The Problems of Jewish Music

Born to a family of musicians in Nizhnii Novgorod, Russia, and raised playing in his father’s klezmer ensemble, Aleksander Krein began formal musical education at the Moscow Conservatory at the age of thirteen. By 1909 he had emerged as one of the most original voices among a group of classically trained Russian Jewish composers seeking to create a Jewish art music within the classical framework. Krein’s “Jewish Sketches” of 1909 and 1910 impressively transmuted klezmer melodies into classical compositions in dialogue with leading musical modernists like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Aleksander Scriabin. Krein played an active role in organized efforts to theorize, create, support, and perform “Jewish national art music” between 1913 and 1919, from work in the Society for Jewish Folk Music to composition for the ambitious modernist Hebrew and Yiddish theater troupes that proliferated between 1916 and 1919. Thereafter, he pursued a notable musical career in the Soviet Union, continuing his engagement with Jewish musical traditions and horizons while serving loyally in Soviet musical institutions and composing some music in accordance with the Bolshevik regime’s ideological dictates.