Sholom Secunda
Sholom Secunda (born ; Shloime Secunda born August 23, jul. / 4. September 1894 greg. In Alexandria , Russian Empire ; † 13. June 1974 in New York City ) was an American composer of orchestral, film, theater and sacred music of Russian origin.
He became known u. a. as the composer of the Yiddish songs Bei Mir Bistu Shein (1932) and Dos Kelbl (Donna Donna) (1940).
Life
Secunda grew up in a Jewish family in the Ukraine. This was Yiddish , but also speaking German. In 1897 his parents moved to Nikolayev . There he played for the first time at the age of 12 in Abraham Goldfaden's Yiddish traveling theater .
After the pogroms in Russia, the family emigrated to New York in November 1907. He took singing and piano lessons. He soon became known as the Little Cantor . He also sang in the street. In 1913 he completed a classical music education at the Institute of Musical Art . After 1914 he was trained in classical orchestral and operetta composition by the Swiss composer Ernest Bloch . During this time he worked for various theaters, initially in the choir, later mostly as an orchestra conductor or composer. He wrote 60 operettas and musicals and more than 1000 songs.
Secunda is known to this day for his works Bei Mir Bistu Shein (1932) and Dos Kelbl (“The Calf”; 1940, later known as Donna Donna ). He sold the rights to the evergreen at Mir Bistu Shein in 1933 for $ 30 to his music publisher, from whom Sammy Cahn acquired it in 1937, had the text changed by Saul Chaplin and sold 2.5 million copies worldwide with the Andrews Sisters . Because of this and the frequent radio broadcasts , Secunda lost royalties of at least 3 million dollars - bad business. It was only when the copyrights for Cahn and Chaplin ended in 1961 that he and his original lyricist Jacob Jacobs got his song back.
In 1964, Secunda's oratorio If Not Higher was premiered, in which Richard Tucker of the Metropolitan sang the lead role. His oratorio Yizkor in memory of the six million people who lost their lives in the Holocaust premiered in 1973. In the same year his last musical Hard to Be a Jew was created .
At the Concord Hotel in the Catskill Mountains , Secunda also directed a symphony orchestra in a series of Thursday concerts for many years. Well-known singers from the Metropolitan Opera such as Robert Merrill , Brenda Lewis , Lucine Amara , Giuseppe Valdengo and Norman Scott have performed as soloists at these concerts.
Works (selection)
Movie
- Sailor's Sweetheart (1930)
- A Cantor on Trial (1931)
- Kol Nidre (1939)
- Tevya (1939)
- The Jewish Melody (1940)
- Her Second Mother (1940)
- Motel the Operator (1940)
- Eli, Eli (1940)
- Got, Mentsh un Tayvl (God, Man and Devil) (1950)
- Catskill Honeymoon (1950)
musical
- Mashe, or Margarita (1926) (from which the standard Vu iz dus gesele? [Where is the alley?] )
literature
- Victoria Secunda: You are beautiful with me. The life of Sholom Secunda. Walker, New York 1982, ISBN 0-913660-15-9 .
Web links
- Biography , Jewish magazine August 23, 2010 (Russian)
- Don Michael Randel: The Harvard concise dictionary of music and musicians , Harvard University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-674-00084-6 , p. 600
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e William Freeman: Sholom Seconda Is Dead; Composer, song writer . In: New York Times . June 14, 1974, p. 36 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 30, 2016]).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Secunda, Sholom |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Seconda, Sholom; Seconda, Shloyme (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian-American composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 4th September 1894 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Alexandria, Russian Empire (now Oleksandrija , Ukraine ) |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 13, 1974 |
| Place of death | New York City |