So how does this religious nonbeliever practice his Judaism? By highlighting an overlooked aspect of Jewish culture. Together with his wife, Robyn, Mr. [Charles] Krauthammer runs Pro Musica Hebraica, a concert series they launched last year to change the common view that “Jewish music” is hava nagila, liturgical music, klezmer and not much else. Earlier this month, Pro Musica Hebraica presented its fourth concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
There is a rich tradition of Jewish classical music, though it is largely unknown even within the Jewish community. For Pro Musica Hebraica, such music is not defined strictly by the composer’s ethnicity. It must simply be “self-consciously Jewish”””by drawing on Jewish folk music, Hebrew texts or Jewish themes. Pro Musica Hebraica is an attempt to recover a tradition, Mr. Krauthammer says, and to encourage audiences to judge whether it might be worthy of “a place in the Western canon.”
Last year, the series focused on 20th-century Russian music, specifically on the St. Petersburg School, the Jewish students of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). As nationalism rose across Europe, Rimsky-Korsakov challenged his Jewish students to create a Jewish national music of their own. They responded, Mr. Krauthammer notes, by sending “ethnographic expeditions to shtetls, where they wrote down and recorded””their wax recordings still exist in the St. Petersburg library””synagogue and folk music of the time.”
Anyone interested in 20th century Jewish music should check out the series from Naxos. About fifty titles right now with more to come, and not a bad one in the bunch.
And for contemporary Jewish reggae music, there’s Matisyahu.