the Jewish Music Forum invites you to join us this Friday at the Center for Jewish History, 9 December 2011, for the next event of the 2011-2012 Jewish Music Forum season. JMF presents a talk entitled, “Jewish Identities and the Quest for Purity in Twentieth-Century Art Music” by Dr. Klara Moricz.

Friday December 9, 2011, 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street, New York, New York 10011

In this lecture Prof. Klára Móricz gives an overview of the anti-essentialist argument of her book Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Art Music. She discusses the concept of Jewish music, the dangers of its various definitions and introduces the protagonists of her book: the Russian Jewish composers who founded the Society of Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg in 1908; Ernest Bloch, whose name is frequently associated with a racial perception of Jewish music; and Arnold Schoenberg, whose Jewish identity evolved around utopian ideals of art and Jewishness. She concludes her lecture by exploring the mythical, religious, secular, ethical, racial, and artistic connotations of purity‹a concept that provides a common thread between the various case studies of her book.

Klara Moricz is Joseph E. and Grace W. Valentine Professor of Music at Amherst College. With Christopher Hailey she is editor of Journal of Musicology. In 2010 she founded the Jewish Studies and Music Group of the American Musicological Society with Ronit Seter. She contributed a chapter on Ernest Bloch to the collection of essays Western Music and Race (Cambridge University Press, 2007). Her book Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Art Music was published by University of California Press in 2008. Her articles appeared in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, twentieth-century music, Cambridge Opera Journal, and American Music. She is presently editing a volume of essays entitled The End of Russia: Essays on Arthur Vincent Lourié (Oxford University Press) with Simon Morrison.

The entire 2011-2012 Jewish Music Forum series is sponsored by the American Society for Jewish Music and the American Jewish Historical Society.