Klára Móricz, Jewish Identities

Klára Móricz, Jewish Identities (University of California Press, 2008, 352 pp. + bibliography, notes, index) Klára Móricz introduces her study with a statement of her own personal identity as a scholar: My interest in the topic of identities, their musical expression, their social basis and implications originates in my experience in Hungary, where in the years after the fall of socialism in 1988 newly discovered political, religious, and ethnic identities divided a population that had previously lived in the illu- sionary unity of the politically repressed… Arriving in the United States in 1994, I was emboldened to tackle this subject by the critical approach and anti- essentialist intellectual atmosphere I encountered at the University of Cali- fornia at Berkeley.1 The two great names that stand out in her long list of acknowledgments are her Hungarian mentor, László Somfai, and her mentor in Berkeley, Richard Taruskin, whose extensive and innovative work on nationalism in general and on Russian nationalism in particular has provided a stimulating framework for many young scholars. She quotes Somfai’s ‘insistence on remaining close to the music and to primary sources in musico- logical arguments, not to get tempted by intellectually attractive theories that had little to do with my protagonists and their music’.2 This attitude to which I subscribe full heart- edly is of enormous importance in a book which deals with a touchy question of national identity as represented in complex art music. The bulky volume, which is beautifully printed with copious musical examples and illustrations, consists of three case studies: 1) Jewish identity in music as viewed and cre- ated in the work of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg (founded 1908) and in Moscow; 2) The works with Jewish titles and connotations by Ernest Bloch (1880–1959); 3) The painful struggle Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) had with Jewish identity as revealed in his musical works on Jewish topics, in his poetic texts, in his spo- ken drama, and in his political writings. The three case studies lead to the crystallization of Klára Móricz’s thesis, as present- ed in her concluding philosophical essay on Purity.3 1. Individualism and polemics in the Society for Jewish Folk Music Part 1 (divided into three chapters) is a thorough critical discussion of the Society for Jewish Folk Music (Klára Móricz uses the abbreviation OYNM of the Russian title Obshchestvo Yevreyskoy Narodnoy Muziki) which has been frequently discussed and 1. Móricz, Jewish Identities, xi. 2. Móricz, Jewish Identities, xiii. 3. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 337–352. Studia Musicologica 50/1–2, 2009, pp. 183–191 DOI: 10.1556/SMus.50.2009.1-2.8 1788-6244/$ 20.00 © 2009 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 184 Review referred to as a ‘group’. As such they were strongly influenced and supported by the Russian nationalist group, most importantly by Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, the important musicologist Leonid Sabaneyev, and the influential critic Vladimir Stassov. Yet Klára Móricz justly stresses the highly individual, even quarrelsome, attitudes and tempera- ments of the leading members of the Society for Jewish Folk Music. Indeed, the founda- tion of the Moscow branch of the Society in 1913 resulted from bitter friction within the Society. In his seminal book, written fourteen years after his emigration to the United States, Lazare Saminsky (1882–1959) did point out the enormous contribution of the Society in publishing hundreds of arrangements of Jewish folksongs from Eastern Europe and their international performance.4 Yet, at the same time he maintained his bitter polemics with the famed Moscow critic Julius (Yoel) Engel (1868–1927), which Saminsky reproduced as appendix to his book,5 and in which he stressed his ‘shifting of interest from the domestic folksong, which engaged the initial labors of the Society’s composers to the religious folksong, to its pure and ancient elements’.6 Saminsky’s insistence on the search for ‘purity’ gave the initial impetus for Klára Móricz’s detailed inves- tigation of this concept. Having provided a detailed (and amazingly lengthy) list of the publications of the Society,7 Klára Móricz discusses the original art songs within them, which, albeit few in number, are of much significance,8 especially those by Alexander Krein (1883–1951). She also emphasizes the importance of the arrangements which broke away from the simple concept of a folksong arrangement into the realm of art songs in their through-composed settings and extreme harmonic elaborations.9 Klára Móricz reaches the conclusion that Jewish music as conceived by the art composers, especially Milner, Saminsky, and Alexan- der Krein, was strongly conditioned by the Russian national group, especially Sabanaev, Stassov, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Scriabin, and above all Mussorgsky, whom Saminsky considered as the ‘greatest among the Russians’.10 Klára Móricz shows that ‘signs, one might even say posters, of academic training abound in the OYNM arrangements’ which have ‘elaborate instrumental introductions and postludes … sections of contrapuntal tex- tures’.11 Such arrangements were made alongside ‘easily performable arrangements’.12 An important aspect of this influence are the elements of orientalism, which Klára Móricz defines as the excessive use of the augmented second and descending chromati- cism.13 Orientalism was a mark of many compositions of the Russian composers, especially Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin, and was adopted by the Russian Jews, who eagerly embraced the stereotype of Jews as Orientals’.14 The oriental stereotype fig- ured highly in Jacob Weinberg’s opera The Pioneers which he composed in Palestine 4. Lazare Saminsky, Music of the Ghetto and the Bible (New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1934), 50. 5. Saminsky, Music of the Ghetto, 227–254. 6. Saminsky, Music of the Ghetto, 228. 7. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 29–34. 8. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 46. 9. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 15. 10. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 4. 11. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 34–38. 12. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 23. 13. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 38. 14. Móricz, Jewish Identities, 23. Studia Musicologica 50, 2009.

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