The Denver Jewish news., 1922-04-12
The Jews Place in Music

Music Is q universal language. II
has various dialects in different en-
yironments but it is the really intel
lectual lingua franca. II Is fact that
Jews are interesting participants In
the progress of music. The forms Of.
musical expressions are very new :
compared with other intellectual fields
they are really virgin soil. Centuries
have passed since Sumerian and
Egyptian scratched or pressed their
written thoughts on clay and stone.
Six thousand years Of writing make
the history of sixty centuries as the
yesterday that is passed. But music
is new, in form at lcast-being but
q little more than three hundred years
old.
Our forms OF musical thinking and
expression take their substance and
their soul from the three BIS. That
none of these was a Jew should not
cause the Anti defamation League to
writhe and ask for further contribu-
tions. Jews were their sturdy follow
crs and earnest supporters. In no
field has the Jew occupied a more dis
tinguished place than that Of music.
In Mendelssohn. Mcyerbeer, Rubin
stein and others there. is n certain
cause for deeper satisfaction These
men and their following were musical
Maranos. They made tunes and touch
ing tones for Frenchmen, Germans and
Russians, but none for and out of their
Jewish selves. The music of Handel
may have been pitifully upJewisIi.
hence as little interpretative of Old
Testament themes as modern Metho
dist minister's exegesis; but he did
speak of the things that made Jewish
life, while Jewish interpreters of music
shrank from any such themes as con-
taminating. True, they were Jews but
In name only.
In modern music Gustav Mailer, the
elegant Vienese, is n worthy successor
of Meyerbeer and even Rubinstein. He
is afraid of exposing his Jewishness.
His compositions are "cOnfessionslos'
and his baton never makes Jewish
gesture. Perhaps that accounts for
the dreariness of his long and elaborate
symphonies. There is bannlity about
tuft-hunting and social climbing which
sears the soul, II a creature with ont
will stoop to be such lickspittle. A
musician with a crippled soul is pitiful.
This exponent of "Hofjude" music is n
real genius crippled by the fenr of be-
ing pointed out as a Jew. He is of
the type that scorns the synagog and
seeks solace in science, medical or
Christian, and thereby stunts the
growth of real soul. To comprehend
the universe he squints thru micro
scope, or kowtOws to the myth which
Israel erect has scorned. A Jew in
the arts grows big in the sun and at
mosphere of Judaism divorced from
1t he withers.
Quite contrary to the precedent of
Meyerbcer. Mailer and others, there
are extant today some curious and
potent forces. Israel is again coloring
the world with the tincturc Of its
genius. 1t may be only slight in
fusion but it is real because it is gen.
uine and honest Such figures as Orn-
stein and Bloch are not to be passed
over and neglected. They are making
musical history. They are also making
it as Jews. Leo Ornstein writes mu.
sic that is New York. 1t is the New
York of etchings and large runiblings
of power, not the New York of the
cheap drummer or shopper. 1t is Il
place of sin and signs and sorrows and
crashing noises and ripplings under
Brooklyn Bridge at midnight and all
the things that make for the symphony