Diversification

The 1930s saw an influx of Jewish composers to Palestine, among them musicians of stature in Europe.

These composers included Paul Ben-Haim, Erich Walter Sternberg, Marc Lavri, Oeden Partos, and Alexander Boskovitch. They were all concerned with creating a new Jewish identity in music, an identity which would suit the new, emerging identity of the Zionist state.

While the response of each of these composers to this Nationalist challenge was intensely personal, there was one distinct trend to which many of them adhered: many of these and other composers sought to distance themselves from the musical style of the Klezmer, of eastern European Jewry, which they viewed as weak and unsuitable for the new national ethos. Many of the stylistic features of Klezmer were abhorrent to them. ``Its character is depressing and sentimental," wrote music critic and composer Menashe Ravina in 1943. ``The healthy desire to free ourselves of this sentimentalism causes many to avoid this ..."^6.1

Perhaps the most radical in his search for a new Jewish identity was Alexander Boskovitch. His Semitic Suite for piano, written in 1945, draws much from Arabic music: it is non-polyphonic, almost homophonic. He uses repeated notes to imitate the sound of a Kanun.

From these early experiments has grown a large corpus of original Israeli art music, much of it specifically seeking roots in Jewish musical tradition. Notable among modern Israeli composers are:

• Betty Olivera, composer in residence at Bar Ilan University. Olivera takes traditional Jewish melodies – both Ashkenazic and Sephardic – and sets them in complex, profoundly dissonant contexts. The result, surprisingly, is not something sounding ultramodern, but rather a natural extension of the folk traditions she draws on. Her work Serafim for soprano, clarinet, violin, cello and piano is a good example of this.
• Tsippi Fleischer, who has composed vocal works that merge contemporary Western compositional techniques with the modal, quartertone scales of Arabic music.
• Mark Kopytman, whose compositions draw heavily on both Eastern European Klezmer and Oriental Jewish sources.
• Yitzhak Yedid, who has composed mostly for chamber groups, strives to combine classical genres with improvisation and Eastern and Jewish styles.
• Chaya Czernowin Chaya Czernowin (1957) is currently residing in Austria. She is the lead composer at the Schloß Solitude Sommerakademie, a biannual international academy of composers and resident musicians at the landmark Schloß Solitude, in Stuttgart, Germany.