Israeli Art Music
Authors: Seter Ronit 
Published: August 2019

Writings about music in Israel illuminate a wide range of topics, often exploring the politics of social identities: nationalism, folklorism, Orientalism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, East-West cultural borrowings and appropriations, representation, religion, and gender. Complementing the Oxford Bibliographies articles on “Jewish Music” and “Jews and Music” (by Edwin Seroussi and Judah Cohen, respectively, both of which focus mostly on ethnomusicological research into ethnic, liturgical, and popular musics in the Diaspora), this bibliography focuses primarily on Western art music by Israeli composers, yet it also examines selected writings on ethnic and popular musics that inform it. Most of the approximately forty notable immigrant composers who fled fascist Europe to British Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s—the founders of Israeli art music—aspired both to create local music and to continue their original styles from their native countries, mostly Germany, Russia, and Poland, or those they studied in France and elsewhere. As participants in the evolving Hebraic and Zionist culture, they believed that they should partake in the creation of a native, Hebrew musical style, informed by local Jewish ethnic sources that had arrived in Israel from the Mizraḥi Jewish Diaspora, often from Yemen, Iraq, or Morocco, or from those of the Palestinian Arabs. This ideology was passionately disseminated, argued, contested, and ultimately stamped as narrowly nationalistic. Beyond general and themed overviews, as well as reference works and other research tools, this bibliography focuses on the writings by and about the founders. It emphasizes those founders whose works were most widely performed and discussed, namely the Israeli Five: Paul Ben-Haim (b. 1897–d. 1984), Alexander Uriah Boskovich (b. 1907–d. 1964), Oedoen Partos (b. 1907– d. 1977), Josef Tal (b. 1910–d. 2008), and Mordecai Seter (b. 1916–d. 1994). It also examines composers who studied with the them and therefore considered themselves “second generation,” such as Yehezkel Braun (b. 1922–d. 2014) and Tzvi Avni (b. 1927); selected peers of the second cohort who immigrated to Israel in the late 1960s and the 1970s, notably Mark Kopytman (b. 1929–d. 2011) and André Hajdu (b. 1932–d. 2016); and a number of younger composers, including Betty Olivero (b. 1954). For the founders and many of their successors, the desire to create “Israeli” rather than “Jewish” music—either following common, essentialist stereotypes and signifiers, or creating neonationalist, Bartókian-, or Stravinskian-influenced local art—was paramount, whether or not they spoke or wrote about it explicitly. Yet others—and often the same composers at later stages in their lives—attempted to follow European and, more recently, American trends. While for many the word “Jewish” has often denoted Ashkenazi characteristics, “Israeli” entailed the use of Mizraḥi melodic and rhythmic elements; that is, elements from the musical traditions of the Jewish communities who fled to Israel from Arab countries and of the indigenous Palestinians. These formative, defining ideologies characterize the music of the founders but less so younger composers, who feel free to defy it. Still, Israeli compositions often receive local prizes and wider reception when they refer to local culture, folklore, identities, ethnicities, and politics. Acknowledgments: I am deeply grateful to my friends and colleagues who helped with their comments, most notably Yosef Goldenberg, Uri Golomb, and Ralph Locke, whose eagle-eyed comments over multiple iterations transformed this article. I am also indebted to Judith Cohen (Israel), Judit Frigyesi, Yoel Greenberg, Jehoash Hirshberg, Bonny Miller, Marina Ritzarev, Edwin Seroussi, Assaf Shelleg, and Laura Yust, who all took the time to read, encourage, and provide content and editing comments that helped polish this article. This large-scale project could not have been what it is without all of your contributions. Finally, this work was partly supported by an NEH Fellowship.