Marian Fuks: "Musical Traditions of Polish Jews"

This paper presents an overview of musical traditions of the Jewish community in Poland, with its roots in folklore and in the religious culture centered in synagogues. Religious services could often be described as sui generis concerts for the cantor and the choir. The cantorial traditions were divided into schools established by famous singers, who all had strong voices and great musical abilities, especially of improvisation. The voice of Joel Jaszunski (d. 1850) delighted Stanisław Moniuszko and other Polish composers of the nineteenth century; tenor Gershon Sirota (1877-1943 was the most famous cantor during the interbellum period; known as the "JEwish Caruso," he often gave concerts of secular music.

The development of religious music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was stimulated by the creation of many large synagogues, e.g. the Large Synagogue on Tłomackie Street in Warsaw (built in 1878, destroyed during World War II and never reconstructed) which allowed for organ accompaniment. Its choir was directed by David Ajzensztadt (1892-1942). Chassidic music, located on the borderline between sacred and the secular, and integrally connected with dance, was only rarely notated or transcribed, and its creators were mostly anonymous. Jewish folk music absorbed influences from many national traditions, including the Polish one. Klezmer ensembles performed at Polish weddings, in Polish inns, occasionally at courts. Among the many klezmer poets who improvised their texts and music, Mordechai Gebirtig (1877-1942) is the most famous. Instrumental ensembles of klezmer musicians were active in Poland since the sixteenth century. The musicians did not have formal training, did not know musical notation, but delighted with their originality. Józef Michał Guzikow (1806-1837) was a virtuoso on the "straw harmonica" (the predecessor of the xylophone), known in all of Europe he was heard by Lipiński, Chopin, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Liszt, Sand, and Lamartine. Considering himself a Polish Jew, he improvised many fantasias on Polish themes, he played mazurkas, polonaises, as well as Jewish, Byelorussian, and Polish folk songs.

In 1805, Jozef Elsner wrote for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung that "Jewish musicians play the polonaise in such an exquisite Polish spirit that no-one can be their equal." Polish Jews valued music very highly and developed various forms of music making for their community. They also participated in Polish musical life, for example staffing the orchestras, or funding their creation (e.g. Aleksander Reichman, the founder of the Warsaw Philharmonic). This orchestra saw the beginnings of the international careers of Paweł Kochański (violinist), Gregory Piatigorski (cellist), and Grzegorz Fitelberg (conductor). Orchestral musicians included the families of Szulc, Ginsburg, and Szpilman, most of whom perished in the Holocaust. Many world-famous musicians had roots in Polish Jewry: Paul Klecki (conductor), Artur Rubinstein (pianist), Bronisław Huberman, Henryk Szeryng, and Ida Handel (violinists), Wanda Landowska (harpsichordist), and others. Polish composers of Jewish descent active in the 19th century include Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1888), whose father, Tobiasz Pietruszka, converted to Catholicism. Ludwik Grossman (1835-1915) was known for his operas, his pianos (he owned a factory), and his musical salon in Warsaw. Adolf Sonnenfeld (1837-1914) composed operettas, ballets, and popular dances. The latter was the primary domain of Leopold Lewandowski (1831-1896), violinist, composer and conductor, who penned over 300 popular Polish dances. In the 20th century there were many important composers of Jewish descent: Józef Koffler (1896-1944), Karol Rathaus (1891-1954), Szymon Laks (1901-1983), and Aleksander Tansman (1897-1986). Numerous musicologists (Józef Reiss, Zofia Lissa, Mateusz Gliński) created the foundations for this discipline in Poland. Between the wars, the Polish "music industry" was dominated by composers of Jewish descent: Henryk Gold, Jerzy Petersburski, Henryk Wars, etc. The composer of the beloved war-anthem "Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino" [Red Poppies on Monte Cassino] was Artur Schlitz. Despite the destruction of the Jewish community in Poland during World War II, the music of the many Polish Jews is a testimony of the existence and vitality of Jewish musical culture that had flourished in Poland.

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Maciej Gołąb: "Koffler—the First Polish Composer of Twelve-Tone Music"

Controversies that still characterize the reception of the works of Józef Koffler, the most important Polish composer of the first half of the 20th century after Szymanowski, are the result of strong tensions between the different components of his musical aesthetics. From the diachronical point of view, the evolution of Koffler's dynamic but unlimited style moved from interests in Polish music folklore and early European examples of serialism to attempting to implement the doctrine of social realism which was unprecedented in the Polish musical tradition.. Simultaneously, Koffler's earlier folklorism was fused with experiences of the European avant-garde. Koffler's dodecaphony incorporates neoclassical features of texture and form (of French as well as German provenance), and his last realizations of social realism are not deprived of individual artistic ambitions under conditions that radically reduced them of means of expression.