Country in the Middle East. The history of the Jewish people was dominated by the traumatic destruction of the Second Temple (70 ce) and the dispersal of the majority of Jews in the Diaspora. Longing for a return to the Holy Land became a basic tenet in Jewish faith. Religious devotion, persecutions and the emergence of a Jewish national movement in the late 19th century triggered successive immigration waves of Jews to Palestine, beginning in 1880. The Jewish community of Palestine, referred to as the Yishuv (‘Settlement’), was culturally autonomous both under Ottoman rule (until 1918) and under the British mandate until the foundation of the independent state of Israel in 1948.
Israeli society has always been dominated by the ideological call to return to the Eastern biblical roots of the nation and to act as a melting pot, contrasted with internal pressures to preserve the heritage of the diverse Jewish ethnic groups, including the performance and study of classical Western repertory. Music played a role in bringing people together, whether for active participation in choirs, bands and folk singing, or as concert audiences. The deliberate revival of Hebrew as a modern language of communication was their most powerful unifying tool, and vocal music was encouraged as a potent device for disseminating the use and the correct accent of the language among immigrants. Lacking a common tradition of folksong, amateur and professional composers turned to inventing a new tradition of Hebrew songs in the hope of their dissemination among the people. Jewish communities of ancient Sephardi, or Middle Eastern, descent comprised expanded families that settled together, leading a mutually supporting cultural and religious life around their synagogue, with daily services and family events providing ample opportunities for music-making. By contrast, most European, or Ashkenazi, Jews immigrated as individuals or in nuclear families, and socialized through the Western institutional model of public concerts. Processes of acculturation ranged from complete compartmentalization to syntheses of traditions.
JEHOASH HIRSHBERG (I), NATAN SHAHAR (II, 1, 2(i)), EDWIN SEROUSSI (II, 2(ii)), AMNON SHILOAH (III)
The number of Jews in Palestine under the Ottomans grew from 8000 in 1839 to 80,000 on the eve of World War I. A small, strictly religious community, known as the ‘Old Yishuv’, settled in the ‘holy towns’ of Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem and Hebron. The first waves of religious immigration of Jews from the Yemen, and of nationally motivated immigration from Europe, mostly from Russia, arrived in the 1880s. Musical activity started with the first amateur communal orchestra in the settlement of Rishon Le-tsiyon (leZion; 1895), soon emulated in most other settlements as well as in Jerusalem and Jaffa under the auspices of Agudat Kinnor Tsiyon (‘The Violin of Zion Society’). Their repertory consisted of light classics, marches and arrangements of Jewish folksongs. The Jews became the largest ethnic group in cosmopolitan Jerusalem, where limited musical activity was conducted within small cultural enclaves such as the private homes of diplomats or among such religious groups as the Templars.
In January 1907 the cantor and scholar A.Z. Idelsohn (1882–1938) settled in Jerusalem and conducted pioneering ethnomusicological research among the numerous local Jewish ethnic groups there, using a cylinder phonograph. His goal was to define the common elements of Jewish liturgy that might reveal the heritage of the Temple. His study of the Yemenites culminated in the first volume of his Thesaurus (1914). He was also active as a teacher and choral conductor.
Tel-Aviv was founded in 1910 as the Jewish suburb of Jaffa, and in the same year the singer Shulamit (Selma) Ruppin (1873–1912) founded the first music school in the country. Basing its curriculum on that of the traditional German conservatory, it served as a model for other music schools, with violin, piano and voice classes, a student orchestra and choir and ear training classes. World War I had disastrous consequences for the small Jewish community, and musical life was halted.
With the establishment of British rule, Jewish immigration resumed, mostly from Russia and Poland. Tel-Aviv became a vibrant urban cultural centre, with fine professional musicians settling in the country. But many imaginative initiatives soon ran aground because of the unstable economy. The conductor Mark Golinkin (1875–1963) initiated in 1923 the Palestine Opera, which performed operas by Verdi, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Anton Rubinstein and others in Hebrew translation, strongly supported by the literary Jewish élite. With fine singers but a deficient orchestra, the Opera performed for capacity audiences in dreary cinemas; lack of funds forced its closure in 1927. In 1925 the conductor Max Lampel had started a short-lived monthly series of outdoor symphonic concerts.
In 1924 Joel Engel (1868–1927), who had founded a Society for Jewish Folk Music in St Petersburg in 1908, made Tel-Aviv the centre of his Niggun society, active mostly in the low-cost publication of hundreds of arrangements of Jewish folksongs from eastern Europe. Music societies in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem cultivated small audiences for chamber music. The Jerusalem Musical Society, founded in 1921 by the British-born cellist Thelma Yellin and her violinist sister Margery, formed the first professional string quartet in the country and sponsored high-standard chamber concerts in Jerusalem for 15 years. Music critics, especially David Rosolio and Menashe Ravina, published detailed reviews in the daily press, insisting on high standards of performance. The European Classical-Romantic canon soon came to dominate concert programmes, delegating the light classics to a secondary position.
Composition was concentrated on the invented folksong, with new art music limited to a handful of works, notably the first Hebrew folk opera, The Pioneers (1924) by Jacob Weinberg (1870–1958). The dominating spirit of socialism spearheaded by the idealistic kibbutz (communal village) movement and the idealization of agricultural pioneer work were the backdrop for the Institute for the Promotion of Music among the People, which sponsored lectures, workers' choruses and courses for choral conductors all over the country. The economic depression of the late 1920s and the deterioration of Arab-Jewish relations in 1929 dealt a heavy blow to these frail initiatives.
The rise to power of Nazi and fascist regimes in Europe provoked a large wave of immigration from Europe. The Jewish population more than doubled, to 445,000, with well trained and musically committed immigrants from central Europe immediately taking the lead in musical life, both as professional musicians and as a highly discerning and demanding audience. In October 1933 the violinist Emil Hauser, former first violinist of the Budapest Quartet, settled in Palestine and founded the Palestine Conservatory, which again emulated the German model, with a staff of 33 teachers of most instruments, as well as classes in theory, music history, composition and music education. In March 1936 the British administration established the Palestine Broadcast Service (PBS), transmitting on one channel and shifting daily from Arabic to Hebrew and then to English programmes. The small and under-funded music department was run by British and Jewish musicians, with relatively large slots for live music from the studio. The studio ensemble soon expanded into the radio orchestra and stressed performances of Jewish and locally written new compositions.
The major event of the 1930s was the founding of the Palestine Orchestra. Conceived by the violinist Bronisław Huberman (1882–1947) as a visionary, multi-faceted musical centre situated in the fresh East in response to what he had regarded as the decline of the West, it soon turned into a salvage operation for the finest Jewish musicians who had lost their positions in some of the best orchestras of central Europe. Huberman supervised and financed most of the operation. Inaugurated in December 1936 as a powerful anti-Nazi protest under Toscanini, the Palestine Orchestra maintained high standards from its inception, performing with the finest international conductors and soloists for capacity subscription audiences. Members of the orchestra formed chamber ensembles, such as the Israeli Quartet, that preserved the central European chamber-music tradition with regular series in intimate halls, such as the old Tel-Aviv Museum. The founding of the orchestra completed the stratification of musical life in the Yishuv.
More than 40 well trained composers came to Palestine during this period. They had not known each other before immigration, and did not constitute any cohesive school. Foremost were Stefan Wolpe (1902–72), Paul Ben Haim (1897–1984), Erich Walter Sternberg (1891–1974), Josef Tal (b 1910) and Marc Lavry (1903–67), all trained in Germany, and A.U. Boskovitch (1907–64) and Verdina Shlonsky (1905–90), who had received most of their training in Paris. Menahem Avidom (1908–95) and Mordecai Seter (1916–94) came to Palestine at a young age, but received their advanced training in Paris. Slightly younger composers, such as Haim (Heinz) Alexander (b 1915), halted their studies in Germany and completed them in Palestine. The Palestine Orchestra provided an incentive for symphonic works, such as Lavry's Emek (1936), eulogizing the pioneers through the insertion of the horah folkdance into a symphonic poem, or Sternberg's large-scale Twelve Tribes of Israel (1938), in which he transplanted the high pathos of the late Romantic German style to express his identification with Jewish history. Other important compositions were Ben Haim's Variations on a Hebrew Tune (1938), based on the Arab melody that had been turned into the folksong My Motherland, the Land of Cana‘an, and Wolpe's Dance in a Form of a Chaconne (1938), which boldly combines horah rhythms with a strict chaconne pattern and atonal harmony.
The bold and innovative Wolpe felt alienated in the traditionally inclined local musical community and emigrated to the USA in 1938, but all the other composer immigrants overcame the resettlement trauma and stayed. In 1938 Sally Levi, a dentist and amateur composer, initiated the World Centre for Jewish Music, which started a huge network of correspondence with Jewish musicians, published a single issue of Musica hebraica, and sponsored performances, most notably of Bloch's Sacred Service, until the outbreak of World War II stopped its activities. The intense compositional activity led to the creation of ACUM, the performing rights society, founded in 1936 and officially registered in 1940. The Academy of Music in Tel-Aviv opened in 1944.
During World War II the country was nearly cut off from the outside world, but concert life continued, with local musicians substituting for international conductors and soloists, and with the composition and performance of such key works as Ben Haim's First Symphony (1940), Mordecai Seter's cantata Sabbath (1940), Boskovitch's Oboe Concerto (1943) and Semitic Suite (1945), and Lavry's opera Dan the Guard (1945). Founded by the American singer Addis de Philip in 1948, Israeli opera survived for 30 years, marred by chronic economic and personal difficulties.
An East–West dichotomy dominated many aspects of musical life. National ideology demanded rejection of the European Diaspora and called for the revival of the ancient roots of the Jews in the East. However, there were few who insisted on a total rejection of the Western musical heritage; the chief argument was between those searching for a West–East synthesis and those upholding the value of individual freedom of expression. Idelsohn's bold endeavour triggered respect and even a romanticization of ethnic traditions, especially that of the Yemenite Jews, among Western musicians. But the lack of training in ethnic interaction, and the economic pressures on the immigrant musicians to make ends meet, hindered most attempts to reach out to the East, and left the core of the problem – the lack of compatibility between the two musical worlds – unresolved. Eastern elements in most early compositions were transplants of Russian orientalism or French exoticism.
Deliberate East–West contacts started in the 1930s almost simultaneously from both directions. A few fine musicians of Middle Eastern origins brought ethnic Jewish and Arab traditions to Western audiences through concerts and radio programmes. The Yemenite singer Brakha Tsefira (Bracha Zefira; 1910–90), raised as an orphan by foster families of different Eastern ethnic groups, from whom she absorbed diverse oral traditions, started an international career in 1930 with the improvising pianist Nahum Nardi, while collecting by memory further traditional songs. In 1939 she turned to most of the immigrant composers and commissioned arrangements, which she performed with members of the Palestine Orchestra on European instruments, as well as with piano, disregarding intonational clashes. The Iraqi-born 'ud player and composer Ezra Aharon (1903–95) was a member of the Iraqi Royal Band. In 1932 he participated in the Cairo conference of Arab music, where he met the ethnomusicologist Robert Lachmann (1892–1939); they continued to collaborate after their settlement in Palestine. Aharon was head of the Arab music ensemble of the PBS, and he also experimented in playing with members of the radio orchestra. The Yemenite Sarah Levi-Tanai was a singer, composer and choreographer who brought Yemenite traditions to the stage, culminating in her dance work ‘Inbal (1948).
The gap left by Idelsohn's emigration was filled by Lachmann, who conducted an intensive recording and research project, continued and much expanded after his early death by the ethnomusicologist Edith Gerson-Kiwi (1908–92).
The composer A.U. Boskovitch presented a well articulated ideology based on the dialectics of time and place. He regarded the Israeli composer as a representative of the collective, one who should strive for a new national style based on what he called ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ landscapes, referring to the vocal rhetoric of Sephardi Hebrew and of Arabic. Stressing the regional culture rather than Jewish heritage, he expressed his ideology in the second movement of his Oboe Concerto (1943), in which the oboe emulates the sound of the zurna in improvisatory melismas over a three-note string ostinato, and in the Semitic Suite (1945), where he imitates the sound and melody of an Arab takht.
The young state of Israel acknowledged the role of music as a powerful social, educational and promotional tool, and the Ministry of Education appointed a High Music Council (later the music wing of the Public Council for Culture and the Arts). The Palestine Orchestra, renamed the Israel PO, was sent on frequent concert tours of Europe and the USA, and fine recitalists were dispatched as cultural ambassadors. The first Israel Prize for composition was granted in 1954. The government sponsored large-scale international events, such as the International Harp Contest (from 1960) and the annual Israel Festival (from 1961). The newly built Jerusalem Congress Centre (1953) and Frederic Mann Auditorium (1957) provided spacious concert venues.
Increased immigration to Israel in the 1950s further diversified its culture, with massive waves of Bulgarian Jewry and entire communities from Yemen and North Africa. Urban growth encouraged new performing groups, such as the Haifa and Be’er-Sheba‘ orchestras, the Rinat (Israel National Choir) and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. The immigration of musicians from the Soviet Union in the early 1970s led to the expansion of the small radio orchestra into the Jerusalem SO (1972), housed at the new performing arts centre of the Jerusalem Theatre.
The New Israeli Opera opened in Tel-Aviv in 1985, performing in the original language with Hebrew surtitles; the Tel-Aviv Opera House opened in 1994. Further huge immigration from the Soviet Union (1989–94) trebled the number of musicians in Israel and encouraged the founding of new orchestras, such as the chamber string orchestra Rehovot Camerata (in Jerusalem since 1996) and Rishon Le-tsiyon SO, which has functioned also as the opera orchestra. The Musica Nova and Caprisma ensembles have specialized in contemporary repertory, and the early music movement found fertile soil.
Chamber music has continued to attract audiences, with regular series held at the Israel Museum, Tel-Aviv Art Museum, Tel-Aviv Conservatory, etc. Ensembles such as the Israel and Tel-Aviv string quartets, Yuval Trio, Israel Wind Quintet and Be’er-Sheba‘ Piano Duo have survived for more than two decades.
Tension between individualism and ideological collectivism increased when a new generation of composers (such as Yehezkiel Braun, Ben-Zion Orgad, Tzui Avni, Noam Sheriff, Ami Ma‘yani), born in the 1920s and 30s joined the founders of Israeli music. Most of them composed with a personal commitment and under external pressure to find a new national style. At the same time they were exposed to and attracted by new developments in the West after 1950. No consensus nor a national Israeli school ever emerged, and the search only increased pluralism and polemics. Of special significance was the use of the sound and rhythm of the Hebrew language, whether biblical or modern, in vocal music. Contrasting techniques were at times juxtaposed within a single composition. For example, Josef Tal quoted a simple folktune by Yehudah Sharett as an ostinato bass under atonal progressions in his Piano Sonata. Oedoen Partos quoted two Yemenite melodies, altering their structural 5ths into Bartókian tritones, in Visions. Tzui Avni integrated passages of declamatory heterophony into rich and dissonant orchestral harmony in Meditations on a Drama. Composers frequently alternated techniques according to context and genre: Haim Alexander, for example, used serialism in his Patterns but folk-like modality in his Nature Songs. New immigrant composers who came at the prime of their creative power went through profound artistic transformations. Mark Kopytman, who arrived in 1972 from the Soviet Union, integrated a traditional Yemenite song as sung on stage by the Yemenite folk singer Gila Bashari into dense heterophony in his Memory. In the 1970s the melting-pot ideology disintegrated and postmodern pluralism gained the upper hand. Third- and fourth-generation composers entered the stage, further expanding the stylistic diversity of Israeli music from the iconoclasm of Aric Shapiro to Haim Permont's and Michael Wolpe's nostalgic mementoes of Yishuv times.
The Hebrew University, founded in 1925, became involved in music in 1933. The University National Library is the main repository of manuscripts and prints of Jewish and Israeli music. The Sound Archives house numerous field recordings. The Jewish Music Research Centre has initiated projects such as the RISM catalogues and the periodical Yuval.
The first department of musicology was founded at the Hebrew University in 1965, followed by Tel-Aviv University (1966) and Bar-Ilan University (1969). Their varied research fields and curricula include the theory and history of European music, Jewish music, world music and ethnomusicology in its broadest sense. The laboratory of musicological research at the Hebrew University was among the pioneers in the development of the melograph.
Instruction in performance and composition has been provided by the Rubin Academies in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, the latter incorporated into Tel-Aviv University. The Jerusalem Music Centre, founded in 1971, sponsors master classes by distinguished international teachers, as well as specialized concerts and symposia. Until the 1980s institutional instrumental instruction involved European instruments only, with the exception of Erza Aharon's limited activity at the Jerusalem Conservatory. The Hebrew University initiated a workshop in the performing practice of Arab and Javanese music, having acquired a full gamelan. Instrumental instruction in Classical Arab music started in 1996 at the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem and at a school for Eastern music sponsored by Jerusalem City Council.
In 1951 Peter Gradenwitz founded Israeli Music Publications, and in 1961 the Culture and Arts Council founded the Israeli Music Institute as a publicly sponsored publishing house for Israeli music. The Israeli Composers League, founded in 1953, established in 1993 its own publishing house, the Israeli Music Centre.
A.Z. Idelsohn: Gesänge der jemenischen Juden (Leipzig, 1914)
Musica Hebraica, i–ii (Jerusalem, 1938)
M. Bentwich: Thelma Yellin, Pioneer Musician (Jerusalem, 1964)
I. Ibbeken and Z. Avni, eds.: An Orchestra is Born (Tel-Aviv, 1969)
M. Brod and Y.W. Cohen: Die Music Israels (Kassel, 1976)
A. Shiloah and E. Cohen: ‘The Dynamics of Change in Jewish Oriental Ethnic Music in Israel’, EthM, xxvii (1983), 227–52
I. Adler, B. Bayer and E. Schleifer, eds.: The Abraham Zvi Idelsohn Memorial Volume (Jerusalem, 1986) [with Eng. summaries]
J. Hirshberg: ‘Tel-Aviv: Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’, Symphony Orchestras of the World, ed. R.R. Craven (New York, 1987), 202–7
A. Tischler: A Descriptive Bibliography of Art Music by Israeli Composers (Warren, MI, 1989)
P.V. Bohlman: The Land where Two Streams Flow: Music in the German-Jewish Community of Israel (Urbana, IL, 1989)
J. Hirshberg: Paul Ben-Haim: his Life and Works (Jerusalem, 1990)
A. Shiloah: Jewish Musical Traditions (Detroit, 1992)
P.V. Bohlman: The World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, 1936–1940: Jewish Musical Life on the Eve of World War II (Oxford, 1992)
J. Hirshberg: Music in the Jewish Community of Palestine 1880–1948: a Social History (Oxford, 1995)
R. Fleisher: Twenty Israeli Composers: Voices of a Culture (Detroit, 1997)
Israel, §II: Folk and popular music
An area of musical creativity originating in Erets-Israel (‘land of Israel’) was Erets-Israeli song, which consists of Hebrew texts set to music with a monophonic texture, usually by identifiable Erets-Israeli composers during the period 1882–1948. Erets-Israeli songs developed alongside other Hebrew songs sung in Erets-Israel up to 1948.
The origins of Hebrew songs coincide with the revival of Hebrew culture in Europe and the beginning of the Zionist movement in the latter half of the 19th century. The Hebrew cultural revival included literature and poetry, just as the Zionist movement brought with it waves of immigration to Erets-Israel.
The majority of songs in Erets-Israel during the era of the first immigration were brought by immigrants. Songs typically expressed a longing for Erets-Israel along with the hope for rebirth in the homeland. Many of the song lyrics were written in Hebrew by poets who were part of the Hibat Sion (love of Zion) and Hathiyah (revival) movements, but who, for the most part, had never visited Erets-Israel. The majority of song melodies were borrowed from Hasidic and Yiddish sources, and from Russian, Romanian and Polish folk and popular songs.
Most melodies were in minor keys and in duple metre, at times in slow march-like tempos, with typical Hebrew syllabic emphasis on the penultimate syllable. These songs are also referred to as Hibat Tzion, among them Hatiqvah, a song that became the anthem for the Zionist movement, later becoming the Israeli national anthem.
Four distinct song types characterize these eras. First, Hibat Tzion songs continued from the previous era, becoming part of the second immigration's repertory. The second category includes songs composed within Erets-Israeli educational institutions. With the establishment of educational institutions in cities and villages and the inclusion of songs in school music curricula, the need for suitable materials became evident. Until this time appropriate pre-school and school songs were almost non-existent, resulting in new musical materials, primarily songs, composed by some of the music teachers. Teacher-composers such as Karchewsky (1873–1926) and Idelsohn (1882–1938) began their activities in the 1910s, and thus were the first Erets-Israeli composers. The third category includes songs with Arab melodies that were widespread in Erets-Israel to which Hebrew texts were fitted, e.g. Hachmisimi, Bein Nehar Prat, Yad ‘Anugah and Ani Re'itiha. These were usually love songs characterized by use of the interval of a 2nd (often an augmented 2nd), slow tempos and rubato. The wide circulation of these songs indicates an integration with a widespread native Eastern culture. The fourth category includes songs with melodies originating in Eastern European Hasidic culture. Such texts include short verses from the Bible or from prayer books. These songs include melodic redundancy, repetition of lyrics, binary structures, ranges of one octave and duple metre. El Yivneh Ha-miqdash, Vetaher Libeinu, El Yivneh Ha-galil and Zivhu Sedeq are examples of songs that also made up the principal component of horah dances. The rise of communal singing and horah dancing became distinguishing characteristics of the Erets-Israeli settlement.
The 1920s was a period of dramatic change for Erets-Israeli song. Composers such as Hanina Karchewsky, Abraham Zvi Idelsohn and Yoel Engel (1868–1927) were ending their active periods, while others, such as Yedidiah Admon (1894–1985), Nahum Nardi (1901–77), Shalom Postolsky (1898-1949), Menashe Ravina (1888–1968), Mattityahu Shelem (1904–75), Mordecai Zeira (1905–68), among others, were beginning careers. Several composers lacked basic formal music education, while others did not know or use musical notation. Their songs were intrinsically different from those of their predecessors; for example, syllabic emphasis, moved to the last syllable of words, brought about changes in musical rhythm. In these and in subsequent years, subjects of songs composed and sung in Erets-Israel concerned work and the homeland, the landscapes of Galilee and the Izrael Valley, construction and creation. Song lyrics written by the best Erets-Israeli poets often used third-person plural verbs to express a national, collective ‘I’.
Many songs later included in the Hebrew song repertory are by identifiable composers who considered their efforts as contributing to the building of a renewed Hebrew culture. As a nation of immigrants, Erets-Israel lacked a long-standing tradition of folksong. The goal of the national movement included a rapid realization of folksong in the revived Hebrew language, and composers wrote hoping to achieve a wide circulation. In their search for musical roots, many composers of Erets-Israeli song adopted the Dorian mode to evoke an older style. The Yemenite trill was also used, as was rhythmic syncopation.
Many country, shepherd, ceremonial, children's and holiday songs were composed in the 1930s and 40s. Eastern influences existed in songs from Eastern composers such as Sarah Levi, Nissan Cohen Melamed and others, or by means of environmental influences on composers such as Yedidiah Admon, Nahum Nardi, Emanuel Amiran and others. Internal and external political events transformed Erets-Israeli song at that time; Arab-Jewish conflicts highlighted ‘Watchmen's Songs’ and ‘Defenders' Songs’. Attempts to create a rural culture encouraged compositions from working settlements, particularly those composers from the Kibbutz movement such as David Zehavi, Mattityahu Shelem, Jehuda Sharet and others. The encouragement for young Israelis to enlist in the British army during World War II inspired Hebrew ‘Army Songs’ composed by Mordecai Zeira, Daniel Sambursky and others. The Holocaust brought the influence of Yiddish village songs, along with political and propagandist Russian tunes.
The War of Independence and the establishment of the State of Israel brought about the conclusion of the era of Erets-Israel. Approximately 4600 Hebrew songs were circulated and sung during this epoch and of these approximately 57% could be considered Eretz-Israeli.
Israel, §II: Folk and popular music
Diverse Israeli songs were discernible immediately following statehood, a direct continuation of Eretz-Israeli song. Mourning and bereavement songs, memorials to the Independence War and victory songs were heard along with songs influenced by foreign dances (tango, rumba, paso doble and mamba), and songs, both new and translated, that were products of festivals of European and American popular songs.
Composers continued writing in the period after statehood, and in the 1950s a ‘country song’ or ‘shepherd song’ style emerged that was a continuation of the ‘rural country’ style of the 1940s. Texts drew on pastoral and rural settings, florid language and cries of ‘hey’ and ‘ho’. Melodies were in minor scales and modes with relatively simple structures. Accompanying instruments included the acoustic guitar, which often dictated harmonic accompaniment, accordion and the Arab clay drum. Special dances developed at this time, known as ‘folkdances’.
Representative composers of this period include Emanuel Zamir (1925–62), Gill Aldemah (b 1928), Amitai Ne’eman (b 1926) and Josef Hadar (b 1926), who formed the first generation born in Israel (most were accordion players). Lahaqat Ha-nahal, the first military performing troupe, was created in 1951 for the Israeli army to entertain soldiers with skits and songs portraying Israeli army life. The international recognition of Tsahal (lsraeli army), raised the status of military performing troupes and thus of Israeli song. A large repertory of songs was created by military troupes, who were awarded top honours in song festivals. These troupes performed extensively, providing venues for many who would later become leading artists, composers, arrangers and directors.
Materials for the troupes were commissioned from the best Israeli composers, among them Alexander Argov (1914–96) and Moshe Velensky (1910–97), who were also prolific Erets-Israeli composers. Other Israeli composers who wrote for the troupes include Nurit Hirsh (b 1942), Matti Kaspi (b 1949), Aryeh Lavnon (b 1932), Yair Rosenblum (1944–96), Naomi Shemer (b 1930), Yohanan Zarai (b 1930) and Dov Zeltzer (b 1932). A significant number of Israeli composers took advantage of writing for military troupes.
A transformation of Israeli song took place in the latter half of the 1960s. The accordion was replaced by the electric organ, the Arab clay drum was replaced by a drum set, and electric and bass guitars were added. This transformation stimulated the rise of ‘beat’ and rock groups in peripheral areas. The band, Hahalonot Hagvohim, heralded the introduction of rock-styled Israeli song. Many performers, among them duos (Ran and Nama, Ilka and Aviva, Ha-dudaim, Ha-parvarim), trios (Shloshet Ha-metarim, Gesher Ha-yarqon), and troupes (Batsal Yarok, Ha-tarnegolim) in addition to hundreds of singers, enriched the Israeli song repertory.
The Six-Day War represented a watershed for Israeli song, flooding the country with ‘homeland’ songs resembling Eretz-Israeli homeland songs. Together with ‘countryside’ songs, homeland songs were integrated into the nostalgia that inundated Israel in the 1960s. The blend of old and new homeland songs formed a current of Israeli music that is referred to as ‘Songs of Erets-Israel’. Naomi Shemer (b 1930), composer of the song Yerushalayim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold), became symbolic of this era.
Television broadcasting began in 1967 in Israel, providing venues and wide exposure for performers. In this era, a number of songwriters also doubled as performers. Shalom Hanoch, Samuel Kraus, Matti Kaspi, Yehudith Ravitz, Schlomo Gronic are composer-singers who were active as independent soloists, while others worked in groups, duos or ensembles (Ha-lul, Ha-churchelim, Ha-keves Ha-shishaasar). The talents of Arik Einstein over the course of 30 years stimulated composers such as Shalom Hanoch (b 1946), Micky Gavrielov (b 1949), Yoni Rechter (b 1951) and others. The group, Kaveret, made its first appearance at the beginning of the 1970s, and despite their brief period of activity, introduced a new sound to Israeli song. A new Hasidic song style developed after the Six-Day War, influenced by annual festivals of Hasidic songs taking place as early as 1969. Hasidic songs employ biblical and prayer book texts, mostly repeated verses with tunes mostly in minor keys, intermediate ranges (an octave to a 10th), simple structure, regular rhythm and basic harmonic progressions (I–IV–V).
The influences of Eastern Jewish communities were felt before the establishment of the State of Israel, owing to the presence of Yemenite and Arab songs. After the Six-Day War, especially since the 1980s, ethnic consciousness grew, and Eastern styles became an important marker, known as the Eastern Mediterranean style. This style includes the use of melisma, the augmented 2nd and melodic ornamentation with the range of quarter- and half-tones. Instrumentation generally consists of electronic instruments, electric and bass guitars and drum sets, and is expanded at times to include, the ‘ūd, qanūn, and darbouka. Among composers associated with this style are Avihu Medina (b 1948), Boaz Sharabi, Shlomo Bar and others.
In the first half of the 1990s, singer-composers who performed their songs with their ensembles gained prominence, such as Yuval Banai with the group Meshina, Arkadi Dukhin with Ha-haverim Shel Natasha, Aviv Gefen (b 1971) with Ha-ta‘uyot, Rami Kleinstein (b 1963) with Hmo'etza, Shlomo Arzi (b 1949), Yehuda Poliker and many others.
The first signs of a popular music industry are found in the mid-1930s with the setting up of a record company and a radio station. Professional immigrant musicians from Germany and Poland opened venues for music theatre and cabaret in the growing cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv, where contemporary European songs were sung with Hebrew texts. The diversity of styles can be heard on the 1933 recordings Mi-shirei erets Yisra’el (‘Songs from the land of Israel’).
Although these musics continued to be performed after the state of Israel had been established, up until the 1970s popular music was dominated by state-controlled cultural policies and mass media. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) entertainment groups (lehakot tsva’iyot) were characteristic of this period. They performed songs which combined ‘native’ elements with international popular styles, were arranged as group songs with short solo sections and were initially accompanied by accordion and derbuka (drum). These songs attained wide popularity and were disseminated on LPs and by radio. By the 1970s the distinction between military and civilian artists had become blurred and IDF artists became major stars.
Other songs of this period included the pizmonim or shirei meshorerim (‘songs of the poets’) performed by duos or trios, such as Duda'im, Parvarim and Shlishiyat Gesher Ha-yarqon, and were accompanied by acoustic guitar. Unlike previous genres, these songs stressed individual, urban experiences rather than collective or national topics. During the 1950s popular musics emerged based on Iraqi and Egyptian urban styles. These were performed in bars and at parties by Jewish immigrants from Arab countries. Greek popular songs, performed in Hebrew, became popular during the 1960s, and these and songs derived from Arab styles were perceived as oppositional to musics sanctioned by the cultural establishment.
From the 1970s onwards Israeli popular musics have diversified and have been increasingly influenced by Anglo-American styles, particularly rock. Contemporary popular styles may be divided into four categories. Firstly, pop and rock of foreign origin, particularly from the UK and USA. Secondly, shirei erets Yisra’el, which includes ‘folk’ songs, IDF ensemble songs and popular songs in a folk spirit, particularly those composed by N. Shemer. Thirdly, Hebrew songs in Western popular styles such as disco, rap and middle-of-the-road. Israeli rock was started by a group of artists including Arik Einstein, Shalom Hanokh and Shmulik Kraus, who were influenced by the Beatles. The most influential Israeli rock band continues to be Lahaqat Kaveret (‘The beehive band’) who performed in 1971–3. Many Hebrew pop songs are influenced by Europop and Israel has twice won the Eurovision Song Contest. Fourthly, musiqah mizrahit (‘eastern music’) developed in the early 1970s which combines Greek, Turkish, Arab and Yemenite-Jewish styles and instruments with Western popular forms. Associated with the working class it achieves huge sales and has had a lasting appeal to a wide audience.
Israel, §II: Folk and popular music
A. Shiloah and E. Cohen: ‘Major Trends of Change in Jewish Oriental Ethnic Music’, Popular Music, v (1985), 199–223
T. Bensky, J. Braun and U. Sharvit: ‘Towards a Study of Israeli Urban Musical Culture: the Case of Kiryan Ono’, AsM, xvii/2 (1986), 168–209
M. Regev: ‘The Musical Soundscape as a Contest Area: “Oriental Music” and Israeli Popular Music’, Media, Culture and Society, vii (1986), 343–55
J. Halper, E. Seroussi and P. Squires-Kidron: ‘Musica Mizrahit: Ethnicity and Class Culture in Israel’, Popular Music, vii (1989), 131–42
M. Regev: ‘The Field of Popular Music in Israel’, World Music, Politics and Social Change, ed. S. Firth (Manchester, 1989), 145–55
M. Regev: ‘Israeli Rock: or a Study in the Politics of “Local Authenticity”’, Popular Music, xi/1 (1992), 1–14
M. Regev: ‘Musica Mizrahit, Israeli Rock and National Culture in Israel’, Popular Music, xv (1996), 275–84
E. Seroussi: Popular Music in Israel: the First Fifty Years (Cambridge, MA, 1996)
A. Horowitz: ‘Performance in Disputed Territory: Israeli Mediterranean Music’, Musical Performance, i/3 (1997), 43–53
Before the creation of the state of Israel (1948), the region was mainly inhabited by Arabs, and various genres of Arab music played an important role in religious and secular ceremonies and everyday life. At the end of Ottoman rule (1517–1917), Muslim and Christian Arabs formed over 90% of the population. The vast majority of these Arabs were Sunni Muslim. From 1948 onwards Jewish interests became dominant.
The most authentic and pervasive kind of Arab music in Israel has been the rich folk music practised by Bedouins, farmers and (to a certain extent) town-dwellers. A characteristic repertory of songs and dances separately involving women and men enhance the various events of life in Bedouin encampments as well as in small or large agrarian villages inhabited by Muslims, Druzes, Christians or mixed populations. The literary, performative and musical components of the sequence of traditional and improvised songs marking any given event all depend on talented individuals who are able to combine the gifts of poet, musician and performer. Normally not all villages are fortunate enough to have a poet-musician within their midst, so they have to bring the best known of them from afar. A normal performance requires the participation of two poets who alternate in singing the verses of certain genres. These are mainly improvised, like the popular Middle Eastern four-line stanzas, the ‘ataba, or the argumentative dialogue in sung verses, the huwar. On special festive occasions, four poet-musicians participate.
Most ceremonies are held outdoors and an active audience takes part by uttering responses, hand-clapping and dancing the debka (chain dance). This is accompanied by a flute, urghul or mujwiz (two types of a double clarinet), the main instruments used in the villages.
From scattered information provided mainly by European travellers, we know that under Ottoman rule Arab art music was occasionally performed in coffee houses and at weddings in urban centres. In style it was essentially similar to that of Turkish, Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian music of the period: singer, supported by instrumentalists of the takht ensemble (see Arab music, §I, 6).
From 1920, when Palestine was under British Mandate, Christian churches in Jerusalem, Ramalla and Nazareth stimulated and sponsored musical activities through educational work and events outside the regular church services. The repertory consisted of a mixture of Arab and Western music.
In the city of Haifa, Ibrahim Bathish founded a music club which played an important role in the development of local art music. One of its graduates, Selim Hilou, became a prominent Lebanese composer and singer of the prestigious muwashshah vocal genre. Among his other writings he has devoted an important book to this subject. After the creation of the state of Israel, three Haifa club graduates became central promoters of Arab musical activity in the northern part of the country: Sudki Shukri, Michael Dermalkonian (who also studied Western music) and Hikmat Shaheen. Through music education a number of performing groups gradually emerged, sponsored largely by the establishment.
The traditional transmission of Arab art music is through assimilation, listening to the fundamental aspects of the art as performed by great masters, or through private lessons given by renowned musicians to interested individuals. Alongside this, an official and formal method of teaching came into being with the establishment in 1951 of a programme for training Arab music teachers at the Haifa Conservatory. In 1963 Suheil Radwan, one of the first trainees, became head of the department of Arab music at Haifa.
The Haifa Arab music department fostered a musical renaissance in schools, clubs and cultural and community centres throughout the country, including the establishment of orchestral ensembles and choirs. Most ensembles included Jewish musicians who had migrated to Israel from Iraq, Egypt and Syria. Muslims, Christians and Jewish musicians worked side by side in a musical community which created a bridge of fraternity between Arabs and Jews. The foundation in 1965 of an Arab-Jewish centre, Beit ha-Gefen, in Haifa, was crucial in this process, and musical activities took place there.
In 1957 the Radio Broadcasting Authority founded the first professional orchestral ensemble. Its first director was Ezra Aharon, a famous composer and ‘ūd player originally from Iraq. In the 1932 Cairo International Congress of Arabic Music, he had led the official Iraqi ensemble under the name ‘Azzuri Efendi. Gifted Jewish instrumentalists from Iraq, Egypt and Syria formed the radio ensemble, later joined by two Arab violinists. Arab singers were employed to sing on radio programmes, and by the 1970s Arab singers and composers were participating in annual festivals held by the radio stations of major cities. Folk, art and popular music programmes were regularly shown on the Arab section of Israeli television.
Most recently some small Arab-Jewish groups have been established containing fine bi-musical instrumentalists conversant with Arab, Jewish and Western art music styles. Their repertories include interesting arrangements of traditional Arab and Israeli music. The most famous of these ensembles is the Bustan ensemble, using qānūn, guitar, banjo, ‘ūd, violin, flute, bass and Arab percussion. The group combines an eclectic mixture of musical influences and has gained an international reputation.
See also Palestinian music and Arab music, §II.