The Presence of Jewish Music in the Musical Life of Interwar Prague
The Presence of Jewish Music in the Musical Life of Interwar Prague

Summary/Abstract: The interbellum was a period when the spontaneous popularity of Jewish music was born. Its expansion in the area of general culture coincided with the rise of a strong institutional and media backing for the musical activities (which means that this music had to have a market value), and on the other hand—with the revival of the national Jewish movement in its various ideological forms, all of which acknowledged a significant role for fostering their own culture. At that time, Prague was the third most important (after Vienna and Berlin) center of Jewish culture in Central Europe, and it strongly influenced the neighboring centers such as Bratislava, Budapest, or—the closest to the author of this abstract—Warsaw. In this paper, various aspects of the Jewish music’s presence in the general musical life of the interwar Prague are being discussed, namely: the open musical activity of Jewish organizations and synagogues, Jewish instrumental and choral music, as well as Jewish songs (synagogal, folk and artistic) performed in the concert halls of Prague, the activity of the group of young Jewish composers (among others: Walter Süskind, Mieczysław Kolinski, Berthold Kobias, Hermann Weiss and Frank Pollak) who formed the so-called “New Jewish School” in music, and finally, writing about Jewish music.

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