20 results for "Jewish History"

The Inextinguishable Symphony A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany

Martin Goldsmith
NOW AN ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY, Winter Journey Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Günther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances--and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them. In the spring of 1933, as the full weight of Germany's National Socialism was brought to bear against Germany's Jews, more than 8,000 Jewish musicians, actors, and other artists found themselves expelled from their positions with German orchestras, opera companies, and theater groups, and Jews were forbidden even to attend "Aryan" theaters. Later that year, the Jüdische Kulturbund, or Jewish Culture Association, was created under the auspices of Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Providing for Jewish artists to perform for Jewish audiences, the Kulturbund, which included an orchestra, an opera company, and an acting troupe, became an unlikely haven for Jewish artists and offered much-needed spiritual enrichment for a besieged people--while at the same time providing the Nazis with a powerful propaganda tool for showing the rest of the world how well Jews were ostensibly being treated under the Third Reich. It was during this period that twenty-two-year-old flutist Günther Goldschmidt was expelled from music school because of his Jewish roots. While preparing to flee the ever-tightening grip of Nazi Germany for Sweden, Günther was invited to fill in for an ailing flutist with the Frankfurt Kulturbund Orchestra. It was there, during rehearsals, that he met the dazzling nineteen-year-old violist Rosemarie Gumpert--a woman who would change the course of his life. Despite their strong attraction, Günther eventually embarked for the safety of Sweden as planned, only to risk his life six months later returning to the woman he could not forget--and to the perilous country where hatred and brutality had begun to flourish. Here is Günther and Rosemarie's story, a deeply moving tale of love and the remarkable resilience of the human spirit in the face of terror and persecution. Beautifully and simply told by their son, National Public Radio commentator Martin Goldsmith, The Inextinguishable Symphony takes us from the cafés of Frankfurt, where Rosemarie and Günther fell in love, to the concert halls that offered solace and hope for the beleaguered Jews, to the United States, where the two made a new life for themselves that would nevertheless remain shadowed by the fate of their families. Along with the fate of Günther and Rosemarie's families, this rare memoir also illuminates the Kulturbund and the lives of other fascinating figures associated with it, including Kubu director Kurt Singer--a man so committed to the organization that he objected to his artists' plans for flight, fearing that his productions would suffer. The Kubu, which included some of the most prominent artists of the day and young performers who would gain international fame after the war, became the sole source of culture and entertainment for Germany's Jews. A poignant testament to the enduring vitality of music and love even in the harshest times, The Inextinguishable Symphony gives us a compelling look at an important piece of Holocaust history that has heretofore gone largely untold.
John Wiley & Sons Canada, Limited 2001-08 354 pages

Who by Fire War, Atonement, and the Resurrection of Leonard Cohen

Matti Friedman
"An expedition into the troubled soul of one of the world's greatest songwriters."-- Haaretz "A fascinating and intense account of Leonard Cohen's time in Israel during the 19-day Yom Kippur War of 1973. A must for any Leonard Cohen completist."--Suzanne Vega A Vanity Fair Best Book of 2022 * Mosaic Magazine Best Book of 2022 The untold story of Leonard Cohen's concert tour to the front lines of the Yom Kippur War, including never-before-seen selections from an unfinished manuscript by Cohen and rare photographs In October 1973, the poet and singer Leonard Cohen--thirty-nine years old, famous, unhappy, and at a creative dead end--traveled to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a group of local musicians, Cohen sang for hundreds of young soldiers, men and women at the worst moment of their lives. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen, reigniting his creativity and inspiring him to compose some of his most memorable songs. Who by Fire provides a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai, drawing on Cohen's previously unpublished writing and original reporting to create a kaleidoscopic depiction of a harrowing, existential moment for both a young country at war and a singer at a crossroads.
Spiegel & Grau 2024-09-03 224 pages

Voices of a people: the story of Yiddish folksong

Rubin, Ruth
The seminal work of Ruth Rubin, a pioneering collector, singer, folklorist, writer, and crusader for the vanishing legacy of the Yiddish world, "Voices of a People" remains the only general introduction to Yiddish folksong. A priceless collection of song texts in Yiddish and English, as well as a selection of tunes Rubin transcribed, this volume brings the Jews' ancient, itinerant culture alive through children's songs, dancing songs, and songs about love and courtship, poverty and work, crime and corruption, immigration, and the dream of a homeland. Rubin's notes and annotations weave each text into the larger story of the Jewish experience. Noted scholar Mark Slobin provides a new foreword that includes a biographical sketch of Rubin and an assessment of her contributions over a lifetime of collecting, absorbing, and disseminating Yiddish folksong.
McGraw-Hill 1973 558 pages

Jewry in music: entry to the profession from the Enlightenment to Richard Wagner

Conway, David
David Conway analyses why and how Jews, virtually absent from Western art music until the end of the eighteenth century, came to be represented in all branches of the profession within fifty years as leading figures - not only as composers and performers, but as publishers, impresarios and critics. His study places this process in the context of dynamic economic, political, sociological and technological changes and also of developments in Jewish communities and the Jewish religion itself, in the major cultural centres of Western Europe. Beginning with a review of attitudes to Jews in the arts and an assessment of Jewish music and musical skills, in the age of the Enlightenment, Conway traces the story of growing Jewish involvement with music through the biographies of the famous, the neglected and the forgotten, leading to a new and radical contextualisation of Wagner's infamous 'Judaism in Music'.
Cambridge University Press 2016 341 pages

Jewry in music: entry to the profession from the Enlightenment to Richard Wagner

Conway, David
David Conway analyses why and how Jews, virtually absent from Western art music until the end of the eighteenth century, came to be represented in all branches of the profession within fifty years as leading figures - not only as composers and performers, but as publishers, impresarios and critics. His study places this process in the context of dynamic economic, political, sociological and technological changes and also of developments in Jewish communities and the Jewish religion itself, in the major cultural centres of Western Europe. Beginning with a review of attitudes to Jews in the arts and an assessment of Jewish music and musical skills, in the age of the Enlightenment, Conway traces the story of growing Jewish involvement with music through the biographies of the famous, the neglected and the forgotten, leading to a new and radical contextualisation of Wagner's infamous 'Judaism in Music'.
Cambridge University Press 2012-01 341 pages

The Memory of All That George Gershwin, Kay Swift, and My Family's Legacy of Infidelities

Katharine Weber
The Memory of All That is Katharine Weber’s memoir of her extraordinary family. Her maternal grandmother, Kay Swift, was known both for her own music (she was the first woman to compose the score to a hit Broadway show, Fine and Dandy ) and for her ten-year romance with George Gershwin. Their love affair began during Swift’s marriage to James Paul Warburg, the multitalented banker and economist who advised (and feuded with) FDR. Weber creates an intriguing and intimate group portrait of the renowned Warburg family, from her great-great-uncle, the eccentric art historian Aby Warburg, whose madness inspired modern theories of iconography, to her great-grandfather Paul M. Warburg, the architect of the Federal Reserve System whose unheeded warnings about the stock-market crash of 1929 made him “the Cassandra of Wall Street.” As she throws new light on her beloved grandmother’s life and many amours, Weber also considers the role the psychoanalyst Gregory Zilboorg played in her family history, along with the ways the Warburg family has been as celebrated for its accomplishments as it has been vilified over the years by countless conspiracy theorists (from Henry Ford to Louis Farrakhan), who labeled Paul Warburg the ringleader of the so-called international Jewish banking conspiracy. Her mother, Andrea Swift Warburg, married Sidney Kaufman, but their unlikely union, Weber believes, was a direct consequence of George Gershwin’s looming presence in the Warburg family. A notorious womanizer, Weber’s father was a peripatetic filmmaker who made propaganda and training films for the OSS during World War II before producing the first movie with smells, the regrettable flop that was AromaRama. He was as much an enigma to his daughter as he was to the FBI, which had him under surveillance for more than forty years, and even noted Katharine’s birth in a memo to J. Edgar Hoover. Colorful, evocative, insightful, and very funny, The Memory of All That is an enthralling look at a tremendously influential—and highly eccentric—family, as well as a consideration of how their stories, with their myriad layers of truth and fiction, have both provoked and influenced one of our most prodigiously gifted writers.
Crown 2012-06-12 296 pages

The Undying Flame Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust

Jerry Silverman
Here for the first time is a stirring collection of 110 rare songs from the Holocaust in sixteen languages with singable English translations, songs of resistance, despair, rage, hope, and even humor, written in the face of utter evil. The very existence of these songs raises haunting questions. Who composed them? Who sang them? Who listened? The lyrics, along with extensive historical notes and insightful survivor testimony in this groundbreaking volume, provide moving answers. Musicologist Jerry Silverman has compiled an expansive collection of Holocaustera songs-in Yiddish, German, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Ladino, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Norwegian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Hungarian, and Englishwhich he situates within a vivid historical framework. This volume comprises then work of concentration camp prisoners and inhabitants of the ghettos of Eastern Europe as well as subversive European cabaret music, anti-Fascist anthems inspired by the Spanish Civil War, Red Army songs, and songs of Resistance fighters. Silverman conducted exhaustive research that included interviews with survivors and visits to international archives. In some cases, where the original music has been lost, he has set the words to music usingmtraditional melodies or his original compositions. Included are songs of prewar Germany, of ghettos and camps during the height of the murderous "Final Solution;' and of postwar reflection by such balladeers as Pete Seeger, Janis Ian, Si Kahn, and Tom Paxton.
Syracuse University Press 2020-09-25 342 pages

Emotions in Jewish music: personal and scholarly reflections

Jonathan L. Friedmann
"'Emotions in Jewish Music' is an insider's view of music's impact on Jewish devotion and identity. Written by cantors who have devoted themselves to the study and execution of Jewish music, the book's six chapters explore a wide range of musical contexts and encounters. Topics include the spiritual influence of secular Israeli tunes, the use and meaning of traditional synagogue modes, and the changing nature of Jewish worship. The approaches are both personal and scholarly, describing the experiential side of Jewish music in both practical and philosophical terms. 'Emotions in Jewish Music' reveals much about the emotional aspects of Jewish musical expression"--Page 4 of cover.
University of Press of America 2012 118 pages

The value of sacred music: an anthology of essential writings, 1801-1918

Friedmann, Jonathan L.
"This collection essays explore issues of historicity, spirituality, standardization and other topics central to the study of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish sacred music from 1801 to 1918. This volume captures the breadth of scholarship available in the field, as well as serving as a useful introduction for those readers just beginning their study of sacred music"--Provided by publisher.
McFarland 2009-01-09 180 pages

New York klezmer in the early twentieth century: the music of Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras

Rubin, Joel
The music of clarinetists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras is iconic of American klezmer music. Their legacy has had an enduring impact on the development of the popular world music genre. Since the 1970s, klezmer music has become one of the most popular world music genres, at the same time influencing musical styles as diverse as indie rock, avant-garde jazz, and contemporary art music. Klezmer is the celebratory instrumental music that developed in the Jewish communities of eastern Europe over the course of centuries and was performed especially at weddings. Brought to North America in the immigration wave in the late nineteenth century, klezmer thrived and developed in the Yiddish-speaking communities of New York and other cities during the period 1880-1950. No two musicians represent New York klezmer more than clarinetists Naftule Brandwein (1884-1963)and Dave Tarras (1897-1989). Born in eastern Europe to respected klezmer families, both musicians had successful careers as performers and recording artists in New York. Their legacy has had an enduring impact and helped to spurthe revival of klezmer since the 1970s. Using their iconic recordings as a case study, New York Klezmer in the Early Twentieth Century looks at the inner workings of klezmer dance music, from its compositional aspects to the minutiae of style. Making use of historical and ethnographic sources, the book places the music within a larger social and cultural context stretching from eastern Europe of the nineteenth century to the United Statesof the present. JOEL E. RUBIN is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Virginia and an acclaimed performer of traditional klezmer music.
University of Rochester Press 2020 466 pages

And you shall know us by the trail of our vinyl: the Jewish past as told by the records we have loved and lost

Bennett, Roger
What started out as a mutual affinity for kitschy Jewish album covers-think Neil Diamond baring his chest hair on the cover of "Hot August Night "or Barbra Streisand in hot pants on the cover of "Streisand Superman"-soon became a quest for identity, history, and culture between the grooves of LPs. Together, Roger Bennett and Josh Kun embarked on a thrilling journey, scouring the world to collect thousands of vinyl LPs from attics, garage sales, and dusty archives. Pieced together, these scratched, once-loved and now-forgotten audio gems tell a vibrant tale: the story of Jews in America. "And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl" spans the history of Jewish recorded music from the 1940s to the 1980s, weaving an account that begins with sacred songs and ends with the holy trinity of Neil, Barbra, and Barry. The LPs found here are also a love letter to forgotten moments in Jewish American pop history, celebrating well-dressed cantors singing Christmas tunes, Long Island suburbanites dancing the mambo, and Chassidic prog-rockers. The music, much of which is no longer available in any format, is brought to life through commentary from writers Aimee Bender, Etgar Keret, Michael Wex, and Shalom Auslander; performers Sandra Bernhard and Motown legend Lamont Dozier; music critics Oliver Wang and Anne Powers; and TV pioneer Norman Lear. A gateway to a forgotten kingdom of sound, the good, the bad, and the ugly of Jewish vinyl gives this aspect of Jewish culture the attention it so richly deserves.
Crown Publishers 2008 217 pages

Jewish life and culture in Germany after 1945: sacred spaces, objects and musical traditions

Katrin Keßler,Sarah M. Ross,Barbara Staudinger,Lea Weik
How was the re-emerging Jewish religious practice after 1945 shaped by traditions before the Shoah? To what extent was it influenced by new inspirations through migration and new cultural contacts? By analysing objects like prayer books, musical instruments, Torah scrolls, audio documents and prayer rooms, this volume shows how the post-war communities created new Jewish musical, architectural and artistic forms while abiding by the tradition. This peer-reviewed volume presents contributions to the conference "Jewish communities in Germany in Transition", held in July 2021, as well as the results of a related research project carried out by two university institutions and two museums: the Bet Tfila - Research Unit for Jewish Architecture (Technische Universität Braunschweig), the European Center for Jewish Music (Hanover University for Music, Drama and Media), the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, and the Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia. For the first time, post war synagogues in Germany and their objects were researched on a broad and interdisciplinary basis - regarding history of architecture, art history of their furniture and ritual objects as well as liturgy and musicology. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) during the years 2018 to 2021 in its funding line "The Language of Objects".
De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022 232 pages

Mapping Canada's Music Selected Writings of Helmut Kallmann

Helmut Kallmann
Mapping Canada's Music is a selection of writings by the late Canadian music librarian and historian Helmut Kallmann (1922-2012). Most of the essays deal with aspects of Canadian music, but some are also autobiographical, including one written during retirement in which Kallmann recalls growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in 1930s Berlin under the spectre of Nazism. Of the seventeen selected writings by Kallmann, five have never before been published; many of the others are from difficult-to-locate sources. They include critical and research essays, reports, reflections, and memoirs. Each chapter is prefaced with an introduction by the editors. Two initial chapters offer a biography of Kallmann and an assessment of his contributions to Canadian music. The variety, breadth, and scope of these writings confirm Kallmann's pioneering role in Canadian music research and the importance of his legacy to the cultural life of his adopted country. In the current climate of cuts to archival collections and services, the publication of these essays by and about a pre-eminent collector and historian serves as a timely reminder of the importance of cultural memory.
Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2024-04-30 260 pages

Recording history: Jews, Muslims, and music across twentieth-century North Africa

Silver, Christopher
"A new history of twentieth-century North Africa, that gives voice to the musicians who defined an era and the vibrant recording industry that carried their popular sounds from the colonial period through decolonization. If twentieth-century stories of Jews and Muslims in North Africa are usually told separately, Recording History demonstrates that we have not been listening to what brought these communities together: Arab music. For decades, thousands of phonograph records flowed across North African borders. The sounds embedded in their grooves were shaped in large part by Jewish musicians, who gave voice to a changing world around them. Their popular songs broadcast on radio, performed in concert, and circulated on disc carried with them the power to delight audiences, stir national sentiments, and frustrate French colonial authorities. With this book, Christopher Silver provides the first history of the music scene and recording industry across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and offers striking insights into Jewish-Muslim relations through the rhythms that animated them. He traces the path of hit-makers and their hit records, illuminating regional and transnational connections. In asking what North Africa once sounded like, Silver recovers a world of many voices--of pioneering impresarios, daring female stars, cantors turned composers, witnesses and survivors of war, and national and nationalist icons--whose music still resonates well into our present"--
Stanford University Press 2022 300 pages

Recording history: Jews, Muslims, and music across twentieth-century North Africa

Silver, Christopher
"A new history of twentieth-century North Africa, that gives voice to the musicians who defined an era and the vibrant recording industry that carried their popular sounds from the colonial period through decolonization. If twentieth-century stories of Jews and Muslims in North Africa are usually told separately, Recording History demonstrates that we have not been listening to what brought these communities together: Arab music. For decades, thousands of phonograph records flowed across North African borders. The sounds embedded in their grooves were shaped in large part by Jewish musicians, who gave voice to a changing world around them. Their popular songs broadcast on radio, performed in concert, and circulated on disc carried with them the power to delight audiences, stir national sentiments, and frustrate French colonial authorities. With this book, Christopher Silver provides the first history of the music scene and recording industry across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and offers striking insights into Jewish-Muslim relations through the rhythms that animated them. He traces the path of hit-makers and their hit records, illuminating regional and transnational connections. In asking what North Africa once sounded like, Silver recovers a world of many voices--of pioneering impresarios, daring female stars, cantors turned composers, witnesses and survivors of war, and national and nationalist icons--whose music still resonates well into our present"--
Stanford University Press 2022 300 pages

Music of the repressed Russian avant-garde, 1900-1929

Sitsky, Larry
Historical background : Anatoliy V. Lunacharsky, the cultured commissar -- Valdimir I. Rebikov : the inventor of whole-tone music -- The diatonic Webern : Aleksei V. Stanchinskiy -- Nikolai A. Roslavets : the Russian Shcenberg -- Aleksandr V. Mosolov : the man of steel -- Arthur V. Louri(c)♭ : the decadent out of place -- Leonid A. Polovinkin : the partial avant-gardist -- Vladimir V. Shcherbachev : old wine in new vessels -- Lev K. Knipper : wind from the West -- Boris N. Liatoshinski : the passionate Slav -- Vladimir M. Deshevov : the man of the theater -- Samuil E. Feinberg : the post-Scriabin pianist -- Anatoliy N. Aleksandrov : the post-Rachmaninovian -- Boris A. Aleksandrov : son of the composer of the Soviet anthem -- Aleksandr A. Krein : voice in the wilderness -- Grigoriy A. Krein : toward assimilation -- Yulian G. Krein : precocious cosmopolitan -- Aleksandr M. Veprik : the Ukrainian Bart(c)đk and Bloch -- Mikhail F. Gnessin : the Jewish Glinka -- Ivan A. Vyshnegradsky : microtones -- Nikolai Obukhov : mystic beyond Scriabin -- Iosif M. Schillinger : Gershwin's teacher -- Aleksandr N. Tcherepnine : suave internationalist -- Sergei V. Protopopov : the post-Scriabin composer -- Leonid L. Sabaneev : would-be scientist becomes critic -- Dmitriy M. Melkikh : rhapsodist -- Gavrill N. Popov : contrapuntalist -- Aleksei S. Zhivotov : notorious for one piece -- Efim Golyshchev : the first serialist? -- Georgi M. Rimsky-Korsakov : microtonist
Greenwood Press 1994-09-29 347 pages

Gustav Mahler, Julius Korngold and the Neue Freie Presse

Korngold, Julius, 1860-1945
Zusammenfassung: "Gustav Mahler and Julius Korngold, critic at the highly influential newspaper Neue Freie Presse, had much in common. He, along with his fellow journalists, were close to and supportive of Mahler. For the first time, their essays on the man and his music are made available in English. The essays on Mahler and his time at Vienna's Imperial Opera were extensive and well informed. Julius Korngold had replaced Eduard Hanslick as principal music critic. Both Korngold and Mahler shared a common Moravian Jewish background, born in 1860 and both students of Anton Bruckner. Mahler also took an early interest in Korngold's son, the child prodigy Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The paper was Jewish owned, and Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist Movement, was its cultural editor and Julius Korngold's employer. Claims that Mahler was driven out of a Vienna by an antisemitic press are wrong given Mahler's support by the most powerful critic of the day writing in the Empire's most influential newspaper. Importantly, the essays also reveal a world of Modernism that includes Mahler's innovations at the opera, and Modernism in music before departures from tonality. This book will interest Mahler enthusiasts, musicians and cultural historians. Mahler was claimed by Arnold Schoenberg as his musical hero, firmly placing him in the Modernist camp. Yet Korngold was universally seen as an archconservative and his relationship with Mahler was personal and his understanding profound. The book addresses the question of "Mahler, the first Modernist or the last Romantic?""--
Routledge 2025 209 pages