User:Maineartists/sandbox: Difference between revisions

Heinrich Schalit (January 2, 1886 – February 3, 1976) was an Austrian-American, Jewish composer and musician; best known for his sacred music, art songs, and chamber music. Together with Herbert Fromm, Isadore Freed, Hugo Chaim Adler, Frederick Piket, Julius Chajes, Abraham Wolfe Binder, and Lazare Saminsky, Schalit modernized Jewish sacred music in the first half of the 20th century.^[1] His most popular work is Freitagabend-Liturgie (Friday Evening Liturgy), premiered in 1932.

Heinrich Schalit was born on January 2, 1886 to Joseph Schalit and Josefine Fischer. He had four siblings, including first secretary of the Zionist Office, Isidor Schalit. Schalit studied organ, piano and composition privately in 1898 with Josef Labor, and 1903 he began studying at the Conservatory of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. His teachers included the pianist Theodor Leschetizky and composer Robert Fuchs. In 1906 he completed his studies and received the Austrian State Prize for Students of Composition for his Piano Quartet in E minor. After his studies, he moved to Munich in 1907, where he worked as a private music teacher and composed numerous works, primarily post-romantic songs and chamber music; including the works Jugendland for piano two hands, Six Love Songs and Six Spring Songs.^[2] In 1909 he studied organ for one semester at the Royal Bavarian Academy of Music. Schalit began his musical education and career without any connection or influence to Jewish music.^[3]

Between 1916 and 1920, motivated by the political events of the time, Schalit began to focus more on Jewish music. He saw himself as a Jewish composer motivated by Zionism.^[4] In a letter to Anita Hepner, Schalit wrote:

[... between] 1928 and 1932, when there was no composer of Jewish birth who could have even thought of writing music with a consciously Jewish heartbeat, I was already a well-known composer of Jewish religious music [...] as a conscious Jewish musician and Zionist I considered it my duty to convince him [Paul Ben-Haim] of the necessity of devoting his talent to Jewish music and culture".^[5]

At the end of the 1920s, Schalit began to intensively study the liturgical music of Jewish worship. In his opinion, Jewish liturgical music was characterized by a romantic and operatic style, as in the works of Louis Lewandowski and Salomon Sulzer, and needed renewal and modernization, which should, however, be based on authentic Jewish musical traditions while still integrating elements of 20th-century music. It should equally meet the needs of worship and meet high musical standards, such as those found in Christian sacred music of the Middle Ages or J.S. Bach. The result of these considerations was the Friday Evening Liturgy for cantor, unison and mixed choir, and organ (Opus 29), premiered in 1932. In this work, Schalit also incorporated the collection of Jewish-Oriental melodies (Hebrew-Oriental Melodienschatz) by the Jewish musicologist Abraham Zvi Idelsohn. The work was highly praised by musicologists such as Alfred Einstein, Curt Sachs, and Hugo Leichtentritt. During the early days of National Socialism, publishing the work was considered too risky, so Schalit published it himself.^{[2] [6]}

• Ostjüdische Volkslieder, Opus 18 and 19
• Freitagabend-Liturgie; premiered on September 16, 1932, at the Lützowstrasse Synagogue in Berlin
• V'shamru
• Hebräischer Lobgesang

• Schalit, Heinrich. In: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (eds.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Volume 2, vol. 2. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2, p. 1022.
• Heinrich Schalit: The man and his music. Schalit, Michael. Livermore, California. ASIN: B0006E285A
• Schalit, Heinrich. In: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short Biographies on the History of the Jews 1918–1945. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4, p. 328.