Some Jewish Composers

Jewish music, unlike most Eastern musical cultures, is not a tightly codified system.

Many Eastern musical cultures like Indian, Japanese or Turkish display a ``stiff'' set of musical rules. Not only the modes maqams are set but also the couplings of rhythm ``modes'' and pitch modes are definitely set. A given maqam ``can only go with'' that rhythm mode and so on... This ``over-structuring'' is perhaps mostly evident in Indian music.

In Jewish music, except may be for the cantillation marks and the traditional cantor singing, we witness a sort of ``open-system''. This musical tradition has been permeable to surrounding cultures for thousands of years and was influenced and has influenced them.

As the result of the planet-wide dispersion of the Jews, their music is best seen as a ``global'' cultural music. This makes particularly difficult, if not impossible and futile, to isolate the ``Jewish'' in the ``Jewish music''.

For this matter it seemed to me that focusing on specific composers and works will be more revealing than trying to extract generalities on such a wide and varied domain.