Some composer biographies
Joachim Stutschewsky, Six Israeli Melodies and Frejlachs
Joachim Stutschewsky (1891-1982) was a composer, folklorist, cellist, lecturer, writer, and proponent of Jewish music. Born in the Ukraine to a family that had been klezmorim (Jewish folk musicians) for several generations, Stutschewsky took up the violin at the age of five, and switched to the cello at age eleven. He moved to Zurich in 1914 and then Vienna in 1924, where he founded the Association for the Development of Jewish Music. He moved to Israel in 1938. Stutschewsky collected and edited Hassidic melodies, and incorporated many of these in his compositions.

Julius Chajes, Israeli Dance
A resident of Vienna, Tel-Aviv, and then Detroit, Julius Chajes (1910-1985) was the son of a surgeon and a concert pianist. In Palestine (1934-36) he conducted research on ancient Hebrew music. Chajes arrived in the U.S. in 1937, and served as Music Director at the Jewish Community Center in Detroit. He was chairman of Hashofar, a society for the promotion of Jewish music.

Ernest Bloch, Prayer (From Jewish Life)
At the age of ten, Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) wrote a vow that he would become a composer. Then, in ritual fashion, Bloch burned the paper over a mound of stones positioned in the shape of an altar. Born in Geneva, Switzerland, he worked for a time in the family clock-making business. His earliest works incorporated traditional Jewish tunes as sung by his father, who was the son of Meyer Bloch, president of the Jewish community of Lengnau (in the Swiss Canton of Aargau). After composing many of his major Jewish-inspired works, including Schelomo (1916), he moved permanently to the United States, founded the Cleveland Institute of Music (1920), and later became director of the San Francisco Conservatory (1925).

Harvey Gaul, A Yigdal from Yemen
American composer and conductor Harvey Gaul (1881-1945) performed as organist in his native New York, as well as in Cleveland and Pittsburgh. His teachers included the French composer Vincent d’Indy. He was the first music director of radio station KDKA and a music critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Most of his 500+ compositions were published under pseudonyms.

David Popper, Wie einst in schöner’n Tagen
Best known as a master cellist and pedagogue, David Popper (1843-1913) was also a prolific composer of very effective genre pieces for the cello. He was born in Prague and died near Vienna. His technical works form the basis of modern cello study. According to Popper’s student and biographer Stephen De’ak, Popper’s wife “was not able to escape the Nazi occupation of Austria, and like millions of others of her faith she was captured by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp in Germany, where she met her end in the gas chambers” (David Popper, 1980).

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Chant hébraïque
A member of an old Florentine family, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) studied music at the Cherubini Royal Institute of Music. His discovery (in 1925) of a notebook of Jewish melodies in his grandfather’s house led him to begin composing Jewish compositions: “The discovery of this little notebook was one of the deepest emotions of my life and became for me a precious heritage.” Soon thereafter he became familiar with the sounds of synagogue cantillation and Hebrew melodies. Racial laws forced Castelnuovo-Tedesco to leave his native Italy. When anti-Semitism became rampant in Italy, during that country’s alliance with Nazi Germany, Castelnuovo-Tedesco fled to the U.S. (1939). He settled in Hollywood where, like many other composers of his time, he composed film music, in addition to his other works.

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Daniel Kazez, Professor of Music
Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio USA