Israeli Folk Music

1994 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Aaron Copland ◽  
Darius Milhaud ◽  
Arthur Honegger ◽  
Kurt Weill

During the 1930s several of Europe's most distinguished composers received commissions to arrange Hebrew songs collected from early settlers in Israel and circulated on postcards. In this edition, fifteen songs appear in voice and keyboard arrangements by Aaron Copland, Paul Dessau, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Ernst Toch, Stefan Wolpe, and Kurt Weill, making the volume a resource for performer and scholar alike. In addition, ten melodies are presented in facsimiles of the original postcards. An afterword is devoted to the significance of folk-song collecting and to the diverse uses of folk music during the period of nascent Israeli national identity.

Héctor Tosar (1923–2002)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camila Juarez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The United States ◽  
Aaron Copland ◽  
Darius Milhaud ◽  
Arthur Honegger ◽  
Vocal Works ◽  
Musical Communication ◽  
New Instruments

Héctor Tosar was a composer, pianist, director, and composition teacher in Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the United States. One of the best-known Uruguayan composers of his generation, his works have been presented in festivals worldwide. He started studying piano with Wilhelm Kolischer, harmony with Tomás Mujica, and composition with Lamberto Baldi, and completed his studies in the United States and France where he studied composition with Aaron Copland, Arthur Honegger, Jean Rivier, and Darius Milhaud, and orchestral direction with Serge Koussevitzky, Eugène Bigot, and Jean Fournet. The defining characteristics of his works are his use of a compositive principle based on "groups of sounds" and his search for musical communication by means of expressiveness and lyricism. His catalogue includes soloist works, mainly for piano, as well as symphonic, chamber, and vocal works, and, in his last period, compositions with new instruments, such as the synthesizer.

scholarly journals “Our song!” Nationalism in folk music research and revival in socialist Czechoslovakia

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matěj Kratochvíl
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
Music Research ◽  
The 1950S

In the Czechoslovakia of the 1950s, traditional folk music was officially presented as the most important resource of national musical identity. Folk- or folk-inspired music was ubiquitous. Although this intensity had subsided in the following decades, the role of folk music as a symbol of national identity remained strong until the end of the communist rule in 1989. While the ideology of nationalism used folk music as its tool, it also influenced the way this music was collected, researched, and presented. The article presents examples from two closely related areas to document this phenomenon: folk music research and folk music revival. A closer look reveals how the idea of state-promoted nationalism influenced the ways researchers presented their findings, how they filtered out material that was deemed unsuitable for publication, and how traditional music was revived on stage or in media by folk music and dance ensembles. Critical analysis of research materials and audiovisual documents from the 1950s and 1960s will show how censorship accompanied a folk song from its collection in the field, through publication, to a stylized production on stage or in film.

‘National Dignity’ and ‘Spiritual Reintegration’: The Discovery and Presentation of Jewish Folk Music in Germany

Jewishness ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 105-130
Author(s):  
Jascha Nemtsov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Martin Buber ◽  
Cultural Divide ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
East And West ◽  
West European ◽  
Modern Jewish Thought

This chapter details how Jewish folk music was presented as high art to concert audiences in early twentieth-century Germany and how that strategy was criticized. In January of 1901, the first issue of the journal Ost und West (East and West) appeared in Berlin. It served as the most important organ of cultural Zionism for the next two decades, and, as its title suggests, it attempted to bridge the cultural divide between east and west European Jews with the aim of creating an ethnic nationalist goal. The first issue contained, among other things, an article by the renowned Jewish philosopher Martin Buber entitled ‘Jewish Renaissance’ — a term that was to characterize this movement. Critical to this renaissance was the establishment of a common spirit binding a modern nation. Although based in Germany, the leaders of the movement envisioned that this spirit would be found in the ‘authentic folk’ of eastern Europe and the ethno-poetry of the folk song. The chapter then uncovers the often overlooked story of these leaders, particularly Leo Winz and Fritz Mordechai Kaufmann, and the significance of their renaissance movement for modern Jewish thought and culture.

Kodály's Melody

Tempo ◽  
1963 ◽  
pp. 12-16
Author(s):  
András Szőllősy
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
The Other ◽  
Organic Part ◽  
Violin And Piano ◽  
Shed Light

It is a generally accepted view that the most striking features of Kodály's melodic structure may be explained by the influence of folk song. This is not borne out, however, by more detailed examination. It is true that there are certain features in his melodic types which later undergo a change, and of these a prime example is the precise periodic articulation of the melodies, which is much more consistent in his later compositions than in those of his youth. Such characteristics may indeed be attributed to the influence of folk music, but in general the typical Kodály melody existed before he could have come into close contact with folk music in the year when he made his first folk song collecting trip. Of his compositions from the years 1904–1906, the only work we can consider from the viewpoint of melodic structure is the ‘Adagio’ for violin and piano; the other two compositions, Evening for mixed voice choirs and Summer Evening for orchestra, are known only in their later revised form of 1930. This, however, is sufficient to convince us that the expansive declamation and the structural ornamentation which is an organic part of its idiom continue an instrumental tradition whose origin may well go back to chamber music of the Baroque age, with its broad-flowing slow movements. This also seems to be substantiated by the piano part, which replaces impressionistic harmonies with those which may be analysed in accordance with classical harmonic principles. This characteristic harmonisation requires mention here, although it is not closely connected with the problem of melodic structure, since even the most complicated of Kodály's harmonies, when stripped of their embellishments, reveal pure ‘classical’ chords as their basis. The role of the melody in this problem serves merely to emphasise that with Kodály, perhaps more than any other composer, harmony is never an end in itself, but is always the result of the movement of the melody. If the word did not have more significance than we wish to attribute to it here, we might say that Kodály's harmony is only secondary to melody. This word ‘secondary’, however, does not refer to expression, but merely attempts to shed light on the matter of origin, by stressing the supreme importance of melody for Kodály.

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