Society for Jewish Folk Music

The Society for Jewish Folk Music was founded in 1908 by Russian Jewish composers trained in the classical orchestral tradition but drawn together by ideals of Jewish national revival. They sought to cultivate a Jewish national art music within the European classical or art-music framework, and looked to both East European Jewish folk music and liturgical music as indigenous musical resources on which to draw to that end. Following models of ethnomusicological collection widespread in Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, members of the society—which included Aleksander Krein, Joseph Achron, and Mikhail Gnesin—engaged in fieldwork, collecting examples of Jewish folk songs, klezmer, and Hasidic music. Indeed, some of them joined S. An-ski’s famous ethnographic expedition (1912–1914), transcribing music and even collecting some early recordings. They also performed concerts, published sheet music, composed original works, and organized music classes and community choruses. The society opened local branches in cities of the Russian Empire and attracted members from as far afield as Baltimore, Zurich, and Tel Aviv. Contact between the branches was disrupted by World War I, and this, together with the Russian Revolution, resulted in the center of the society shifting to Moscow. The St. Petersburg society continued to exist with government support until 1919.