Chemjo Vinaver

Chemjo Vinaver (* 1895 in Warsaw ; † December 16, 1973 in Tel Aviv ) was a Polish conductor, composer and musicologist.

Life

Vinaver was raised at the Hasidic court of his grandfather, Rabbi Isaak von Worka, where he took up various Hasidic musical traditions. From 1916 to 1920 he studied in Warsaw, then in Berlin conducting and composition with Hugo Rüdel and Siegfried Ochs . In Berlin he founded the Hanigun choir for the dissemination of Jewish music , which toured Germany as well as Vienna, Prague, Yugoslavia and Palestine . At that time, Vinaver and his choir were an exception in the Jewish choral tradition that had been stylistically oriented towards church music since the 19th century . From 1926 to 1933 Vinaver was the chief conductor of the New Synagogue in Berlin and recorded over 20 liturgical works with the local choir (mostly as "Chemina Winawer" for the Odeon label). He also taught music at the teachers' college of the Reich Representation of German Jews founded in 1933 . In 1938 Vinaver emigrated to New York , where he also founded Jewish choirs. From 1952 he was musical advisor in the cultural department of the American Zionist Organization. In 1960 he settled in Jerusalem, where he continued his musicological studies. An archive was set up under his name at the National Jewish Library in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem .

His compositions include The Seventh Day for cantor and choir, for the Friday evening service (1946), and a setting by Kol Nidre . He is the editor of various collections of Hasidic, Yiddish and Israeli folk songs and published an anthology of Jewish music in 1955, for which Arnold Schönberg contributed a setting of Psalm 130 .

Vinaver was the second husband of the poet Mascha Kaléko . Their son was Steven Vinaver .

Today Vinaver's work is known only to a few specialists in traditional Jewish music, although he was considered one of the most important German-Jewish musicians, especially in the 1930s.

literature

Encyclopaedia Judaica . Volume 16, p. 151.

Web links

Review of Vinaver's Anthology of Hassidic Music by Judit Frigyesi ( Brown University ) In: Ethnomusicology. Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 360-364. (English)

Individual evidence

^ Erik Levi: Music in the Third Reich. Palgrave MacMillan, 1996, ISBN 0-312-10381-6 , pp. 54 and 55.
↑ Jascha Nemtsov : Zionism in music - Jewish music and national idea. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05734-9 , p. 279.
↑ Jascha Nemtsov: An "East Jewish" musician in Berlin in the 1920s-30s - the choir director and ethnomusicologist Chemjo Winawer. In: Christine Engel, Birgit Menzel (Ed.): Culture and / as translation - Russian-German relations in the 20th and 21st centuries. Frank & Timme, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86596-300-0 , p. 99.

personal data
SURNAME	Vinaver, Chemjo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Polish conductor, composer and musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH	1895
PLACE OF BIRTH	Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH	16th December 1973
Place of death	Tel Aviv

[1] Erik Levi: Music in the Third Reich. Palgrave MacMillan, 1996, ISBN 0-312-10381-6 , pp. 54 and 55.

[2] Jascha Nemtsov : Zionism in music - Jewish music and national idea. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05734-9 , p. 279.

[3] Jascha Nemtsov: An "East Jewish" musician in Berlin in the 1920s-30s - the choir director and ethnomusicologist Chemjo Winawer. In: Christine Engel, Birgit Menzel (Ed.): Culture and / as translation - Russian-German relations in the 20th and 21st centuries. Frank & Timme, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86596-300-0 , p. 99.