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How come Jews are so prominent in classical music?

28K views 73 replies 32 participants last post by  hpowders 
#1 ·
Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, Leonard Bernstein, Gil Shaham, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Isaac Stern, Arnold Schoenberg, Gustav Mahler, Arthur Rubinstein. And I am certain there are many who I forgot. It seems like they are more renowned as musicians and not as composers. Why is that?
 
#2 ·
There is a strong cultural heritage that many Jewish people have with classical music. In fact, one of my favorite latest CD's is an album of purely Jewish songs that Sol Gabetta did.



This is a most wonderful connection indeed. The same could be said of the strong Asian presence in the classical music world too.
 
#8 ·
The entire Jewish population of the world is about 15 million.

The population of Germany alone is 80 million, not including Jews. France 66 million, Spain 44 million.

Jews make up about .25% of the world's population. It would seem that they do make up a substantially larger % of classical musicians than would be expected by their population.
 
#5 ·
The OP makes me think of Max Jaffa's entertaining autobiography 'My Life on the Fiddle', where he says that violinists are always 'short, tubby and - well - Jewish!'

I think it's just a social custom thing - Jewish families in the past have been very aspirational in regard to bringing up children to play the violin, as are some other groups today, like the Chinese - I'm thinking 'Tiger Mother'. :)
 
#7 · (Edited)
Gilels, Serkin, Szell, Walter, Grumiaux, Szeryng, Oistrach, Argerich, Kogan, Klemperer, Lupu, Barenboim, Vengerov, Bell, Maazel, Perahia, Anda, Schneiderhan, Hoenstein, Grimaud, Berman, Solti, Glass, Feldman, Starker, Krips, Gould, Eschenbach, Schiff, Fleischer..............
 
#9 ·
How come there are not more Irish drunks in classical music?
 
#15 · (Edited)
Turnaboutvox's list left out Meyerbeer, Halevy and Hahn, and probably others! :scold: ;)

I don't know whether Jewish people are overrepresented among great musicians and high achievers generally- maybe they are- but if there seem to have been a lot of great Jewish musicians historically, it could be because there were many more European Jews (musicians and otherwise) before the war than there are today. So it's possibly not so much a case of today's small Jewish population producing so many talented people, but rather a much larger historical Jewish population producing them.

Edit: I see Nereffid made the point I was trying to make a couple of posts back, and put it more clearly than I did. :tiphat:
 
#17 ·
Steiner, E Bernstein, Korngold, B Hermann, Gershwin..................
 
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#18 ·
I'd suggest that there are so many great Jewish musicians in classical music for the same reason that, at one time, there were so many great African-American musicians in jazz: It was valued and appreciated by the culture that they were a part of. It was also a path to success & self-betterment when many other paths were not open to them.
 
#19 ·
Let's not forget Morton Feldman as well. Definitely one of my fav Jewish-American composers eva! :p :D
 
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#22 ·
Indeed... can we say that Jewish people are prominent in jazz music too?

 
#25 ·
Italian Composers (910 pages)

German Composers (884 pages)

American Composers (874 pages)

French Composers (712 pages)

Austrian Composers (269 pages)

Russian Composers (207 pagposes)

Jewish Composers (194 pages)

Judging by those numbers, I'd say they're not nearly as prominent as you're seeming to claim.
This is not a reliable count of Jewish composers in this list because it's possible to be an Italian-Jewish composer or Russan-Jewish composers... or partial heritage counts.

The Jewish composers in this listing are mostly strictly Jewish composers I would think or people who composed mostly Jewish-focused classical music works... ones like Bloch... :)
 
#23 ·
most of those composers are obscure though.
 
#26 ·
Whether because of limited numbers worldwide or whatever, Jews only seem to dominate classical music if you are somehow focused on Jews. Mr. Eco wrote a novel depicting such a focus.
 
#30 ·
Indeed... in fact, Jewish American studies is a rather prominent field in academia... as much as women's studies, Asian-American studies, gay studies and so on.

It's the prism that you look to frame that makes all the difference here.
 
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#29 · (Edited)
How come the question always gets asked about Jews?

But never about the Italians, Irish, Asians, Scandinavians, Indians, Anglo-Saxons, non-Jewish semites?

Why "The Jews"??
We should ask Jesus Christ-he's a pretty wise Jew. :angel:

So how about them Scandinavians with their Ikea, meatballs, and . . . stuff.
 
#28 ·
cause they are a minority and are represented disproportionally I think.
 
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#35 ·
Classical music isn't the only the only thing with a larger proportion of jews than you'd expect given their world population total. Another is Nobel Prize Laureates. From wikipedia "Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 850 individuals,[2] of whom at least 22% (without peace prize over 24%) were Jews, although Jews comprise less than 0.2% of the world's population". On the other hand, Muslim Nobel Prize winners are disproportionately uncommon. I count just 11 muslim Laureates on wikipedia, even though they make up about 23% of the world population.

As to why this is the case, there are probably a lot of factors. Culture, history, and religion being likely candidates in my opinion, but I don't think it's something we can ever be certain of the answer to. I don't think the necessary reaction is to try and inflate the number of Muslim prize winners in the future by lowering the bar for them, though this might already be happening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_Nobel_laureates

http://www.jinfo.org/Nobel_Prizes.html
 
#36 ·
One explanation is the ability to adapt (often out of necessity). I'm thinking of people like the conductor Bruno Walter who escaped three countries, Germany in 1933, Austria in 1938, and France in 1939, and found, one might argue, his greatest success in the United States. By this time he was in his sixties. I recommend his autobiography, 'Theme and Variations', as well as his other book 'Of Music and Music-Making.' Having said all this, I get the strong feeling that this particular person lived with a sense of conflict with his Jewish identity.
 
#50 ·
A few names doesn't seem much basis for such a conclusion. Is that all you base it on? Why would you connect a religion with an apparent propensity for musicality?
I would imagine that any propensity for musicality would be cultural rather than religious as such, since most of the ethnically Jewish musicians I've known have not practiced their religion. That said, Jewish liturgical music has produced some truly phenomenal singers.
 
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