KlezCalendar

How does music define a people? And how does a people define an art form-music-that embodies the essence of national, ethnic or religious identity? These are the questions that engaged Jewish composers who gathered in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1908 to create the Society for Jewish Folk Music. The Society, which thrived in various forms, first in Russia and then in Vienna until the rise of Hitler, brought together the talents of Joseph Achron, Michail Gnesin, Alexander Krejn and others who-unlike their Western European counterparts-maintained a connection to the Jewish community while creating serious works of Jewish music for the concert stage.

Through lecture and illustrations with live musical performances, Klára Móricz will explore the Russian origins of Jewish music as a serious art form and the relationship of this body of work to emerging twentieth century Jewish nationalism and modernism. She will be joined by pianist Edwin Swanborn, tenor Elias Rosemberg and soprano Lynn Torgove.

This lecture-performance is a prelude to a concert by the Zamir Chorale of Boston, Hebrew College artists-in-residence, at Temple Emanuel, Newton, on Wednesday, December 24, 7:30 p.m., Glories of the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Music.

Klara MoriczKlára Móricz is the Valentine Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Amherst College. She is author of Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Music (University of California Press, 2008), editor of a forthcoming volume of the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition (University of California Press) and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Musicological Society and Studia Musicologica. A prolific author, she has published articles on Bartók, Liszt, Fauré, Schoenberg and Bloch.