Conference Report: Potsdam – The New Jewish School in Music

Extract

Both for the quality of the repertoire and the influence of the composers, the ‘New Jewish School in Music’, the subject of a two-day conference on 10–11 May 2004 at the University of Potsdam, Germany, represents a significant aesthetic movement in the history of 20th-century music. To apply the term ‘school’ to a varied group which lasted from 1908 till 1938, and spread from St. Petersburg, through Russia, to Berlin and Vienna, as in the conference title (it is also that of a new book by Dr Jascha Nemtsov, conference organizer), begs the question of the extent to which there was a unanimity of aesthetic purpose and style. Yet while this is still open to debate, what emerged from the conference was a common agenda and a sense that it was certainly ‘new’ and young, since all the composers were keenly interested in contemporary, avant-garde music. Though diverse in idioms, they all shared a profound involvement with the revival of a folk culture and its assimilation into art music.