Heinrich Schalit

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Heinrich Schalit (born January 2, 1886 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † February 3, 1976 in Evergreen (Colorado) / USA ) was a German-American, Jewish composer and musician.

He and mainly created sacred music , art songs and chamber music . Together with Herbert Fromm , Isadore Freed , Hugo Chaim Adler , Frederick Piket , Julius Chajes , Abraham Wolfe Binder , and Lazare Saminsky , he modernized Jewish sacred music in the first half of the 20th century. The Friday evening liturgy , which premiered in 1932, is regarded as his main work . He left Germany in 1933 and emigrated to the USA in 1940. For a long time it was hardly received by general musicology .

Life

education

Schalit began his musical training privately in 1898 with Josef Labor in the subjects of organ, piano and composition and completed training at the Conservatory for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna from 1903. His teachers were among others the pianist Theodor Leschetizky and Robert Fuchs in composition theory. In 1906 he graduated with an excellent grade and received the Austrian State Prize for Composition Students for his piano quartet in E minor . After completing his training, he moved to Munich in 1907, where he worked as a private music teacher and composed numerous works, mainly post-romantic songs and chamber music. It emerged u. a. the work Jugendland for piano for two hands and the work groups Six Love Songs and Six Spring Songs . He began his musical work without connection to Jewish music and without influencing it. In 1909 he began studying the organ for one semester at the Royal Bavarian Academy of Music.

Reflection on Jewish music

In the years 1916 to 1920, Schalit began to return to Jewish music , motivated by the political events of the time . He saw himself as a Jewish composer motivated by Zionism . In a letter to Anita Hepner, Schalit wrote:

»[.. between] 1928 and 1932, when there was no composer of Jewish birth who could have even thought of writing music with a consciously Jewish heartbeat, I was already a well-known composer of Jewish religious music [...] as a conscious Jewish musician and Zionist I considered it my duty to convince him [Paul Ben-Haim] of the necessity of devoting his talent to Jewish music and culture «.

In 1921 he married the non-Jewish Hilda Schork (1899–1981) from Mannheim . The three sons Joseph, Michael and Theodor came from this marriage. Schalit's Jewish compositions of this period were based on Eastern European, Spanish, and Oriental-Jewish folk music. An example of this are the East Jewish folk songs (Opus 18 and 19). In 1921 the Seelenlieder for voice and piano and the hymn In Ewigkeit for choir, organ, harp and violin were published. This work was performed in several German cities and received good reviews. Both works are based on texts by the medieval poet Judah ha-Levi, which were translated into German by Franz Rosenzweig . In 1927, Schalit applied for a position as organist and music director at the Munich synagogue ; it was not without difficulty that he was employed there.

Liturgical music

At the end of the 1920s, Schalit began to deal intensively with the liturgical music of Jewish worship. In his opinion, Jewish liturgical music was characterized by a romantic and operatic style, as in the works of Louis Lewandowski and Salomon Sulzer , and needed renewal and modernization, but based on authentic Jewish musical traditions and nonetheless elements of the music of the 20th century. Century should integrate. At the same time, it should meet the needs of the worship service and meet high musical standards such as in Christian sacred music of the Middle Ages or JS Bach. The result of these considerations was the Friday evening liturgy for cantor, unanimous and mixed choir and organ , which was premiered in 1932 (Opus 29). In this work, Schalit also processed the collection of Jewish-Oriental melodies ( Hebrew-Oriental Melodies Treasure ) of the Jewish music researcher Abraham Zvi Idelsohn . The work has received great praise from musicologists such as Alfred Einstein , Curt Sachs and Hugo Leichtentritt . In the beginning of National Socialism, the publication of the work was too risky, so that Schalit published it himself.

National Socialism and Exile

After the takeover of the NSDAP joined Schalit in 1933 to the synagogue in Rome , where he worked among others as a choral conductor. In 1940 he emigrated to the USA, where he had various positions in synagogues on the east and west coasts, including in Rochester, Providence and Los Angeles .

Musical tools

In his music he avoided the harmonious customs of 19th century music and instead increasingly resorted to modal elements. His musical language also uses controlled dissonance in the diatonic framework. He placed more emphasis on clear, linear-horizontal melody lines than on the complex vertical harmony that was more prevalent in late Romanticism . His way of setting reminds - without becoming atonal - of the polyphonic density of the choral and orchestral compositions in many of Arnold Schönberg's works . With the realization of an individually defined tonality , which often ignores the conventional harmonic rules, but also does not lapse into atonality or twelve-tone technique , Schalit stands in the context of the musical innovations of the music of the 1920s, which in Germany, for example, through Paul Hindemith's own form of Tonality ( instruction in musical composition ) is represented. Like Béla Bartók and others, Schalit considered the folk music traditions of the individual cultures / nations to be an important source of renewal inspiration for the music of the early 20th century. He assessed the modern research and collection of original Hebrew-oriental ritual music as done by Idelsohn as an impetus for the further development of synagogue music.

reception

For a long time, Schalit was hardly received by general musicology . Only in Müller's Lexicon of German Musicians from 1929 is there an extensive article with a catalog raisonné of the Munich years. The modern online dictionary of persecuted musicians of the Nazi era and the BMLO put an end to Heinrich Schalit's previous neglect. In the MGG , it is only mentioned in passing in Volume VII in connection with the article Jewish Music . Riemann's music lexicon has no entry on his person. Statements about him and his work can be found scattered in special books on Jewish music and Jewish history . There are no musical analyzes of his works.

Works (selection)

  • East Jewish Folk Songs Opus 18 and 19
  • Friday evening liturgy ; First performance on September 16, 1932 in the Lützowstrasse synagogue in Berlin
  • V'shamru
  • Hebrew hymn of praise

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinrich Schalit on www.naxos.com
  2. ^ The Heinrich Schalit Collection at the Library of the Jewish Theological seminary, arranged and described by Eliott Kahn, DMA, February 2000 ( Memento from May 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Michael Brenner: Jewish Culture in the Weimar Republic . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46121-2 , p. 175
  4. ↑ Yotam Helem, Joachim Jacob: Popular constructions of remembrance in the German Judaism and after his emigration . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-525-35579-4 , p. 92
  5. ↑ Music master of the Munich main synagogue: Prof. Emanuel Kirschner et.al. - According to Tina Frühauf “Organ and Organ Music in German-Jewish Culture”, 2005; on www.hagalil.com
  6. ↑ Michael Brenner: Jewish Culture in the Weimar Republic , CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46121-2 , p. 175
  7. ↑ Michael Brenner: Jewish Culture in the Weimar Republic . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46121-2 , p. 176
  8. ^ The Heinrich Schalit Collection at the Library of the Jewish Theological seminary, arranged and described by Eliott Kahn, DMA, February 2000 ( Memento from May 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Note .: "A talented non-Jewish organist had Applied for the position and so did Henry. Dr. Elias Straus championed Heinrich's cause and insisted that the congregation should hire a Jewish organist A competition was held between the two musicians, and Heinrich won the contest « ; according to http://www.hagalil.com/deutschland/2008/musik-01.htm
  10. ^ The Heinrich Schalit Collection at the Library of the Jewish Theological seminary, arranged and described by Eliott Kahn, DMA, February 2000 ( Memento from May 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Yotam Helem, Joachim Jacob: Popular constructions of remembrance in the German Judaism and after his emigration . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-525-35579-4 , pp. 93 and 94
  12. ↑ Heinrich Schalit on www.naxos.com
  13. ^ Tina Frühauf: The organ and its music in German-Jewish culture . Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-533706-8 , p. 168
  14. ↑ Michael Brenner: Jewish Culture in the Weimar Republic . CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46121-2 , p. 176
  15. ^ "The modern musicological research and collection of Hebrew-Oriental ritual which has been done by AZ Idelsohn has given a new impetus to the further development of synagogue music." ; quoted from Lily E. Hirsch: A Jewish Orchestra in Nazi Germany - Musical Politics and the Berlin Jewish Culture League , University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 2010, ISBN 978-0-472-11710-9 , p. 177; Quote in the google book search
personal data
SURNAME Schalit, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1976
Place of death Evergreen , Colorado , USA