Yiddish song is a general description of several genres of music sung inYiddish which includes songs ofYiddish theatre,Klezmer songs, and "Yiddish art song" after the model of the GermanLied and Frenchmélodie.
From the fourteenth century secular songs were sung in Yiddish, though rabbis of the period directed that sacred songs were only to be sung in Hebrew.[1]
One of the main genres of Yiddish folk song in Central and Eastern Europe isKlezmer, which was also exported to America and Israel, though Henry Sapoznik (2005) writes "Historically, Yiddish song and theater have had a higher visibility than klezmer music in Israel."[2] Generally 17th and 18th century songs and lullabies are anonymous, but the composers of others such as are known; such asOyfn Pripetshik "On The Hearth" byMark Warshawsky.
In Europe many of the songs of theYiddish theatre companies were composed as incidental music to musical theatre, or at least plays with strong musical content, whereas others are "hit" individual arias and numbers culled from Yiddish operetta.[3] In America, aside from America's own Yiddish theatres, songwriters and composers employed Yiddish folk and theatre songs, along with synagogue modes and melodies, as material for the music ofTin Pan Alley,Broadway andHollywood.[4][5]Irving Berlin was one of the popular composers to move from Yiddish song to English songs.[6]Bei Mir Bistu Shein is an example of a Yiddish song which was later recast as an English hit.
Di Shvue "The Oath" (1902) was the Yiddish anthem of the socialist,General Jewish Labour Bund in early 1900s Russia. Another song by the same composer,S. Ansky (Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport), wasIn Zaltsikn Yam "In the Salty Sea". Yiddish workers' choral societies continued - including that led by Lazar Weiner in New York until the 1960s.Zog Nit Keyn Mol "Never say (this is the end of the road)" was a partisan song written in 1943 byHirsh Glick, for theVilna Ghetto resistance.
Composers of self-consciously "serious" Yiddish art songs include the composers of theSociety for Jewish Folk Music founded inSt. Petersburg in 1908 which was associated with composers including "the JewishGlinka"Michael Gniessin,Joseph Achron,Moses Milner,Lazare Saminsky,Alexander Krein, andSolomon Rosowsky. In America composers included young immigrantsLazar Weiner,Solomon Golub, film composerHenech Kon, and Los Angeles cantorPaul Lamkoff.[7][8] Though like many German Lieder and French mélodies Yiddish art songs may make sensitive use of folk tunes.[9] One example of a conscious 21st Century approach to the Yiddish folk song as art song, as tribute to Schubert, are theA Yiddish Winterreise andDi Sheyne Milnerin cycles of folk songs arranged by Alexander Knapp for English baritoneMark Glanville.[10][11] New settings of Yiddish poetry continue today as well includingvayter un vayter (2012), a selection ofAbraham Sutzkever poems set to music byJudith Shatin, andand all the days were purple (2017/2019), a song cycle including poetry in Yiddish byAnna Margolin,Abraham Sutzkever,Rachel Korn, and others byAlex Weiser which was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Music.[12][13]
Art song