Laya Harbater Silber<\/p>\n
Yiddish Art Songs By Israeli-Born Composers: A New Stylistic Interpretation<\/p>\n
Israelis who compose Yiddish art\u00a0 music do not do so\u00a0 in order to pay tribute to a lost culture, nor to perpetuate the memory of the dying Yiddish folksong tradition. They rather compose it in order to generate a vibrant, contemporary interpretation of the Yiddish language, unburdened by the long history of the Jewish Diaspora.\u00a0 This paper examines how this relatively new and possibly short-lived phenomenon emerged in Israel in the late 1960s, as a consequence of underlying political, social and aesthetic factors. It will further provide\u00a0 examples from\u00a0 works by three highly individual, Israeli-born composers, who composed Yiddish music\u00a0 since the 1980s. A brief historical introduction to the Yiddish language, as well as to its literature and music, is first drawn, in order to clarify the various conflicting aesthetic attitudes that eventually led to the emergence of the Yiddish Art Song in Israel.<\/p>\n