Ha-Tikva, L’Internationale,
and Yerushalayim shel Zahav:
“Israel in Three Anthems”
A talk by Dr. Michael A. Figueroa,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Discussant: Dr. Brigid Cohen, Assistant Professor of Music, New York University
Monday, November 28, 2016 at 7pm.
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York, NY 10003
Admission is free. Please RSVP to info@jewishmusicforum.org
This presentation addresses three anthems that have helped shape Israeli society: “Ha-Tikva,” “L’Internationale,” and “Yerushalayim shel Zahav.” In light of three ideological facets represented by these songs—liberation, solidarity, and territoriality—Dr. Figueroa will discuss what constitutes an anthem in Jewish and Israeli history, theorizing a mode of performance he calls the “declamatory style,” in which vocal gestures that blur the distinction between speech and song portend the political value of musical performance.
Ars Choralis, a non-profit organization of 48 amateur singers, will perform “Music in Desperate Times: Remembering the Women’s Orchestra of Birkenau”
Several times in the last year (or so) there have been concerts for women based on the album by Talia Applebaum Flashes in the Darkness. It deserves another look for the humour, fun, a bit of blues, a little jazz, a bit of funk, but mostly American folk. Talia is writing about the stuff of her chosen life with the Breslov Hassidmi, and the way religious devotion permeates her life, blended into ‘the everyday.’ The music gives a window into that world –that Talia obviously relishes– for the rest of us. All music and lyrics are by Talia, including blending English and Hebrew with an all female accompaniment. Occasionally the melody and words don’t quite make it, but most often they do, and music cleverly wraps into the lyric.The best piece, (or maybe better to say, the one more universally related to all Jews’ experience), is “Perservere” with arrangement and piano by Shana Friedman, which could fit into any Jewish denomination’s repertoire.… 
The music world involved in the revival of Jewish national music or recovery of early twentieth century art music of the first order will be dazzled by the new critical edition of Leo Zeitlin’s Chamber Music published by AR Editions, and edited by musicologist and professors Paula Eisenstein Baker and Robert S. Nelson. Texts are presented in original Yiddish, Hebrew, transliterations and English translation. 
