Erasure and void were significant parts of the developing Israeli musical culture of the mid-twentieth century, as exemplified by a case study of German-born Israeli composer Hanoch Jacoby’s Mutatio (1975). Erasure is central to the piece as an expression of Jacoby’s personal experience and through his appropriation of traditional ethnic musical materials. Ideologies of negation were common in Zionist thought and Israeli music, particularly regarding Orientalism in Zionist and Israeli contexts. In Israeli music, the East functions as the Other, but also as an ancient Self, complicating the merging of Eastern materials and Western styles at the heart of the new, “Mediterranean” style of Israeli art music in the 1950s. Jacoby was born in Königsberg and studied composition under Paul Hindemith, with whom he maintained a correspondence through his emigration to Jerusalem in 1933. Mutatio, composed late in his career, was an attempt to reconcile his role as an Israeli composer with the missing German part of his identity and musical upbringing. The structure, orchestration, and texture of Mutatio suggest that it was modeled after the first movement of Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler. Hindemith’s movement is built around a German chorale, which serves as the introduction and coda and is set polyphonically at the climax of the movement. Mutatio follows this scheme almost exactly. By using Hindemith as a model, Jacoby highlights the difference in their exile experience: Hindemith maintained his German identity and could turn to the German musical tradition while Jacoby could not. Jacoby further engages with issues of Orientalism and secularization by borrowing two versions of the piyyut Hon ta’hon sourced from transcriptions prepared by Hail Alexander. Alexander’s transcriptions were based on specific performances of the two versions of Hon ta’hon, and they were created for the purpose of providing composers with material for practical arrangements. By using the Hon ta’hon melodies as Oriental folk material, borrowed and developed in a Western manner, Jacoby implies that Western, Judeo-Christian history has its roots in the East, that is to say, in Israel.

Works: Hanoch Jacoby: Mutatio (158-60, 169-72); Paul Hindemith: Mathis der Maler (159)

Sources: Paul Hindemith: Symphony Mathis der Maler (158-59, 169-72); Anonymous: Es sungen drei Engel (159); Haim Alexander (transcriber), Baruch Abdalla Ezra (performer): Hon ta’hon, Baghdad version (162, 166-69, 169-72); Haim Alexander (transcriber), Ezra Mordechai (performer): Hon ta’hon, Kurdistan version (163-64, 166-69, 169-72)

Index Classifications: 1900s

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet