The ethnical factor in european literature for the organ in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries based on works by british, italian and Jewish Composers

The article presents examples of the emphasised ethnical factor in works belonging to the European organ literature of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, found in pieces written by British, Italian and Jewish composers. In case of British composers, significant were the proposals of Ralph Vaughan Williams, who primarily saw folk songs as the tool for expressing a national style. Among the composers who wrote music inspired by traditional songs or quoting them directly (which was an important novelty in the British organ literature) were: Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Percy Whitlock, Cyril Bradley Rootham, Geoffrey Turton Shaw, Harold Carpenter Lumb Stocks, and more. The influence of national elements on Italian organ literature is not as strong but it seems justified to assume that some composers might have been influenced by the romanità myth which identified the features of the Italian nation with the ideas allegedly drawn from the traditions of ancient Rome. These composers were Giuseppe Corsi and Alfredo Casella. It is worth paying attention to the phenomenon of writing organ masses which preceded the popularisation of that myth. In this context, composers of Jewish organ music attempted to emphasise the ethnical factor in their works in the clearest, most consequent and most comprehensive ways possible. Abraham Zevi Idelsohn summed up their ideological programme, indicating that music meant for being performed in synagogues, including Jewish organ music, should be based on traditional melodies and scales, at the same time using tonal harmonic systems, which was supposed to allow for introducing prayerful atmosphere and concentration of the audience as well as understanding it properly. This group of composers included Louis Lewandowski, David Nowakowski, Arno Nadel, and others.

‘Jewish Musicians are the Crowning Achievements of Foreign Nations’

This chapter discusses the treatment of the Jewish identity of various composers by the Yiddish folklorist and music critic, Menachem Kipnis. It describes Kipnis as a small, energetic man with a soft but beautiful singing voice and considered one of the most popular Jewish folklorists of interwar Poland. It also looks into Kipnis' book World-Famous Jewish Musicians, a collection of biographies of nineteenth-century composers with a Jewish background. The chapter examines the contradictions and idiosyncrasies of World-Famous Jewish Musicians compared with Kipnis's other works. It seeks to understand the balance Kipnis struck between praise for Jewish composers and quasi-nationalist emphasis on their Jewishness on the one hand, and his work as a folklorist in Poland, collecting songs from traditional, Yiddish-speaking Jews on the other.

The Polish Tin Pan Alley, a Jewish Street

This chapter highlights the 28th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan, that became the home of several music publishers. It looks into the various accounts of how 28th Street came to be called “Tin Pan Alley,” pointing out the observation that the pianos played by song “pluggers” produced a cacophony reminiscent of the clatter of tin pans. It also mentions how the name “Tin Pan Alley” was eventually used as a metonym for the American popular-music industry. The chapter explores the pre-eminent role of Jewish composers, poets, songwriters, and performers in the Polish popular music industry of the 1920s and 1930s. It also focuses on Adam Aston, who was credited with popularizing the first Polish rumba, and Mieczysław Fogg, the most popular Polish singer of the twentieth century.

Jewish Composers of Polish Music after 1939

This chapter looks into the devastating impact of the Holocaust in Jewish musical creativity in Poland. It discusses the inclusion of Jewish composers in the world of Polish music by its post-1945 historians. It also examines the presence of Jewish composers in Poland's musical world before 1939 and the disappearance of these composers as shown by official publications, dictionaries, and music histories up until 1989. The chapter reviews all the composers of Jewish origin who were alive in September 1939, regardless of their attitude and relationship with Judaism. It mentions the most important composers of Jewish descent but not of Jewish faith, such as Józef Koffler, who gave up his official Jewish religious allegiance in May 1939, and Roman Palester, who was baptized Catholic as a baby.