CLASSICAL COMPOSERS | |
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TWO
REMARKABLE PRODIGIES |
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POPULAR
SONGWRITERS For more Jewish songwriters, see also lists of Jewish-composed SONGS and MUSICALS. |
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FILM
SCORE
COMPOSERS For more Jewish film music composers, see: Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Motion Picture Academy Award for Best Original Song. |
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NOTES
1. Jewish father,
non-Jewish mother. 2. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. 3. Kreisler never acknowledged his Jewish background, but both of his parents came from Jewish families. Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) lists his religion as "israelitisch dann katholisch" ("Jewish, then Catholic"). Amy Biancolli's biography Fritz Kreisler: Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy (Amadeus Press, Portland Oregon, 1998) contains an extensive discussion of Kreisler's Jewish background (see Chapter 8: "Kreisler the Catholic, Kreisler the Jew"). She cites a 1992 interview with Franz Rupp, Fritz Kreisler's piano accompanist in the 1930s, which was conducted by David Sackson. Rupp is quoted as stating that he once asked Kreisler's brother, the cellist Hugo Kreisler, about their Jewish background, to which Hugo responded simply, "I'm a Jew, but my brother, I don't know." Viennese Jewish communal archives contain the birth records of both Fritz and Hugo Kreisler, as well as Hugo's 1929 burial record. They also contain the marriage record of their parents, Dr. Samuel Kreisler and Anna Reches. The birth records of Fritz and Hugo give Anna Reches' Jewish name as "Chaje Riwe" (rendered as "Chaje Ribe" in Hugo's record). There are numerous other individuals surnamed "Reches" in the Jewish archives. Biancolli indicates that Fritz's mother was most probably not of Jewish origin, but this assertion is apparently incorrect. According to Louis Lochner's 1950 biography Fritz Kreisler, Kreisler was reared as a Roman Catholic. However, according to unpublished parts of the manuscript uncovered by Biancolli in the Library of Congress, he was baptized only at the age of twelve. The bottom line seems to be that Kreisler was entirely Jewish by descent and his reticence on the subject primarily an attempt to placate his highly anti-Semitic wife Harriet. ("Fritz hasn't a drop of Jewish blood in his veins!" she is said to have vehemently responded to an inquiry from Leopold Godowsky. Godowsky retorted: "He must be very anemic.") 4. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. See http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/long-bio/Alfred-Schnittke. 5. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. 6. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. 7. Jewish father, opera singer Edmund Loewe, whose 16 December 1870 birth to Eduard Löwe and Phillippine Herlitzka is recorded in the Jewish communal records of Vienna. 8. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. In an interview with Francine Cohen published in the Arts and Leisure Guide of the November 4, 1994 issue of The Jewish Chronicle (London), Newley stated concerning his 'Jewish genes': "My mum's side is Jewish and so is Joan Collins's dad's side, so I suppose you could say we had a full set between us. We both always used to say that whatever talent we had came from our Jewish backgrounds." 9. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father. 10. See Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, by Mark Steyn (Routledge, NY, 1999, p. 87). According to Steyn, "Cameron Mackintosh isn't Jewish, but his writers on Les Miz and Miss Saigon, Boublil and Schönberg, are. 'Claude-Michel Schönberg,' he says, 'is Hungarian-Jewish.'" 11. Jewish father (publisher Richard Simon), non-Jewish mother. 12. Claims found elsewhere that Ernest Gold was only one-quarter Jewish are simply incorrect. His grandparents were Moritz and Alice (née Jeiteles) Goldner and Dr. Siegmund and Anna (née Spitzer) Stransky. The marriages of both sets of grandparents were performed at the Stadttempel in Vienna and recorded in the Jewish communal archives of that city. 13. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. 14. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother. In addition to Thomas Newman's father, Alfred Newman, his uncles Lionel and Emil Newman were also prominent film composers, as are his brother David and his cousin Randy Newman. 15. See Ismerjük''oket?: zsidó származású nevezetes magyarok arcképcsarnoka, by István Reményi Gyenes (Ex Libris, Budapest, 1997, p. 144). 16. Not widely known to be Jewish; see, however: http://www.jewishjournal.com/culture/article/hans_zimmer_proud_to_say_my_people. |