles to achieve their ambition.
As for the children, whatever their eventual professions (or in Felix’s sister Fanny’s case, the profession of whomever she would marry), each was expected to master music and the other arts at a professional level just as their mother had. At first it was Fanny who seemed destined to lead her family’s generation in music. (Though she did continue her musical activities, she married the distinguished royal court painter, Wilhelm Henzel). Felix’s brother Paul was destined to head the family banking business though he too was an accomplished musician for whom Felix would write a very difficult cello sonata. But it was Felix who turned out to be the real musical prodigy—possibly the greatest musical prodigy since Mozart—and his amazing gifts were apparent at a very young age. It was he that would pursue music as a career.
Felix Mendelssohn at about the time he wrote his opus 12 string quartet at the age of 20 in a drawing by Mary Evans.
Indeed, Felix was writing music at an incredibly high level in his young teens, much of it to be performed at Sunday musicales at home where some of the greatest instrumentalists in Berlin came for informal musical sessions. His string octet, considered one of the masterpieces of classical chamber music, was composed when he was 15, the opus 12 quartet when he was 20. The music drew on earlier forms—no one ever did more than Felix to rekindle an interest in Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, much of whose music had been largely forgotten after his death.
The “Canzonetta” from the opus 12 string quartet is a perfect example of Mendelssohn’s approach. A canzonetta is an ancient Italian song form featuring a solo voice and accompaniment. But in Mendelssohn’s hands. The architecture was transformed into a moderately-paced classical scherzo in 2/4 time, with a two-part “song” section (in which each half repeated), followed by a quick contrasting middle section (again two parts repeated), and then a return to the song without repeats and with an elegant ending. The structure borrows a bit from Bach bourrées, from Haydn and Mozart minuets, and from Beethoven scherzos. At the same time, it draws on an ancient musical form while also breaking new ground. Quite a hat trick.
So in the end, is Mendelssohn’s music Jewish? Perhaps not any more than “I am Dreaming of a White Christmas,” “Sleigh Bells,” “Have Yourself a Merry, Merry Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” or “Rudolf, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” are examples of Jewish music, though all were written by Jews. What is significant is that the opus 12 quartet was composed by someone steeped in what Germans called bildung—the harmonization of mind and heart, “the ideal of personal ennoblement through humanistic education, a faith in the ability of literature, music, philosophy, and poetry, to renovate the self.”[ii] Felix was the grandson of an intellectual pioneer whose life was devoted to linking the Jewish beauty of holiness with the German Enlightenment’s holiness of beauty.
This to me is the essence of our first strand in the Jewish musical tradition: a pursuit of the harmonization of mind and heart through musical composition, one that would be carried forward by other Jewish composers including Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Aaron Copeland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein, to name a few.
Paul Ben-Haim—The incorporation of ancient modes connected to Jewish holy texts
Israeli composer, Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984), born Paul Frankenburger in Munich, Germany, wrote music that drew on Jewish modal music with ancient origins.
With the quartet by Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984), I was on solid ground in talking about a second strand of music that was identifiably Jewish. The String Quartet No. 1, Op 21, from 1937, a large thirty-minute piece, is by a German-Jewish composer who emigrated to the holy land, became an Israeli citizen, and wrote music, some of which was overtly religious in subject matter and melodic material.
So what is Jewish about Ben-Haim’s music? It draws on Jewish liturgical music—that is, ancient music from the synagogue that in turn is based on characteristic modes (melodic formulas that are routinely connected with holy text). Jews recognize these modes when the cantor or anyone else chants from scripture or when the congregation sings various prayers and responses. Today, in many synagogues, much of this music has been westernized—harmonized with familiar chords that make it more palatable to the modern ear. Much of that musical transformation occurred during the nineteenth century, influenced by the same liberalization and emancipation that was championed by Moses Mendelssohn. But the true unvarnished chants are very old and authentically Jewish.
The very opening phrases of this quartet call for each instrument to enter with a modal passage and these are then skillfully woven into a musical tapestry. Such polyphony is not what one would hear in a synagogue—this is, after all, classical chamber music. But the melodic material on which the individual lines are based, or much of it, comes from the liturgical modal tradition. In the final movement, as well, the opening melody and other melodic material draws from ancient modes.
I can just imagine some non-Jews, in listening to this quartet, saying, “Hey wait. That’s not Jewish music. That’s middle eastern.” I can even picture someone declaring, “I heard music like that when I watched a belly dancer at an Arabic restaurant last Saturday night.”
And of course, they are right. These modes have been shared among many traditions, most especially those in the Middle East. They have great universality. But they are ancient and certainly Jews did much to promulgate them. Thus, a second strand of the Jewish musical tradition: the incorporation of ancient modes connected to Jewish holy texts.
Eugène Ysaÿe, first violinist of the Ysaÿe Quartet that premiered the string quartet of Claude Debussy in 1893.
Claude Debussy—The domination of Jewish instrumentalists (especially string players) following the quartet’s premiere
Which brings us to the Debussy String Quartet in G Minor. How does this work, which bridges the Romantic and Impressionist musical periods, fit into a talk about Jewish music? As a composition, it does not. Nor is there anything significant in the biography of Claude Debussy (1862-1918), at least that I am aware of, that we can turn to with the possible exception that his second wife was Jewish, though the marriage took place long after the quartet was written. However, in thinking about the piece’s performance history, we can transition to a third important Jewish musical tradition: the domination of Jewish instrumentalists (especially string players) following the quartet’s premiere.
The first performance of the Debussy Quartet was given by the Ysaÿe Quartet in 1893. Eugène Ysaÿe was a great violinist and pedagogue who happened to become my grandmother’s teacher. She, like so many others who played this quartet later, was Jewish. Indeed, after Debussy’s death in 1918 and for the next half century, there is a good chance that the Debussy Quartet was played more often by Jewish string players than players of any other single religion.
How was this possible?
Perhaps the simplest way to explain it is to describe the life of my grandmother, Lea Luboshutz, one of the first world-famous female violinist, a Jew whose dramatic story I have written about in my book, The Nightingale’s Sonata. Her story is emblematic of how so many Jews came to dominate the classical music stage in the 20th century.
Lea was born in Odessa, part of what was then called the Pale of Settlement, a large strip of land in Russia established by Catherine the Great where Jews were permitted to live. It was not an easy life—making a living was challenging and pogroms were frequent. There were only two ways that Jews could get “beyond the pale” (as the saying goes), that is to places like Moscow and St. Petersburg. One was to make a great fortune. The other was to display great talent, especially in music. Indeed, in Odessa, the great joke among Jews used to be, “How do you know which of these boys will become a mathematician?” Answer: “The one not carrying a violin case.” Like many Jewish families, my grandmother’s was hell-bent on improving themselves and they knew that musically talented children could be the key.
And they were lucky. Three children displayed immense musical talent, all made their way with the family to Moscow, and the three children ultimately had international careers.
After the Russian Revolution, many Jewish musicians, like my grandmother, hounded by the Soviets, emigrated, first to Berlin, then to Paris, and finally to the United States. Antisemitism pushed these musicians from one country to another. Many of the less fortunate perished in Russia after the Revolution; others were subject to a similar fate in Western Europe during the Holocaust. But for those who survived, their numbers in the classical music world were extraordinary. At one time more than three quarters of the violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra consisted of Russian Jews—and of those players, the majority came from Odessa.
For those of us who grew up in the households of these Jewish musicians, it was assumed we would play instruments and play them well. Many of us entered the profession. Others created a kind of Jewish musical community where classical music was cherished and great musicians were idolized. Such a value system furnished a continued hothouse for the nurturance of Jewish musical talent even when the threat of persecution abated. It was the environment that I knew as a child and it only began to wane in the generation that followed mine.
There is a certain irony in the fact that many of these latter Jewish musicians followed in Mendelssohn’s footsteps in the sense that they renounced the religion of their forebears. It was like history repeating itself. Superstar violinist, Efrem Zimbalist, became a practicing Christian and did not want his biographer to mention his Jewish roots, an absurd request given the fact that his entire musical development was nurtured in a Jewish world.
Serge Koussevitzky’s gravestone along with those of his two wives is prominently etched with a cross (photo credit: Bridget Carr). Even a memorial stone located nearby, donated by the Israel Symphony Orchestra has a cross at the bottom indicating that this Jewish musician converted and died a Christian.
The grave of Serge Koussevitzky, another Russian Jew who began his career as a double bass virtuoso before becoming the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, is prominently etched with a cross. Even the memorial stone close to his grave, donated by the Israel Symphony Orchestra, has a cross at the base.
Similarly, the composer Arnold Schoenberg, renounced his Jewish roots only to come back to them after he realized that he would always be marked as a Jew. As he wrote to the artist Wassily Kandinsky: “For I have at last learnt the lesson that has been forced upon me this year and I shall not ever forget it. It is that I am not a German, nor a European, indeed perhaps scarcely even a human being… but I am a Jew.” [iii]
For my grandmother, Lea, and her siblings and others like them, the simplest solution was to practice no religion at all. Antisemitism had been a reality in their lives from childhood. Assimilation, being free of their Jewish origins, was an insurance policy, or so they thought, intended to help them create new identities.
Ironically and sadly, it did not protect many who were born Jewish, renounced their religion, only to die as Jews in the gas chambers of the Holocaust or in other antisemitic acts. Nor, more benignly, did it in any way diminish the identification and fame of others as Jewish musicians.
Today, we honor these musical giants not only as great performers but also as embodiments of the third important strand of the Jewish musical tradition.
[i] Eichler, Jeremy. Times Echo: The Second World War, The Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.
[ii] Eichler p. 26.
[iii] Eichler p. 64.