The Sound of Change

This chapter observes the local manifestations of klezmer revival in Chmielnik, Lelów, and Szczekociny. It analyzes how the festivals and musical performances in the three cities contribute to an environment that encourages people to speak the unspoken. It also addresses the significance of a Jewish performance in a small Polish town that opens a cultural space for thinking in new ways about social identity and community. The chapter explains how a repertoire of particularly Jewish music influence the audience's perception of a town's past and future, as well as how festivals contribute to the social changes. It talks about small-town events with Jewish themes that focus on culture and draws on theatre, dance, film, and food, in addition to music.

‘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 Jews in the Band

This chapter focuses on the “Anders Army,” which was founded by General Władysław Anders after he was freed from the Lubyanka prison by the Stalinist government. It recounts the Anders administration's special invitations that were issued to touring Polish show troupes that were made up primarily of acculturated Jews in order to form two embedded theatrical revue units. It also speculates on the motives of why the Anders administration decided to spend precious resources on particular Jewish recruits. The chapter draws on the memoirs of performers and soldiers and the articles, reviews, and editorials published in the Polish-language wartime newspapers that was subsidized by the British army. It describes the Jewish recruits that represented the greatest performers of modern Polish popular music and comedy, such as Henryk Wars, Jerzy Petersburski, Henryk Gold, and Alfred Longin Schüt.

Music as a ‘Paper Bridge’ between Generations before and after the Holocaust

This chapter examines how music produced in Vilna before the war provided a bridge to the post-war Jewish generation in Poland. It analyzes the poem written by Kadya Molodowsky in 1942 about the bridge that ordinary people build with honest hands and in pureness of heart. It mentions the Jew's use of the word khurbn for the Holocaust, which is the same term used to describe the destruction of the First and Second Temples. The chapter focuses on performing artists and musicians from Vilna that aim to develop performance skills that are linked to general European music, which can be seen as an expression of post-Haskalah tendencies. It talks about Rafael Rubinstein, who became a director of the reactivated music institute in Russia and returned to Vilna after the Bolshevik revolution in order to aid the Jewish Music Institute.

The Nazi Confiscation of Wanda Landowska’s Musical Collection and Its Aftermath

This chapter discusses the Nazis' confiscation of Wanda Landowska's musical collection and how it was partly recovered after the war. It recounts Landowska's career before the Germans invaded France in May 1940 and describes her as an internationally renowned harpsichord and piano soloist and an accomplished scholar, writer, teacher, and composer. It also highlights Landowska's extensive music library, which included manuscripts, rare printed music, books, and an impressive antique musical instrument collection. The chapter recounts how the Nazis plundered Landowski's musical treasures in September 1940 after Landowska fled her home and music school at 88 rue de Pontoise, Saint-Leu-la-Forêt. It describes Landowska's library that contained approximately 10,000 objects, which reflected Landowska's intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities, her eclectic interests, and to some extent her heritage.

The Art of Cantorial Singing in the Polish Territories

This chapter gives a general overview of the development of cantorial singing in the Polish lands. It discusses eastern Europe as the youngest when it came to the traditions of synagogue music. It also explains how eastern Europe is rooted in the Middle East and its direct origins lie in the medieval traditions of the Ashkenazi community in southern Germany. The chapter focuses on Poland and its pre-partition borders that became an important centre of Jewish culture, and the art of hazanut. It discusses the east European hazanim that were characterized by great mobility, which was the result of their studying with a hazan who did not live locally, of their attending Polish or foreign universities, and of travelling long distances with their meshorerim.

Jewish Music Organizations in Interwar Galicia

This chapter provides a comprehensive account of Jewish musical organizations in interwar Galicia. It investigates the various types of Jewish musical organizations and how they implemented their cultural policies. It also shows the wealth and variety of the musical life of the Jewish communities from the four south-eastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic: Lwów, Kraków, Stanisławów, and Tarnopol. The chapter looks into the goal of the Jewish Music Society in Lwów in order to unite the local Jewish musical community and represent the Jewish community in the city's musical life. It analyzes different musical interests and visions of society's cultural role that explain the different activities of symphony orchestra, choir, mandolin orchestra, and chamber orchestra.

Szpilman, Bajgelman, Barsht

This chapter focuses on the post-war fate of the Szpilmans, Bajgelmans, and Barshts, which are an extended family of professional Jewish instrumentalists that originated from Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski in Poland. It explores how the Szpilmans, Bajgelmans, and Barshts played important roles as performers and composers in genres as diverse as instrumental klezmer, jazz, chamber, symphonic music, Yiddish theatre, vaudeville, and Brazilian dance music. It also mentions Władysław Szpilman as the most famous family member, whose memoirs formed the basis of Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, The Pianist. The chapter provides an ethnography of elderly living musicians that became part of salvage ethno-musicology, cultural history, and genealogy. It looks into activities of professional Jewish musicians from klezmer families, whose work and experience expanded in a number of directions, especially during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The Klezmer Revival in Poland as a Contact Zone

This chapter analyzes the general phenomenon of the revival of klezmer. It explains the klezmer revival as the most visible and controversial aspects of the popular surge of interest in the Jewish past, traditions, and heritage that unfolded over the last two decades in post-Holocaust and post-communist eastern Europe. It also mentions the various scholars that labelled the klezmer revival in different degrees of scepticism, such as “Jewish space,” “virtual Jewishness,” “redemptive cosmopolitanism,” or “post-Jewish culture.” The chapter discusses the Jewish heritage revival in Poland that addresses the lack of spiritual intensity in modern society. It notes the new surge of philosemitism in Polish cultural production that is merely a new incarnation of antisemitism and has a harmful or violent aspect.

Władysław Szpilman’s Post-War Career in Poland

This chapter draws attention to Władysław Szpilman, who was the focus of Roman Polanski's critically acclaimed and commercially successful 2002 film adaptation of the bestselling memoir Smierc miasta. It looks into Szpilman's harrowing portrayal of the cruelty of the Holocaust and the German occupation of Warsaw, including his inspiring depiction of human kindness amidst absolute evil. It also discusses Szpilman's key role in Polish classical and popular music after the war, in which he's considered as one of the most important figures in twentieth-century Polish music. The chapter provides an overview of Szpilman's contribution to Polish music, with a particular focus on the period beginning in 1945. It reviews archival and secondary sources and interviews with Szpilman's widow and son, which brings to light the enormous contribution of the man dubbed the “Polish Gershwin” and the “Polish Cole Porter” by leading composers.