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Fifty years of electronic music in Israel

August 2005
Organised Sound 10(02):163 - 180

Authors:

University at Albany, State University of New York

The history of electronic music composition, technologies and institutions is traced from the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Core developments are followed beginning with the founding generation including Joseph Tal, Tzvi Avni and Yizhak Sadai, continuing with the second and third generations of musicians and researchers, living in Israel and the United States. The institutional and political dynamics of the field in this country are explored, with a focus on the challenges of building an audience and institutional support, as well as prospects for the future.

Tzvi Avni in the mid-1970s with students in the Jerusalem Rubin Academy Electronic Music Studio (photo courtesy of Tzvi Avni).

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Arie Shapiro at the piano (photo courtesy of the composer).

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The Haifa University Electronic Music Studio

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The Haifa University Electronic Music Studio (photo courtesy of Avi Elbaz).

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The home studio of Yossi Mar-Haim (photo courtesy of the composer).

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Figures - uploaded by Robert J. Gluck

Content may be subject to copyright.

Content uploaded by Robert J. Gluck

Content may be subject to copyright.

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel

ROBERT J. GLUCK

University at Albany, PAC 312, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, New York 12208, USA

E-mail: gluckr@albany.edu

founding figure of electronic music in Israel. Born in

present-day Poland, Tal studied during his teen years

at the Staatliche Akademische Hochschule fur Music

in Berlin. Among his teachers was Paul Hindemith

who, he recalls, ‘pointed me in the direction of elec-

tronic music’ (Tal 2003), specifically to the studio of

engineer Friedrich Trautwein, best known as inventor

of the Trautonium, a synthesizer prototype created in

1928. Tal was one of a handful of students at the lab

who ‘learned electronics theory, to create, measure

and do experiments . . . creating sounds, but not yet

music, using electronic tools (vacuum tubes)’ (Tal

2003). Tal never worked directly with Trautwein, but

he was involved in the life of Trautwein’s studio during

the period when the Trautonium was coming to frui-

tion. The studio was equipped with sound generators,

wire recorders and other devices and its goal was the

emulation of acoustical instrument sounds.

Tal arrived in Israel in 1934. He did not continue his

involvement with electronic music until the late 1940s.

As he notes, ‘We didn’t have access to electronic

instruments to produce sounds and there was no

[perceived] need for them by the public’ (Tal 2003). Tal

became active as a composer and teacher of composi-

tion and piano at the Jerusalem Academy of Music,

at its founding in 1936. It was renamed the Israel

Academy of Music and Dance in 1948, when Tal

became its director. He remained there through 1952.

Tal’s early compositional style was a point of some

controversy, due to his departure from – and criticism

of – the so-called ‘Mediterranean school’ favoured by

many Israeli composers at the time. This was an

approach pioneered by Paul Ben Haim and other

composers, who set traditional Middle Eastern Jewish

melodies within a European, often Impressionist,

harmonic vocabulary. For this reason, Tal observes

that he was viewed as an ‘enfant terrible’.

Tal remained rooted in European music, at times

composing using dodecaphonic techniques. Over the

course of his career, his works have included music

for choir and orchestra, ballet and opera (often on

biblical themes), music for solo instruments including

piano, harp, woodwinds, strings and brass, music for

orchesra, percussion ensemble, accompanied voice

and other instruments, chamber music and music on

The history of electronic music composition, technologies and

institutions is traced from the founding of the State of Israel

in 1948. Core developments are followed beginning with

the founding generation including Joseph Tal, Tzvi Avni and

Yizhak Sadai, continuing with the second and third

generations of musicians and researchers, living in Israel and

the United States. The institutional and political dynamics of

the field in this country are explored, with a focus on the

challenges of building an audience and institutional support,

as well as prospects for the future.

1. INTRODUCTION

For a small country, Israel’s electronic musical heri-

tage is historically long and musically diverse. This

should not be surprising given Israel’s identity as a

magnet for Jews from many cultures and geographic

locations. The heritage of electronic music in Israel is

as old as the State itself. Israeli independence in 1948

coincided with Pierre Schaeffer’s initial experiments,

in Paris, with musique concrète. This emerging body of

work made its way to Israel within a decade, when it

was first publicly presented on Israeli radio. Ironically,

Israel’s first electronic music pioneer, Joseph Tal, was

among those who experimented, in Germany in the

1920s, with the use of electricity to generate sounds.

The pre-State period and the pre-history of electronic

music are thus linked as well.

Since electronic music first developed internation-

ally as an expansion of European and, subsequently,

American musical ideas and vocabulary, it is not

surprising that the first Israeli works in this medium

would also reflect movements in those locales. Impor-

tant influences included the Parisian musique concrète

of Pierre Schaeffer and its integration, pioneered

by Edgard Varèse, with the German approach to

electronically generated sounds. New possibilities

were opened up when Joseph Tal toured the studios of

Europe and New York, Tzvi Avni encountered the

Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New

York, and Yizhak Sadai visited Schaeffer’s GRM

studio. The reception at home was, however, less than

welcoming and accepting.

2. JOSEPH TAL (1910–)

Composer and educator Josef Tal, née Joseph

Gruenthal, is universally acknowledged as the

164 Robert J. Gluck

electronic tape. His eclectic music has been described

as ‘broad dramatic gestures and driving bursts of

energy generated, for example, by various types of

ostinato or sustained textural accumulations . . .’

(Ringer 1980).

2.1. Tal returns to electronic music

Tal re-engaged with electronic music after visiting

Europe, shortly after World War II:

I received a UNESCO fellowship for research in elec-

tronic music and I travelled to the studios cross Europe

and America and I learned what there was to learn. When

I returned home, I brought with me a tape recorder,

which was a source of great interest and excitement to

people. Slowly I hired engineers interested in the field to

conduct experiments in creating sounds.

Through his efforts, the Israel Center for Electronic

Music at the Hebrew University was founded. A work

of Tal’s, an oratorio with electronic tape, became the

first electronic work to be broadcast on Israeli radio,

most likely in 1959 (Avitsur 2003). One of his former

students, composer Reinhard Flender recalls Tal’s

thinking about the nature of electronic music:

To Josef the sound produced by a Moog synthesizer was

absolutely equal to the quality of a traditional instrument

(e.g. Violin or Cello). He was very philosophical in

his approach to electronic music. It was somehow clear

to him that it [electronically generated sound] was the

highest level of sound production because it had over-

come all limits of a traditional instrument in terms of

speed, colour, pitch, etc. He contradicted with all the

authority he had my theory that a sound produced by a

musician was fundamentally different from a sound

produced by the turning of the button of a synthesizer.

For him the production of electronic music was in no

way different from playing the piano. The only difference

for him was that in electronic music the composer is

united with the performer. It is a way of direct com-

munication between composer and audience without

the intermediary state of notation and interpretation

of the written score. (Flender 2005)

Tal speaks of having been the beneficiary of

unfriendly criticism for his electronic compositions

and organising efforts. He saw himself as a lightening

rod for public reluctance to accept electronic music:

I had the patience to get hit by all the stones at my head

[he patiently received all of the criticism]. [At one point,]

I played a concert for piano and electronic music in one

of the festivals. The [news] papers objected. There was a

front-page article the next day with the title ‘Terror . . .’

(Tal 2003)

Others received his work approvingly. Tal credits the

positive response, especially by students, as a conse-

quence of a policy in Israeli high schools that allowed

students to invite visiting lecturers to speak on subjects

of special interest. Exposure to forward-thinking

musicians set the groundwork for greater openness to

electronic and new music. Fellow composer Tzvi Avni

(2003: 1) considers Tal’s best-known works to be his

two concertos for piano and tape, a harp concerto, and

the opera Masada for tape and singers. He has been

awarded many prizes at home and abroad, including

the Israel Prize (1971), Arts Prize of the City of Berlin

(Germany, 1975), Johann Wenzel Stamitz Prize

(Germany, 1991), and others.

With respect to his identity as an Israel composer,

Tal observes:

. . . I don’t think that a national expression ends with a

quotation of old music. There are national elements and

there is the behaviour in the street, how the people

behave. What’s their morality? What is their degree of

aggression? And so on. And this is a nationality. This

should come out in the music, you see, because I live it

and I’m confronted with it day by day. If you start

now to translate those things, then already you are on

the borderline between language and music, common

language and music language. Because to speak about

music in itself is principally an impossibility . . . if I

wouldn’t have decided to go to Palestine in the early

1930s or would have gone to London or new York, I

don’t think I would have written the same music . . . there

would be the same elements of twelve-tone music in it, or

electronic music, or any other thing . . . my environment

is not only Israeli, my environment is absolutely interna-

tional . . . So I am a member of the whole world, but I am

living in a certain country, which is called Israel and very

near to all that interests us – our fight in life, our struggle

in life. And this certainly comes out in the music, no

matter if it is written for piano or for electronics, or for

whatever you want. (Tal 2003)

Tal continues to consider issues about electronic

music. Among his interests is effective and replicable

scoring of electronic music, work that has been pre-

sented at the 1988 and 1992 International Computer

Music Conferences (Shimony, Markel and Tal 1988;

Shimony, Gerner, Markel and Tal 1992). He recently

published an extended essay, ‘Musica Nova in the

Third Millennium’ (Tal 2002), addressing the gradual

development of timbre as a musical organising

principle through the history of Western music.

2.2. The Israel Center for Electronic Music at the

Hebrew University

In 1958, Tal visited the studios of Europe and the

United States facilitated by the Institute of Interna-

tional Education, affiliated with UNESCO, which

provided a grant to support the six- month trip. As his

travels drew to a conclusion in New York City,

Vladimir Ussachevsky spoke of a new invention by

Canadian instrument-designer and composer, Hugh

Le Caine (1914–1977), the ‘Multi-track’. This was an

instrument designed to facilitate composing using the

musique concrète techniques of Pierre Schaeffer in

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 165

Paris, by which recorded sounds on tape would be

transformed by playing them back at different speeds

and direction and using cutting and pasting; multiple

layers of such sounds would then be mixed together.

Tal was intrigued by this new instrument, which he

described as ‘an ingenious construction because of the

very rare combination of technique and imagination.

It should be the nucleus of the professional equipment

for the electronic music composer’ (Young 1996). The

Multi-track, invented in 1955,

was able to play six tapes simultaneously, changing

the playback speed of each tape independently and

recombining the resulting sound into a single recording.

The tapes were played on a single capstan at the left of

the instrument while the speeds were controlled by a

three-octave keyboard on the right’. (Young 1999)

Keyboards provided convenient and immediate methods

of controlling the instrument, as they could be easily

operated by musicians and the pitch changes produced

in the pre-recorded sounds exactly matched those of the

standard keyboard. Playing an octave on the keyboard

would double (or halve) the playback speed and the

sound would rise (or fall) by an octave. (Canadian

Science and Technology Museum 2004)

Tal immediately began conversations with Le Caine

towards purchasing a Multi-track (Young 1996:

By the end of August negotiations were underway for

NRC to build another Multi-track for Tal’s new studio in

Jerusalem. An NRC memo outlined the estimated cost of

a new Multi-track at $1000 in materials, 500 hours of

machine shop work, and 200 hours of electrical work.

This turned out to be an optimistic estimate. The memo

continues: ‘Our electronic music project has reached an

important and critical phase in its development. Serious

musicians are taking an interest in it for the first time.

Both Arnold Walter and Josef Tal want to open studios

with the Multi-track as central instruments.

Tal initially lacked the funding to build an Israeli

electronic music studio where he could continue his

work. He was fortunate to gain the interest of instru-

ment inventor, Canadian engineer Hugh Le Caine,

after some successful fund-raising by Shalhevet Freier

(Ringer 1980). Freier was a physicist and government

leader closely associated with Shimon Peres and later,

Vice President of the Weizmann Institute of Science

and the son of Recha Freier, founder of the important

new music festival, Testimonium, discussed below. Tal

remembers Freier with admiration and appreciation:

He was an extraordinary man – one of a kind. His whole

family was very special. Shalhevet helped organise and

find support, people and money for the Jerusalem studio,

but this was for him a personal initiative and not an

official role. He was very helpful. He was very interested

in electronic music and without him there would be no

studio in Jerusalem. (Tal 2004)

With Freier’s support, Tal purchased Le Caine’s early

electronic keyboard instrument, the Multi-track.

Despite hopes that it could be constructed and

delivered by the end of 1959, it was not ready until

May 1961. This particular version used a combination

of vacuum tubes and transistors, which had recently

been invented. Tal’s new studio was the Electronic

Music Center, founded in 1961. Additional equipment

was funded through his UNESCO fellowship, which

Tal (2003) notes ‘[was all at] my initiative’.

Setting up the Multi-track and the rest of the studio

did not prove to be a simple matter. After acknowledg-

ing the arrival of the new device, in October 1961, Le

Caine received a November telegram from Tal alerting

him that there were problems:

Tal reported that the ‘engineer wants to know if it was

tested before shipping’. Le Caine immediately wrote a

five-page letter outlining several testing procedures to

determine whether all the bolts were tight, all the cables

were moored, and the vacuum tubes and fuses were in

operation. After several weeks during which the Multi-

track was still not operation, it was decided that Le Caine

would have to go to Israel himself to repair the instru-

ment. He and his wife arrived in Jerusalem on February

19, 1962, and stayed for two weeks. They were well

received in Israel, given official dinners and tours of the

city, but Le Caine barely noticed these things. He was

totally preoccupied with the Multi-track, which he had

found in pieces on the floor of an almost empty room that

was the electronic music studio. (Young 1996)

It became clear to Le Caine that Tal personally lacked

technical expertise nor had sufficient technical support

at his disposal. Gayle Young notes that ‘Le Caine had

to make special arrangements to have the engineer

relieved from military duty during his visit’. Addi-

tional equipment had not yet arrived and the studio

was thus in disarray.

Nonetheless, Tal’s studio did eventually effectively

function. A former student in the studio from 1977–

1981, composer Reinhard Flender, recalls that ‘Tal

himself was not a technician. He always worked with

Sailes, his sound engineer. Sailes was an Iraqi Jew who

followed with devotion Tal’s instructions’ (Flender

2005). Flender himself composed one major work in

the studio, ‘Ba Voh le Tishrei’, an oratorio for mezzo

soprano, cello, recitation and electronic tape. It was

premiered at the Jerusalem Theatre in 1980.

As an educator, Josef Tal considered electronic

music, including hands-on work, to be a useful and

important subject for all music students. Reinhard

Flender wrote: ‘Josef offered seminars in this subject

to all students of musicology. But he encouraged all of

the participants to do their own work, which meant

to create a piece of electronic music’ (Flender 2005).

Tal served as studio director until he retired in 1980.

Menachem Zur then became director until, in the

1990s, for a variety of reasons, the University closed

the studio.

166 Robert J. Gluck

3. TZVI AVNI (1927–)

Born in Germany, Avni (née Steinke) immigrated to

Israel in 1935. His formal musical studies began at the

Tel-Aviv Academy of Music (later called the Rubin

Academy of Music). Avni has been a student of Abel

Erlich, Paul Ben-Haim, Mordecai Seter, and of Aaron

Copland and Lukas Foss at Tanglewood (1963).

Avni’s works have included electronic music and

music for orchestra, chamber ensemble, voice and

chorus, ballet, theatre, art films and radio plays.

It was Edgard Varese who pointed Avni in the

direction of electronic music. Avni recalls:

. . . I actually wanted to study with him and he said, ‘No

you don’t need any studies. If you want me to teach you

new tricks, I wouldn’t teach you anyway. I want to keep

my tricks for myself, you find your own tricks’ . . . he

called up Otto Luening and spoke with him and said,

‘I have here a young man . . .’ . . . They gave me a scholar-

ship there for a year in the Columbia-Princeton

Electronic Music Center. (Fleisher 1991)

At Columbia-Princeton, Avni worked with Vladimir

Ussachevsky between 1963 and 1964. Avni notes that

‘[Mario] Davidovsky was already assistant instructor’

(Avni 2003: 1). It was there that Avni composed his

first electronic work Vocalise (1964) about which he

notes:

My late first wife, Penina, who was a singer, was with

me in New York and when I started thinking about a

piece I thought it would be a good idea to use her voice

versus electronic sounds, as a dramatic encounter of

the warm human voice with the colder and alienated

electronic sounds. Having these two kinds of materials,

I decided to use the sonata form, namely: an exposition

(1 minute), a longer section of ‘development’ (4 minutes)

and a recapitulation plus coda. Altogether it is less than

6 minutes long. (Avni 2003: 2)

His arrival at Columbia-Princeton represented an

immersion in an unfamiliar aesthetic. His return to

Israel became a time of assimilating this new learning

into his musical world view:

. . . I tried to find my own world in the new sound

environment. Then, when I came back here (to Israel) it

took quite a few years somehow to adjust and to choose

what I felt was right and good for me, and sincere. And to

remain myself, although I wanted very much to use new

sound elements like, of course, tone clusters and tone

rows and sonoristic elements and electronics and so on

. . . (Avni 2003: 1)

One of his electronic works from this period is Collage

for voice, flute, percussion and tape (1967). The text

for this work was by the noted Israeli poet Yehuda

Amichai. During this period, Avni’s music was influ-

enced in important ways by his Israeli cultural

environment, in particular the shaping of its national

identity in light of its Jewish and historical roots:

I would say my music became more Jewish, if you can say

so, in the late 1960s and 1970s. Especially in the melodic

area and perhaps some kind of nostalgic elements. I

cannot define it exactly. But I feel that now it’s much

more important to me to know what it means to be a Jew.

Let’s say in the 1950s and the 1960s I was very busy, like

many others, trying to understand what it meant to be an

Israeli. But now, you know, we have a kind of national

identity here, and you look for the wider cultural identity

much more than local nationalism, which is now perhaps

already established. (Avni 2003: 1)

3.1. Founding of the Electronic Music Studio at the

Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem

Upon his return to Israel, Avni began to teach at

what was then named the Rubin Academy. In 1971, he

established a studio, the second in Israel. Here is how

Avni describes the studio set-up:

The studio in Jerusalem started with the ARP 2600 and

a couple of Revox tape-recorders. Later on we acquired a

professional Reverb plate (Studer) and then we bought

two B62 Studer tape-recorders. (Avni 2004: 1)

The ARP 2600 was a ca 1970s analogue synthesizer

whose voltage-controlled modules were integrated

within a single unit. The studio staff included the direc-

tor with the assistance of a technician, as Avni recalls:

The classes I used to teach since 1971 were mainly for

the theory and composition students (compulsory

course) and they got individual help from the technician,

who was also responsible for the maintenance of the

equipment. Usually, each student did a piece during the

seminar.

The impact of electronic music on students of that

era was enhanced by the requirement that all music

students work in the studio. Avni’s own electronic

compositions from this early period of the studio

include Lyric Episodes for oboe and tape (1972), and

Figure 1. Tzvi Avni in the mid-1970s with students in the

Jerusalem Rubin Academy Electronic Music Studio (photo

courtesy of Tzvi Avni).

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 167

Synchromotrask for female voice, tape and a door

(1976). During this time, he was awarded the Engel

Prize (1970) and Lieberson Prize (1973).

3.2. Avni’s creative work in the 1980s

In the 1980s, Avni enriched his musical learning at

the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, Germany (1981),

and in the studios of Iannis Xenakis in Paris (1984).

His works from this period include A Monk Observes

a Skull for mezzo-soprano, cello and tape (1981), and

Five Variations for Mr. K. (1982) for percussion and

tape. He continued to receive recognition at home

and abroad, being awarded the ACUM Prize for life

achievements (1986), the Culture Prize of the Saarland

(1998) and, more recently, The Israel Prime Minister’s

Prize for life achievements (1998), and the coveted

Israel Prize (2001).

4. YIZHAK SADAI (1935–)

Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Sadai immigrated to Israel in

1949, shortly after the founding of the State. He is

known as a composer, educator and theorist, whose

interests include musical perception and meaning.

Like Tal and Avni, Sadai studied electronic music

abroad. In the early 1960s, he began his first works, at

the Groupe de Recherces Musicales (GRM) in Paris,

with Pierre Schaeffer, Francois Bayle and Guy Reibel.

Sadai’s philosophy and compositional practice are

strongly intertwined, as he observes:

I first became interested in electroacoustic music (this

term covers musique concrète and electronic[ally gener-

ated] music) in the early sixties, as a natural evolution in

my creative compositional activity. At the same time I

discovered, through musical experience, phenomenology

as a method, a philosophy, an attitude, and even a belief

that expresses a way of thinking, of feeling, and of

regarding the world. (Sadai 2004)

Sadai explains his affinity to Schaeffer’s approach

and, conversely, his discomfort with the approach of

the Cologne-based Elektronische Musik:

My phenomenological attitude to music was triggered by

the constant discovery of some important gaps and

incompatibilities between the way in which a musical

phenomenon is perceived and the way in which it is

explained by music theory and re-explained by analytical

procedures. Thus it becomes easy to understand not only

my affinity to the empirical and theoretical attitude of

Pierre Schaeffer, as manifested in his famous Traité des

objets musicaux and Solfège des objets sonores, but also

my somewhat opposed attitude to the musical approach

and way of thinking of the Köln ‘formalistic’ electronic

music composers. (Sadai 2004)

As an educator, Sadai’s courses focused on the

composition and perception of electronic music from

the perspective of musique concrète. Not surprisingly,

his books, Harmony in its Systemic and Phenomeno-

logical Aspects and Traité de sujets musicaux – vers

une épistémologie musicale are dedicated to Pierre

Schaeffer. His electroacoustic compositions include

Song into the Night (1971); La prière interrompue (The

Interrupted Prayer, 1975), composed following the

Yom Kippur War; and Trial 19 (1979), an audio-

visual composition, after records from the Spanish

Inquisition trial. Works for acoustic instruments and

tape include Aria da capo (1966), From the Diary of

a Percussionist (1972), Anagramme (1975) and Canti

Fermi for orchestra and tape.

4.1. Don Goodman (1938–) and the Electronic Music

Studio at the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel-Aviv

University

The third electronic music studio in Israel was founded

at Tel-Aviv University, in 1974, by Yizhak Sadai. It

was sponsored by the University’s Faculty [College]

of Fine Arts and by the Tel-Aviv Foundation for

Literature and Art. The Tel-Aviv studio was designed

and constructed by Don Goodman, who became the

studio technician. Goodman immigrated to Israel

from England in 1967, shortly before the Six Day War:

I was originally an electronic-based technician specia-

lising in analogue audio electronics [working with]

mixers, boxes . . . Without [academic] qualifications I’m a

design engineer. I built up the knowledge for myself by

reading magazines, experimentation. I was working [in

England] at EMI, as a technician. I listened to pre-

recorded tapes, before disks and before cassettes [were

commercially marketed]. I was on the quality control

side. I was in the same department where they were

recording from the master tapes to the copy masters. You

had to listen on Tannoy horn-loaded loudspeakers. They

would take up half the room in my house. There were all

sorts of notes on the score. When you get to a particular

note, you have to change the levels . . . I was working at

the time with a small group who imported professional

equipment to Israel and I was an installation and testing

engineer, for hospitals, security places . . . I got tired of

travelling and I always had interest in the music side.

I tried making my living freelance building stuff, such as

mixing consoles for Kibbutzim. (Goodman 2004)

Goodman recalls how he came to work with Sadai:

I knew one of the students in Yizhak Sadai’s class,

Danny Handlesman. One day Sadai announced in class:

‘I’m going to start a new class with electroacoustic music.

I have the equipment but I have so many problems with

these technicians and engineers . . . I don’t know whether

it will start; it’s a complex problem’. He was anxious to

get it going. Danny said, ‘Professor, I have an idea about

a person’. Danny gave me Sadai’s phone number and I

went to his house. We talked for about two hours and

he thought that this seemed to be OK. I worked on a

contract basis. Sadai invited Pierre Schaeffer for an

honorary professorship at Tel Aviv University and I

168 Robert J. Gluck

linked up with Schaeffer to help him play back his music.

Schaeffer said ‘you keep that fellow; he knows what he

was talking about’. (Goodman 2004)

The original analogue equipment included three

Studer reel-to-reel tape recorders, a sizeable Moog

synthesizer, which featured two keyboards, nine oscil-

lators and two filter modules; a Revox amplifier and a

pair of JBL loudspeakers. One distinctive feature of

the studio reflected Goodman’s interest in periodically

building new devices, including a vocoder, ring modu-

lators and a custom mixer. In the 1980s, the studio

became a digital facility, the Center for Computer

Aided Music, featuring a Synclavier II Digital Music

System. After Sadai’s retirement, Raviv Gazit became

director. The studio has been a member of the Interna-

tional Federation for Electroacoustic Music, affiliated

with UNESCO, but ceased operation in 2003. Around

1996, the University’s Music Academy constructed a

new concert hall, which included elaborate recording

equipment, constructed and maintained under Good-

man’s direction. Goodman retired in 2003 and the

recording studio remains in operation.

5. THE SECOND GENERATION OF

COMPOSERS: EDUCATED IN TEL-AVIV

The first generation of composers to be educated in

Israel were born during and immediately following

World War II. Most were born in Israel and several

were students of Yizhak Sadai and Don Goodman,

in Tel-Aviv, including Joseph Dorfman, Yossi Mar-

Haim and Raviv Gazit. Arie Shapira studied com-

position with Sadai, but graduated before the studio

opened and thus developed his electroacoustic compo-

sition skills independently. All of these composers

have remained in Israel, unlike many of those born a

decade later.

Two other composers are known primarily for their

works for acoustical instruments. Tsippi Fleischer

(1946–) has composed several electronic works,

including: The Gown of Night (1988) for magnetic

tape, drawing upon the voices of Bedouin children;

Ramblings on a Volcano (1997, composed with Rajmil

Fischman); and Saga-Portrait (2003) for voice and

tape. Another composer, Dan Yuhas (1947–), winner

of several Israeli awards, continued his studies of elec-

tronic music in London, in 1980, with Hugh Davies,

and recently began to actively compose electronic

works. He opened a small studio, operated by Didi

Fire, created as a recording space for the Israel Con-

temporary Players. The studio was temporarily closed

in 2003 due to a fire, and was scheduled to re-open in

2004.

Joseph Dorfman (1940–) was born in the Ukraine,

and has served as a mentor to numerous students at

the Israel Rubin Academy of Music, Tel-Aviv Univer-

sity. Largely a composer of instrumental and vocal

music, he composed electronic music between 1974

and 1980 on the Synclavier II at the Jerusalem

Academy, as well at the Electronic Music Center

in Columbia University (Dorfman 2003, 2004). His

electronic compositions include: The Stones of

Jerusalem (1977), with sound material created from

striking together Jerusalem stones, and texts from the

Hebrew Bible that glorify stones; De Profundis (1976),

using electronically processed recorded singing voices;

and Viribus Unitis No.1 (1977) for piano, three tape

recorders, ring modulator and mixer.

Born in Jerusalem, Yossi Mar-Haim (1940–)

encountered electronic music in the early 1960s, when

he heard Josef Tal’s music in the Hebrew University

studio and, on recording, music by composers at the

Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, includ-

ing Milton Babbitt, and Vladimir Ussachevsky.

Yizhak Sadai introduced him to the sound world of

Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. Mar-Haim found

his own compositional direction while at Julliard, in

works for instruments and tape by Mario Davidovsky,

Charles Wourinen, Tzvi Avni, Karlheinz Stockhausen

and his own teacher, Luciano Berio. He soon began

his own attempts to compose:

In 1969 I started to collect gadgets like oscillators, wah-

wah for guitar, echoes . . . but I had no connection with a

proper lab, so my first experiments were done with tape

loops played backwards, controlled feedback . . . The

results were closer to Cage in spirit than to any other

figures like Stockhausen. I still love low-tech cheap

electronic effects. (Mar-Haim 2003)

His work came to focus on music for outdoor environ-

ments and live electronic performance. Music in the

Trees (1980) includes the instructions that the musi-

cians perform in the higher region of trees. Listeners

choose their own walking paths through the woods

and thus hear the work from varying perspectives;

Declaration of Independence (1988) for orchestra,

band, echo device, narrator and tape, includes clips

from a recording of first Prime Minister David Ben

Gurion reading the Declaration. Mar-Haim teaches

sound for film and sound for virtual media at Tel-Aviv

University. The most recent of the prizes he has

received is the 2003 ACUM (Israeli ASCAP) Prize.

Born in Tel-Aviv, Raviv Gazit (1949–) is best

known for his film and theatre soundtracks, and as an

educator. With a background bridging electroacoustic

and rock music, he seeks to ‘synthesize all my different

ways of expression into a unique style of electronic

music, hopefully not classifiable as Experimental,

Ambient, Dance or whatever’ (Gazit 2003). Gazit

studied electronics engineering, especially computing,

at Tel-Aviv University, and in his early thirties,

musical composition with Yizhak Sadai. His first

electronic compositions were on the Tel-Aviv studio’s

Synclavier Digital Music System (1983), where he

subsequently taught, directing the studio after Sadai’s

retirement, until the studio’s closing, in 2003.

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 169

5.1. Arie Shapira and the Haifa University Studio

Arguably the most individual composer among gra-

duates of Tel Aviv University is Arik (Arie) Shapira

(1943–). Shapira began learning electronic music

composition on his own in 1962, working with tape

recorders. During his college years, he studied

harmony and counterpoint and after graduation in

1968, he attended concerts by students and faculty at

the University, rejecting their aesthetic and composi-

tional approaches. He learned about the Vocoder and

pitch-to-voltage synthesizer in professional audio

magazines in the early 1980s, which helped motivate

his return to electroacoustic composition. (Shapira

2005) Shapira views himself as an iconoclast, seeking

to break new expressive ground and to offer political

commentary through his work, as he observes, ‘Rebel-

lion and contradiction, that’s the key. I am an extre-

mist. I write radical music . . . My music is definitely

not middle-of-the-road!’ (Shapira 1996)

Shapira’s music seeks to provoke critical thinking

and reaction. His tape work Upon Thy Ruins Ophra

(1990) criticises the policies of West Bank settlers.

Gustl in Theresienstadt (1999) imagines Gustav

Mahler, having remained Jewish, ending up in a con-

centration camp (historically accurate) established by

the Nazis to house musicians and artists as a phoney

show-case for public relations purposes. Missa Viva

(1977) is an orchestral work that includes a rock

group.

Arguably his most important work is the Kastner

Trial, Electronic Opera in Thirteen Scenes (1994). The

opera is a setting of the trial transcript from a highly

politically controversial trial involving questions of

Jewish complicity with the Nazis during World War II

and political expediency in addressing this explosive

issue. Shapira’s music engages questions of Israeli

identity and Jewish history. Many of his works, like

Kastner, Gustl and others focus upon text and lan-

guage, rather than timbre and abstraction, offering

commentary upon those texts and their subjects in a

manner that may be seen as following in Jewish tradi-

tions of verbal textual commentary. Shapira, however,

denies that his music is tied to any particular identity:

Being an Israeli composer for me is only a label. I

compose for myself. I use Western notation, but its only

technique; notation is only technique. I’m interested in

disintegration, not building. That’s aesthetics to me,

modern aesthetics. (Fleisher 1991)

In 1986, Shapira won the Prime Minister’s Prize,

followed, in 1994 by his becoming the first musical

composer since 1970 to receive the Israel Prize

Laureate. The award was controversial among some

Israeli composers and critics. Shapira concludes that

his music is ‘too modern, too aggressive’ for the Israeli

audiences, who prefer ‘traditional, old fashioned

music’ (Shapira 1996). Following sharp political cri-

ticism of his tape work Upon Thy Ruins Ophra and

the award of the Israel Prize, Shapira left Tel-Aviv

University and joined the faculty of the University of

Haifa.

In 2000, Arie Shapira founded the Haifa University

studio, which he serves as director. The studio has

become a growing centre of activity among Israeli

composers. Avi Elbaz is its main instructor. While

the primary function of the studio is to support the

studies of pop, rock and jazz-oriented music students,

as well as Art students, a number of electroacoustic

composers have begun to emerge.

The studio computer is equipped with a SCOPE

Creamware audio card and Cubase SX, Logic Audio,

Reaktor, Kontact, Intakt and a variety of digital pro-

cessing plug-ins, a MIDI keyboard controller, Neve

two-channel strip, and a pair of Dynaudio BM6 studio

monitors, Telefunken 372 pre-amps, UREI LA 4

Compressors and UAD cards (Elbaz 2004: 2). Elbaz

observes:

In the last years we are organising more concerts involv-

ing a lot of young musicians. At the University of Haifa

three courses of electronic music are filled with students

and it seems like younger musicians are getting into it.

(Elbaz 2004: 1)

6. THE SECOND GENERATION OF

COMPOSERS: EDUCATED AT THE ACADEMY

IN JERUSALEM

Eitan Avitsur (1941–), best known as a conductor and

composer of instrumental and vocal music, founded

the Computer Music Laboratory at Bar-Ilan Univer-

sity in Ramat Gan, in 1995. He also directs the

University’s Electroacoustic Music Program, founded

in 1990. Avitsur has composed several electronic

works including Ele Habanim (‘These are my Sons’,

1975), dramatic oratorio for baritone solo, orator,

symphonic orchestra, and electroacoustic music; and

Figure 2. Arie Shapiro at the piano (photo courtesy of the

composer).

170 Robert J. Gluck

Megillat Haesh (‘The Scroll of Fire’, 1976), dramatic

oratorio for solo soprano, orator, chamber orchestra,

and electroacoustic music.

Composer and educator, Menachem Zur (1942–)

sees his work as following in the tradition of American

electronic music composers, especially those associ-

ated with the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music

Center:

The electronic music experience that shaped my sound

views was done at Columbia University under the

guidance of Mario Davidovsky during my studies for the

Doctor of Musical Arts, 1972–1975. That view erased

everything I ever experienced before in Israel, Europe, or

in the United States. The works of colleagues such as

Arthur Kreiger, Eric Chasalow, James Primosch – and

Mario Davidovsky above all – continue to influence

me. (Zur 2004)

Zur prides himself on close attention to every indi-

vidual sound and the shaping of sound gestures, in

his works such as Chants (1975) for magnetic tape;

Shiluvim (Combinations, 1986) for children’s choir

and magnetic tape; Alleluia (1999), for vocal sextet

and magnetic tape; Translations (2003) for percussion

and electronics. ‘In working with sounds from pre-

existing menus the composer must hide the identifiable

sound source by techniques of detuning, filtering, ring

modulating, etc., to acquire a sound that is divorced

from conventional associations.’ He describes his

aesthetic as ‘based mainly on short sounds’, paying

close attention to motivic development and pitch

organisation. ‘The main interesting component of

sound rests in its attack. This is why it is easy to create

varied electronic music based on varied envelopes

of attacks’ (Zur 2004). Zur’s compositional method

includes conceptualising and scoring his sounds

prior to working in the studio, as opposed to a more

improvisational approach:

Sketching the entire composition with its complex wave-

forms is necessary in order to conceive of a plan, espe-

cially since many new sounds are destined to join the

world of acoustic possibilities and they surprise com-

posers and technicians alike. A composer must conceive

of enough contrast and nuance at the planning stage and

be ready to change initial plans according to the many

surprises that sound production introduces. (Zur 2004)

Zur has won many awards, including several ACUM

prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2001 Prime

Minister’s prize. He is on the faculty of the Hebrew

University of Jerusalem and at the Academy of Music

and Dance in Jerusalem, where he serves as Director

of the Electronic Music Studio. It is his belief that all

composition and conducting students should study

electronic music.

7. CHAMPION OF ISRAELI CONTEMPORARY

MUSIC, RECHA FREIER, AND TESTIMONIUM

One of the truly remarkable figures in Israeli history is

Recha Freier (1892–1994), poet and founder of Aliyat

Hanoar (Youth Aliyah), an effort that rescued thou-

sands of young people from the Nazi Holocaust.

Freier herself immigrated to Israel in 1941, escaping

from Germany through Yugoslavia.

In Israel, Recha Freier became a champion of con-

temporary music. Among her efforts was the found-

ing, in 1958, of the Israeli Composer Funds (Avni

2004: 2) and, in 1966, Testimonium. Her co-organiser

was Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, a Polish-born

composer who immigrated to Israel and later settled in

Vienna, Austria. At one point, he worked at Pierre

Schaeffer’s Studio de Musique Concrète in Paris.

David Flusser (1979), an Israeli biblical scholar and

member of the Directory Council of Testimonium,

describes the rationale for the organisation as:

. . . to give musical expression to historical events and

spiritual creations during two millennia of exile of the

Jewish People. The compositions are commissioned from

Figure 3. The Haifa University Electronic Music Studio

(photo courtesy of Avi Elbaz).

Figure 4. The Haifa University Electronic Music Studio

(photo courtesy of Avi Elbaz).

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 171

local and foreign composers, Jewish and non-Jewish and

given their world premiere at the Testimonium . . .

The name ‘Testimonium’ is based upon the Latin word

meaning testimony. Flusser describes the goal as the

giving of offering testimony regarding the history of

the Jewish people:

The life of Israel in its entirety, the sufferings, the hopes

and the service to God embodied therein, all constitute a

lasting and varied testimony. Testimonium not only tries

to give artistic expression to the experiences of previous

generations of Jews, but aims also at offering testimony

of ourselves as well as of the artists taking part. The

artists, the performers and the audience are witnesses

who offer their evidence on what happened in Jewish

history. Thus, this manifestation offers contemporary

evidence for the identification of the nation with its past.

The idea for Testimonium arose from discussions

between Freier and Haubenstock-Ramati about a pos-

sible artistic collaboration. Each Testimonium was to

be organised around a theme rooted in Jewish history.

Often Freier wrote or selected a text with which a

chosen composer would work and she would per-

sonally solicit the composer’s interest. Joseph Tal

(2004) recalls: ‘Resha would travel to them personally

and convince them to write, and they did’.

Themes for the triennial festival, which took place

from 1968 through 1984, not long before Freier’s

death, included Jerusalem (1968), The Middle Ages

(1971), Deprofundis (1974), Lucem cumfulgeret (1976),

and The Jews of Spain (1979). The final Testimonium

(1984) lacked a theme. Each festival was to take place

at the Jerusalem Theatre and the Tel-Aviv Museum.

The featured ensemble was the Jerusalem Symphony

Orchestra, conducted, starting with the 1974 festival,

by Chilean maestro Juan-Pablo Izquierdo.

The six festivals that took place during the two

decades of Testimonium included new works by

Karlheinz Stockhausen, Michael’s Youth from the

opera Licht (one of the only included works not

connected to the year’s theme), Iannis Xenakis’s

Nishima, Tzvi Avni’s Destruction of the Temple and

Jerusalem of the Heavens, Yizhak Sadai’s Trial 19

(from the Records of the Spanish Inquisition),

Yehoshua Lakner’s Mohammed’s Dream, Mauricio

Kagel’s Vox Humana, Andre Hajdu’s Ludus Pascalis,

Mark Kopytman’s Chamber Scenes From the Life of

Susskind Von Trimberg, a chamber opera for soloists,

choir, dancers and orchestra with libretto by Recha

Freier, and works by Roman Haubenstock-Ramati,

Sergiu Natra, Luigi Dallapiccola, Abel Ehrlich,

Lukas Foss, Arnold Schoenberg (in memoriam), Leon

Shidiowsky, Samuel Adler, Alexandre Tansman,

Hans-Joachim Hespos and others. Several of the

commissioned works included electronic sounds.

Recha Freier had hoped to organise a seventh Testi-

monium, which was to tentatively include new works

by Luciano Berio and Stephen Horenstein, the latter

to a text by poet Uri Tzvi Greenberg (Horenstein

2004). Unfortunately, following her death, it became

impossible to raise the funds to continue the festivals.

Tzvi Avni recalls:

A few weeks before her death at a very old age, Recha

Freier invited me for a discussion on the future of the

Testimonium, of which she was very worried. I advised

her to hand it over to the Jerusalem Foundation (under

the auspices of the municipality), which she agreed, but

somehow it did not work out. [Her son] Shalhevet spoke

with me after her death and expressed his wish to con-

tinue his mother’s legacy but nobody could apparently

manage to find the funds, which Recha somehow used to

collect. (Avni 2004: 2)

8. THE POST-WAR GENERATION OF

COMPOSERS

The establishment of the two Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv

electronic music studios spawned a new generation of

composers. Many of them continued their education

and/or found teaching opportunities abroad. This is

due to relatively limited resources and musical envi-

ronment that Israel can afford to electronic music

composers, especially when compared to the breadth

of possibilities to be explored in the United States.

Most of the composers, now in their forties and fifties,

who left the country, have travelled to the United

States rather than Europe, with the exception of

Rajmil Fischman, who went to the United Kingdom.

Their influences tend not to be specifically Israeli,

although most of them maintain close ties, familial

and musical, to Israel.

There are important exceptions, including Stephen

Horenstein (1948–), an immigrant from the United

States, and Dror Elimelech (1956–), whose works

include acoustic instruments and voice with live elec-

tronics. Elimelech founded the Other Israeli Music

concerts and Night Happening new music forum.

His music has been heard in concert venues and in

Figure 5. The home studio of Yossi Mar-Haim (photo

courtesy of the composer).

172 Robert J. Gluck

multimedia, dance, video, poetry, and art exhibitions.

There is also a younger generation of upcoming com-

posers, students of Arie Shapira at Haifa University,

who may represent a new trend in Israeli composers

who remain in the country.

8.1. Students of Tzvi Avni and Josef Tal: Jonathan

Berger, Shlomo Dubnov . . .

Born in New York City, Jonathan Berger (1954–) was

introduced to electronic music through the work of

Pierre Schaeffer, Mario Davidovsky, Bulent Arel and

Luigi Nono. He studied composition in Israel with

Tzvi Avni, Josef Tal and Mark Kopytman at the

Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, and sub-

sequently with Milton Babbitt, and in the United

States with Morton Subotnick, Barry Schrader, Mel

Powell and John Chowning. He was also influenced by

the work of Bill Schottstaedt, Jacob Druckman and

Bernard Parmegiani.

I did not feel ‘liberated’ by electronics until . . . I was

working with John Chowning at Stanford. For the

most part I recall the experience of composing for tape

frustrating, tedious and largely unrewarding. Chowning,

however, got me excited by algorithmic composition –

particularly the idea of taking structure to the level of

timbre and microtime . . . (Berger 2003)

Many of Berger’s works are composed for acoustic

instruments and interactive electronics, including The

Sound Within the Hammer (1997) for flute, clarinet,

piano, viola, cello and computer; Arroyo (1998) for

motion-tracked dancer, computer and instruments;

and Con Carne (1998) for pianist and Disklavier.

Berger teaches at the Center for Computer Research

in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

Born in the Ukraine, Shlomo Dubnov (1962–) is

a researcher and composer. As a researcher, he is

particularly interested in the fields of advanced audio

processing and retrieval methods. Dubnov’s education

bridges electrical engineering (at the Technion), com-

puter science (at the Hebrew University), and music

(at the Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem).

Dubnov was familiar with electroacoustic music when

he learned about computer music as a field of research

during a workshop by Jonathan Berger around 1990:

My main engagement with computer music started when

I was considering a PhD in computer science. I met

Naftali Tishby, who became my PhD supervisor, who

was very interested in language understanding and I

thought to investigate music models. Then I became also

interested in musical signals, trying to model sound

timbre and texture using statistical methods. This con-

tinued into work on extracting content from audio signal

that I did at IRCAM with Xavier Rodet. In parallel I did

some work on modelling music using statistical tools

and information theory with Gerard Assayag. (Dubnov

2004)

Dubnov has composed works for live electronic per-

formance, such as Modes of Discourse (1996) for Midi

Wind Player and MAX Interactive Computer System;

and Me-Oh (1996) for voice, ensemble and live elec-

tronics; and multimedia sound installations. One of

these, Carnet de Voyage, exemplifies his transparent

use of the computer in interactive multimedia settings:

In the handling of the computer, the visitor has an active

role as in a game. Dynamics arise from an interaction

between the visitor, the musical movements, the appea-

rance or the disappearance of the material and the

colours. The visitor, with a movement of the hand, can

also reduce or increase visited space or penetrate in new

paintings. Augustine Lenoir’s paintings proceed by

successive layers, which superimposed, create an increas-

ingly dense texture. The sequence begins with a super-

position from all the paintings; then the visitor clears the

structure to go towards black and white or the integral

black. Displacement takes place by side movements of

the mouse without clicking. The sequences of sounds and

images vary in time but the user is always free to control

the scrolling speed. (IRCAM 2004)

Shlomo Dubnov is on the faculty of the University of

California at San Diego, having previously taught at

Ben-Gurion University. In 1994, he founded the Israel

Computers and Music Forum.

Another former student of Avni is Kiki Keren-Huss

(1955–). Fifteen years after graduation from the

Jerusalem Academy, she was inspired by music by

Amnon Wolman to return to composing using a DAT

recorder, microphone and desktop software. ‘I com-

posed my first piece Mi, for solo violin and tape [2000],

using recorded home sounds, fragments of an Yves

Montagne song and a sentence from a recorded

theatre production by Israeli playwright Nisim Aloni

. . . what fascinated me most was the infinite possibili-

ties of the sound and the ways one could play with

them and put them together’ (Keren-Huss 2003). Sub-

sequently, she has composed works for piano and

tape, string quartet and tape, and most recently sound

installations.

8.2. Students of Yizhak Sadai at Tel-Aviv University:

Amnon Wolman and Daniel Oppenheim

Israeli-born Amnon Wolman (1955–) is best known

for having developed a broad body of work that spans

music for instrumental soloist and live electronics,

works for varied instrumentation about Marilyn

Monroe and her meaning to gay people, tape music,

radio pieces, music for acoustic ensemble, and other

media. His music bridges tonality and abstraction,

with a sensitive to sonority and tone colour, bringing a

sensibility from electronic music to bear on how he

treats instrumental writing. After studying at Tel-Aviv

University, Wolman continued his education at the

University of Utrecht, Holland, the Institute for

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 173

Sonology, Stanford University, and at the Aspen

Music School. He has served as director of the Com-

puter Music Studios at Northwestern University and,

currently, at Brooklyn College.

Daniel Oppenheim (1954–) is a researcher and com-

poser working in the Human Centric Tools team at the

IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne,

New York. For a decade he was on the staff of the

Center’s Computer Music Group, following graduate

studies at Stanford University’s Center for Computer

Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Oppen-

heim’s interests include the design of intuitive inter-

active computer user interfaces for composers and the

application of those ideas more generally to comput-

ing. Among his long-term projects has been DMIX,

which ‘allows the composer to draw a shape that

the notes should follow. Through its graphical user

interface, the user can morph one musical passage into

another. For example, a Bach concerto can be turned

slowly into a tango and then, by tiny increments,

transformed again by adding a touch of a salsa beat’

(IBM Research 2004). Another project is Qsketcher, ‘a

new environment for composing music for film. The

main focus is the support of early stages of the creative

workflow, from idea conception through realisation,

rather than the order and synchronisation of musical

fragments with film’ (Steven Abrams, Ralph

Bellofatto, Robert Fuhrer, Daniel Oppenheim et al.

2002).

Other students in the studio at Tel-Aviv have in-

cluded Ron Kolton, Gidon Levenson, Jan Radzinsky

and Betty Olivero (1954–), a well-regarded composer

of instrumental music.

8.3. International identity: Rajmil Fischman

The music of Rajmil Fischman (1956–) reflects a

multiple, hyphenated identity. ‘My learned musical

experience derives from formal Western education

(conservatory studies in Peru, academic music studies

in Israel and Britain) as well as performance of

popular music and, to a less degree, Latin American

folk material’ (Fischman 1999). He sees in his music a

concern for the indigenous population of the Andes,

an interest in Latin American dance rhythms and

a political awareness that is often embedded within

Latin American music, and Jewish influences that

emerge from ‘the fact that part of my family suffered

and disappeared during the Holocaust because of their

Jewish identity’, as well as childhood experiences of

Jewish religious traditions and culture and a ‘fami-

liarity with much of the Old Testament and Jewish

liturgy manifested in the treatment of contemporary

themes’.

Fischman’s composition Alma Latina (1996), for

instance, very subtly integrates Latin rhythms into

an abstract electroacoustic sound tapestry. Fischman

also finds in his work a ‘particular use of microtonality

to produce melodic lines that may be linked to uncon-

sciously absorbed traits, such as cantillation and

certain types of Yiddish song’. His integration of these

many influences and ideas may be seen as symbolic

of the Jewish ‘historical adaptability to continuous

changes of environment’ (Fischman 1999).

Fischman was born in Lima, Peru to parents who

emigrated from present day Moldava immediately

prior to the Holocaust. Fischman moved to Israel

at age nineteen and attended graduate school in the

United Kingdom, where he continues to live and

teach. Fischman views the multiplicity of his identity

as inherently Jewish (Fischman 1999): ‘I consider

the diversification of cultural traits in my works and

the consciousness of being at home everywhere and, at

the same time, nowhere in particular one of my Jewish

attributes’.

Fischman first encountered electronic music in the

late 1970s, reading books about contemporary music

and listening to works associated with the Columbia-

Princeton Center for Electronic Music, by Bulent Arel,

Vladimir Ussachevsky, Mario Davidovsky, Otto

Luening, and Milton Babbitt. When he began com-

posing his own works, in graduate school at York

University, ‘it was exhilarating and exciting, and there

was the promise of vast possibilities as technology

advanced’ (Fischman 2004). Later influences included

Gyorgy Ligeti, Luciano Berio, Witold Lutoslawsky,

Trevor Wishart, Jonty Harrison, Denis Smalley,

Francis Dhomont and Bernard Parmegianni. In

addition to composing, Fischman teaches at Keele

University in the United Kingdom and develops

compositional software, including KEELEDESK

(1991–), AL (Algorithmic Composition Graphics

Environment) and ERWIN – COM, a granular

synthesis plug-in, in the context of the Composers

Desktop Project.

8.4. Stephen Horenstein (1948–) and the Jerusalem

Institute of Contemporary Music

American-born Stephen Horenstein is a composer,

educator, saxophonist and founder, in 1987, of the

Jerusalem Institute of Contemporary Music and its

resident experimental music ensemble, the Jerusalem

New Music Ensemble. The Jerusalem Institute

includes a workshop for electronically expanded

musical instruments, including what Horenstein refers

to as ‘hyperinstruments’, a term coined by MIT Media

Lab’s Tod Machover. This is a reflection of Horen-

stein’s strong interest in composing and performing

works for live performance with electronics. Among

the most noted features of his work has been his inte-

gration of traditional Jewish source material, includ-

ing, in Agadot (1985), sounds suggestive of those

described in biblical texts and, in Andarta (1986), field

174 Robert J. Gluck

recordings of Holocaust survivors emerging from

concentration and displaced persons camps.

Horenstein’s interest in electronic music developed

gradually. In college, he heard Luciano Berio’s Visage

and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie I, and as

a faculty member at Bennington College, he learned

from his mentor, Bill Dixon, who ‘manipulated the

trumpet physically to simulate electronic effects’

(Horenstein 2004), and he listened to the sounds of

Joel Chadabe’s studio immediately above his office.

After Horenstein immigrated to Israel in 1980, his

music began incorporating interactive electronics,

tape and mixed media. The first such work was an

environmental composition, a sound environment for

the Israel Museum, Seven Faces of a Garden (1981),

which included processed sounds diffused around a

garden, in conjunction with dancers and work by

architect Isamu Noguchi. He considers his work in this

domain, “explorations in outdoor environmental and

spatial applications of sounds, including the blending

of musical and physical architectural principles” to

be among his most significant artistic contributions

and “a way to bring electroacoustic music to a wider

audience in Israel.” (Horenstein 2005)

Horenstein’s work has been influenced in subtle

ways by living in Israel, as he observes:

I’m in the middle of a tornado here, in the most volatile

place in the world, and I feel it’s a very vital place to be –

the tension emanates from the day-to-day compression

that one feels. I use these opposite extremes in my music.

Thus, my work is very much rooted in collage, very much

an extension of an Ivesian approach to the unity of

opposite qualities of sound. (Fleischer 1996: 233)

Stephen Horenstein has taught at Bennington College,

the Jerusalem Academy of Music, and Tel Aviv

University. He has founded music programmes and

curricula in Israeli and Jewish-American high schools

in Boston, Massachusetts. He has been a Jerusalem

Fellow and the recipient of awards from the National

Endowment of the Arts and the America Israel

Cultural Foundation.

8.5. Students of Arie Shapira at Haifa University

The studio at Haifa University is now the most active

environment for training upcoming electronic music

composers in Israel. Among the composers who have

studied with Shapira are Avi Elbaz, who teaches in the

Haifa University studio, Uri Pesach, Itsik Mizrachi,

live electronic performer Gil Wasserman, Guy

Rosenfarb, and Offir Ilzetzki and Dganit Elyakim,

who are both continuing their graduate studies in The

Netherlands.

Avi Elbaz (1961–) immigrated to Israel from

Morocco with his family in 1970. A few years after

hearing a work by John Cage while at Berkeley

College of Music in Boston (‘I was shocked and

confused . . .’), he experienced music by Arie Shapira

on the radio. ‘I still felt confused but I could feel

that he was talking to me in a new language that one

has to know if you want to understand. That was the

first time that the term modern music or electronic

music started to act on my imagination’ (Elbaz 2004).

Elbaz began to study privately with Shapira, compos-

ing a text-based piece using analogue equipment. A

distinct aspect of his work has been its non-Western

influences:

I am trying in my work to connect modern language as

electronic with older cultures like Moroccan music and

language and trying to keep a very delicate balance

between modern music and feel. Modern music needn’t

be disconnected to very simple and natural elements that

can bring people to feel something and to get excited.

(Elbaz 2004)

Gil Wasserman (1965–) performs with Ilan Green

(1963–) in the live electronic duo, Krechtz. Green

and Wasserman design and build their own instru-

ments, including feedback circuits, new-fangled

devices like ‘Disconnections Gtr’, ‘Prepared Toys’ and

‘Baloonon’, circuit-bending electronic toys like ‘Koto-

Tea’, ‘Egg-Harp Ventilation’ and various kitchen

appliances, all used in combination with hi-tech

equipment. The duo describe themselves as:

two musician-inventors composing ‘serious’ music in

the space of their basement lab . . . the music of feedback

circuits combined with the sound of processed kitchen

bowls played with marbles . . . Krechtz music usually

grows from building or programming curious instru-

ments, playing around with them, and composing a piece

from the results . . . It’s not about melodies or harmonies,

it’s about playing the instruments in both senses of the

word. (Green 2004: 2)

Keren Rosenbaum (1970–) is a multimedia artist in

New York City. Her work integrates music, video,

dance and theatre with electronic music and art, in

multimedia works such as the opera CHAT (2001–),

Figure 6. Krecht in performance (photo courtesy of Ilan

Green).

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 175

Washing Machine (1999) for piccolo, violin, voice,

pre-recorded soundtrack and video installation; and

Construction Site (2000) for video art and installation.

She has also played a notable role as a pioneer of

multimedia performance in Israel through her direc-

tion of the New Voices Festival and her work with the

Reflex Ensemble.

8.6. Researchers: Israel Computers and Music Forum,

Dan Gang

ICMF was organised by Shlomo Dubnov in 1994 to

facilitate two-way dialogue between people in the

fields of music and technology, with hopes that each

discipline can inform the other. Its goals were defined

in this manner:

to conduct multi-disciplinary research in computer

science, engineering and acoustics in the field of music; to

encourage composers into producing new works of music

using new technologies; to promote computer-aided

musicological research, and to serve as a means of

exchange among those researchers; to establish con-

tinuous relationships with the international musical and

scientific communities; to promote pedagogic efforts in

the field; to promote production of public events that

bring to the public eye the results of computers and music

activity and the evolution of musical thought. (Dubnov

1996a)

The membership of ICMF has reflected the range

of research and composition taking place in Israel,

including Shlomo Dubnov, Naftali Tishby, Dalia

Cohen, Dan Gang, Daniel Leman, Claudia Goldman,

Jeffrey Rosenschein, Naftali Wagner, Ron Vinocourt,

Hezi Yeshurun, Joseph Tal, Uri Shimony and Mira

Balaban. The ICMF has held five meetings to date,

1994–1996, that have rotated around major centres

of activity: the Academy of Music and Dance in

Jerusalem, Ben Gurion University, Bar-Ilan Univer-

sity, Rubin Academy in Tel-Aviv, and the Technion in

Haifa, where Joseph Tal and Uri Shimony have

worked on notation systems for electronic music. The

organisation maintains a listserv (il-cmf@cs.huji.ac.il)

and an ftp site.

Among the researchers who have been connected

with the ICMF is Dan Gang (1962–). Gang’s work

explores the intersection of artificial intelligence,

music and cognition. Born in Haifa, he studied at the

Hebrew University and at Stanford University’s

Center for Computer Research in Music and Acous-

tics (CCRMA). Among his interests are applications

of Recurrent Neural Networks to understand the real

time choices of performers, as they learn chords,

harmonise melodies and create polyphony, and the

perceptual experience of listeners, as their expecta-

tions are met or confounded (Gang 2004: 1). Gang

founded the company Music Genome, in 2000, based

in Ramat Gan, Israel and Sunnyvale, California to

apply artificial intelligence and music cognition

models to predict the musical preferences of listeners

to facilitate retail sales (MusicGenome 2004: 2).

8.7. Gil Weinberg and a musicology computer music

lab at Tel-Aviv University

Gil Weinberg (1967–) is a researcher, composer

and educator, and Director of Music Technology at

the George Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).

Weinberg is interested in designing hardware and soft-

ware that allows expressive group musical engagement

(Weinberg 2003a). This has included Beat Bug, a core

element in Tod Machover’s Toy Symphony (2003),

and the Voice Network Installation, Squeezables and

Fireflies. Beat Bug is a musical instrument that allows

children and novice musicians to join in collaborative

music-making, what he calls ‘Interconnected Musical

Networks (IMNs)’. Weinberg seeks to:

design algorithms that would bridge between the

thoughtful and the expressive . . . by embedding cognitive

and educational concepts in newly designed interconnect

instruments and applications . . . live performance sys-

tems that allow players to influence, share, and shape

each other’s music in real-time. (Weinberg 2003b)

Weinberg was educated at Tel-Aviv University, in the

Musicology Department, where, in 1994, he founded

a computer music lab for musicology students, and

he developed coursework in MIDI, notation, sequenc-

ing and recording. Students also work with graphics

and video software on the same workstations. The

Musicology Department recently merged with the

Rubin Academy.

9. DEVELOPERS OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES:

WAVES

Gilad Keren (1959–) and Meir Shashoua (1963–) have

pioneered digital audio processing technologies. Their

Figure 7. Krecht in performance (photo courtesy of Ilan

Green).

176 Robert J. Gluck

company, Waves, founded in Israel in 1988 and based

in Knoxville, Tennessee and Tel-Aviv, emerged as

the fruit of a friendship and a shared love of musical

technology. ‘Waves is the leading provider of DSP

[digital signal processing] solutions for audio profes-

sionals in content creation and MaxxTM audio signal

processing solutions for consumer electronics . . .

Waves’ Maxx technology dramatically enhances

audio performance in consumer applications and has

been licensed to several leading audio companies

including Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung and Sanyo’

(Keren and Shashoua 2004).

Keren studied at the ORT technical high school and

Applied Mathematics at the Technion, in Haifa, and

he became a sound engineer. ‘Like many teenage boys,

I was interested in music, but I didn’t play any instru-

ments. I studied electronics and I was involved in these

sorts of things . . . When I was 21, one half year before

I was done with my military service, I had ideas about

sound and I went to a musician and he recommended

that I talk to someone . . . and I was referred to

Tommy Friedman at the Altec Lansing’s multimedia

technology department . . . I went to see him at his

studio, Tritone. As soon as I walked into the control

room, I saw the equipment and things came together

for me [in my mind]’ (Keren 2004).

Shashoua grew up as a musician and self-taught

builder of electronic circuitry, gaining formal training

in the army. ‘We set out to make a digital Vocoder.

Soon we found out that just doing digital synthesis was

hard enough. We decided that we would crawl first . . .

started writing code in 1988, and we had a prototype

in 1989. We showed it in New York City at the AES

[Audio Engineering Society] convention’ (Keren

2004). The core of their technologies was, from the

start in 1986, the Motorola DSP (digital signal pro-

cessing) 56000 chip, for which there was a digital to

analogue and analogue to digital conversion evalua-

tion board, to which Shashoua gained access at a

university. And then, ‘Gilad surprised me and told me

that he bought the evaluation board and that’s how

the garage studio started. Our first prototype – an

equaliser – was [developed] right then’ (Shashoua

2004).

An important influence on the development of

Waves’ products was mathematician and audio theo-

rist, Michael Gerzon (1945–1996), best known for his

development of Ambisonics, an approach to surround

sound. After his death, Keren and Shashoua (2004)

wrote in his obituary, ‘We have been working with him

during the last 5 years at Waves and if there is any-

thing like a father to a company – this is what Michael

was for Waves’. His work played an important role

in the Waves’ TrueVerb plug-in, S1 Stereo Imager,

L1 and L2 ultamaximisers, C1 [Compressor, Gate,

Expander], StereoMaker, and the Increased Digital

resolution. At present, the company is considering

moving into publishing information technologies,

expanding beyond plug-ins to books and other

resources.

10. OBSERVATIONS

Electronic music composition and performance has a

long history in the State of Israel. Its composers, those

living in Israel and abroad (mostly in the United

States), approach their creative work from a great

variety of perspectives and backgrounds. It is thus dif-

ficult to generalise about the nature of this musical

genre. Nonetheless, there are some basic commona-

lities about which one may comment. Composer

Jonathan Berger makes an apt observation when he

notes that ‘Israeli music explores national identity,

and incorporates multiculturalism; it often has

uncharacteristic (perhaps ‘un-cool’) expressivity –

which I find most appealing’ (Berger 2004).

Berger’s comments are relevant to many Israeli

composers in general, those who compose electronic,

as well as acoustic instrumental and vocal music. Israel

is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, although

most of the historical models for electronic music and

most of its Israeli composers are European by heri-

tage. Israeli identity, because of the young age of

the nation, founded in 1948, and the complexities and

varieties of Jewish identity (religious, secular, post-

Holocaust, immigration from Middle Eastern, Euro-

pean, African and Asian societies), which represents

one of the core aspects of Israeli identity, often leads

Israeli artists and musicians to explore identity issues

in their work, directly or indirectly. Some Israeli com-

posers create in a more European, abstract, musical

language, among them Yizhak Sadai and Menahem

Zur. A number of composers create works that draw

upon Hebrew language texts, integrating the sounds

of Hebrew into the sonic texture. Among these are

Tzvi Avni, Joseph Dorfman, Stephen Horenstein, and

Arik Shapira, most notably a feature in his predomi-

nantly text-based opera The Kastner Trial. Although

the Israeli composers discussed in this article are

secular and distant from religious identity, the work

of Tzvi Avni, Rajmil Fischman, Stephen Horenstein

and others at times contains inflections of traditional

Jewish music and traditional Jewish historical refer-

ences, especially the Bible and the Holocaust. There

has been little electronic music to date reflective of

the surrounding Middle Eastern cultures where many

Israelis were born. One exception is Avi Elbaz, who

integrates elements of Moroccan music and culture

into his work. Horenstein (2004) speaks of an Israeli

‘utilising a different time sense emanating from

Middle East’.

It is difficult to say whether the trend is more

towards abstraction or to an identifiable Israeli

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 177

flavour. Certainly, with the exception of new immi-

grants, the creation of an Israeli identity is a task that

is not presently in flux. Recall Tzvi Avni’s statement,

quoted earlier:

Let’s say in the 1950s and the 1960s I was very busy, like

many others, trying to understand what it meant to be an

Israeli. But now, you know, we have a kind of national

identity here, and you look for the wider cultural identity

much more than local nationalism, which is now perhaps

already established. (Fleisher 1996)

Whether changes in the unstable regional political

situation will cause shifts that will be reflected in

future music is unknown. It is possible that continued

tensions and a lack of political resolution might lead

more composers to create politically inspired works. I

have encountered few Israeli composers who are apo-

litical. It is also possible that the sharp divide between

religious and secular Israelis will narrow, with the

emergence of non-Orthodox religious forms, resulting

in a reconsideration of identity issues. Certainly, most,

if not all, Israeli electronic music composers are

secular in orientation. Fewer are currently exploring

biblical themes than had composers of the earlier

generation. It is equally possible that religious divi-

sions, which have political consequences in Israel due

to the politicised nature of religious authority, could

increase, also influencing musical expression.

11. CHALLENGES

A major issue facing Israeli composers is that their

creative work has not been received with a high level of

critical acceptance or institutional support in their

home country. The only music familiar to masses of

Israelis, and that uses electronic media, is popular

dance music, especially trance. Most Israelis are

largely, if not entirely, unaware of the composers or

forms of music discussed in this paper. Avi Elbaz

notes:

We have a lot of difficulties but I think that the major

are radio and television. We don’t have any regular time

to play our music or the chance to connect more audi-

ences to that kind of music. Stations are refusing to play

modern music. (Elbaz 2004)

Rajmil Fischman adds:

Perhaps the most difficult problem is that of funding for

arts, which cannot become completely independent of

sponsoring, since they do not have mass appeal. This is

accompanied by lack of media interest and exposure.

There are artistic pursuits that are bound to remain

within minorities (not only electronic music but also

some traditional folk genres, classical concerts which are

not digests of masterpieces) . . . (Fischman 2004)

It has not been common for electronic music

composers to receive major national prizes or receive

substantial State support. In fact, when the coveted

Israel Prize was granted to Arik Shapira in the early

1990s, the announcement was met with great contro-

versy, largely on the part of fellow composers. Some

felt that the Prize should be granted to a more main-

stream, more senior composer. To this observer’s

mind, the controversies at least in part point to the

very limited degree of acknowledgement available

in Israel today for any electronic music composer,

leading to an unfortunate degree of competition.

There are now only three surviving electronic music

studios among all of those that were established at

universities. The recent closing of the studio at the

Tel-Aviv Rubin Academy leaves only the Jerusalem

Academy studio, the decade-old Bar-Ilan Laboratory

and the Haifa University studio remaining active. In

addition to this is the ‘hyper-instrument’ workshop of

the Jerusalem Institute of Contemporary Music. The

closing of the Israel Center for Electronic Music at

the Hebrew University, founded by Joseph Tal, and

the Electronic Music Studio at the Rubin Academy of

Music in Tel-Aviv, founded by Yizhak Sadai, both

after several decades in operation, represents a loss of

not only educational and creative resources, but of a

historical legacy. Composers outside of academia have

even more limited options.

Finally, many of the most significant composers in

their thirties and forties have moved to the United

States, where they can find academic employment,

support for their work, and venues for performance.

Some composers now in the United States return to

Israel for extended visits or teaching, but the locus of

activity for Israeli-born composers and performers of

electronic music is not in the land of their birth. This is

unfortunate, although it allows the work of Israeli

composers to flourish.

I believe that the situation is well described in a

conversation between Shlomo Dubnov and Joseph

Tal:

Tal: It [the 1950s] was a difficult period. Today is difficult

too. It is typical for Jewish history, but then we remain

...

Dubnov: You can’t compare then and today.

Tal: For Moses it was hard to carve the Ten

Commandments in stone.

Dubnov: So then it was like Egypt and now like in the

desert?

Tal: Something like that. (Tal 2004)

12. HOPEFUL SIGNS

The number of Israeli composers and the level of

activity over the past half century suggest that elec-

tronic music has been a lively and engaged movement,

even as it remains marginal to Israeli public life.

Stephen Horenstein (2004) observes that an important

178 Robert J. Gluck

attribute of composers in Israel has been their ability

to ‘maximise modest resources for maximum effect’.

He adds that despite the challenges, Israeli composers

have exhibited ‘necessity and artistic drive, in the

midst of many obstacles: lack of public funding,

audience. . .’.

It is worth considering whether a new generation

of Israeli composers, working in more popular genres,

will move outside of the commercial world that they

currently inhabit. Yossi Mar-Haim notes:

Right now most electronic activity is done by young

people who are closer to pop music, done at home with

smaller equipment, mostly samplers, and performed at

clubs and fringe theatres. The university labs did not

produce major works in the pure electro-acoustic sense.

There are however some new voice artists that [are]

find[ing] a new way, combined with visual ideas.

(Mar-Haim 2003)

Avi Elbaz adds that ‘In high schools more institutes

have started to teach electronic music as part of their

programmes’ (Elbaz 2004: 1). Joseph Tal found that

such programmes had helped build support for his

work in the 1970s. Elbaz concludes ‘I believe that the

audience will grow in the future and more young musi-

cians will create music in that area, so it is currently a

question of time but it is very hard to say how long’.

Is it possible that the availability of small, relatively

inexpensive equipment will result in a creative syn-

thesis of popular forms with more experimental

models? Will the rise of multimedia performance

(including live video mixes by vj’s) in popular music

veins have a positive effect on such output? Unless

there is an exposure to experimental forms, currently a

rarity, this seems less likely.

Rajmil Fischman sees the possibility that the

marginalisation of electronic and computer music

could end:

After a dynamic beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, elec-

tronic music in Israel became constrained to pockets of

activity (for example, Yitzhak Sadai in the 1980s, Raviv

Gazit and Arie Shapira in the 1980s and 1990s, Josef Tal,

consistently since the 1950s, Tsippi Fleischer, sporadi-

cally in the 1990s), which were rather dependent on the

particular aesthetic approach of a few practitioners. I

believe that this is changing due to more international

exposure, availability of tools, use of technology in

popular music, contemporary musical pluralism, the

Internet revolution and the emphasis put on electroa-

coustic music in educational institutions such as Haifa

University, and that there is a new generation emerging,

which promises vitality and creative drive. (Fischman

2004)

Stephen Horenstein describes his hopes of future

possibilities:

I dream of establishing a world-class studio, available to

all composers who are affiliated with the center, raising

money from interested donors, here and abroad.

I envision a move to create interactive projects

(musicians/electronics) in the major academies, building

collaborative relationships between performers and

composers.

I dream of a new repertoire that builds on the indigenous

sound material found in the Middle East, and from

echoes of Jewish history and consciousness.

I hope for a new renaissance of collaborations between

composers and artists from other media, utilising the

potentials of electronic sound. (Horenstein 2004)

Despite all challenges, Israeli composers of weight

and significance continue to compose and perform,

sometimes in their homeland. Arie Shapira, Stephen

Horenstein, Menahem Zur, Yossi Mar-Haim and

others remain active within Israel. The live electronic

duo, Krechtz, featuring Ilan Green and Gil Wasser-

man, thus represents a spark of new life and a new

direction for Israeli performance. There is an Israeli

presence of merit within international computer music

and throughout American universities, among them

Amnon Wolman, Jonathan Berger, Gil Weinberg,

and Shlomo Dubnov. Keren Rosenbaum, based in the

United States, is an increasingly active composer who

maintains a presence and influence in Israel. The Haifa

University studio, under Arie Shapira, is a growing

hotbed of activity. In summary, the heritage of Joseph

Tal, Yizhak Sadai and Tzvi Avni remains alive and

creative, albeit facing an uncertain future in its land

of origin.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks go to the many composers, educators and

writers who have given their time and attention to this

project. Among them are Tzvi Avni, Yossi Mar-Haim,

Ofer ben-Amots, Joseph Dorfman, Arik Shapira,

Amnon Wolman, Shlomo Dubnov, Eitan Avitsur,

Jonathan Berger, Menahem Zur, Dan Yuhas, Kiki

Keren-Huss, Guy Rosenfarb, Raviv Gazit, Yizhak

Sadai, Gilad Keren, Meir Shashoua, Keren Rosen-

baum, Mira Zakai, Anna Immanuel, Joel Chadabe,

Don Goodman, Ilan Green, Avi Elbaz, Daniel Oppen-

heim, Rajmil Fischman, Stephen Horenstein, Gil

Weinberg, Marianne Brün and Anna Immanuel.

Special thanks go to Shlomo Dubnov for conducting

two interviews with Joseph Tal, the first at the same

time that he was preparing to move to a new academic

position, many miles from home. This article was

researched and written in tandem with my work as

co-Executive Editor (with Joel Chadabe) of the Elec-

tronic Music Foundation’s EMF Institute, a web-

based historical resource centre about the history of

electronic music. Additional materials relating to

this topic may be found on that website: http://www.

emfinstistute.emf.org

Two web resources about Israeli composers worthy

of reference include the Israel Composer’s League:

Fifty years of electronic music in Israel 179

http://www.go.to/israelcomposers (2004); and the

Israel Music Institute: http://www.imi.org.il/ (2004).

There is also a listserv for the Israel Computers and

Music Forum at il-cmf@cs.huji.ac.il. Additional

material about Yizhak Sadai may be found in The

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians; Dictionary

of Twentieth Century Music 1974, London, Thames &

Hudson; and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music,

1980, Oxford University Press.

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The music histories signaled by (and in) Mordecai Seter’s notebooks

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2022
Mod Jew Stud

Assaf Shelleg

Spanning more than 2700 pages, the notebooks Mordecai Seter had written between 1952 and 1993 feature more than to-do lists, teaching schedules, and other errands involving the musicians and functionaries that performed, published or broadcast his music. The notebooks disclose dozens of stylistic self-analyses (whose growing volume in the 1960s and 1970s would signal a creative impasse) alongside numerous citations from books on Jewish mysticism, esotericism, symbolism, philosophy, psychoanalysis, modernism, art history, and musicology that Seter repurposed as borrowed autobiographical snippets. Combined, these two facets shed new light on his aesthetic shifts as well as on the stipulations of the historiography of art music in Israel. And as unsung chapters of Seter’s autobiography unfold, they also thicken the biography of a bigger ecosystem, unconditioned by notions of peripherality or Otherness.

Israelism: Nationalism, Orientalism, and the Israeli Five

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Aug 2014

Ronit Seter

The Dilution of National Onomatopoeias in Post-Statehood Israeli Art Music: Precursors, Contiguities, Shifts

Article

Oct 2013

Shelleg

Israeli art music penned from the late 1930s to the early 1960s unfolds early serial practices in Mandatory (British) Palestine that had come to the fore during the early post-statehood years, when growing disillusionment with romanticist nationalism loomed large. Abandoning peripheral native masks, composers responded to the post-statehood shift by either adapting the linear properties of non-Western Jewish music, which they aligned with local readings of serial devices, or through the destabilization of folk-like dances and exotic musical markers. Shifts in Israeli poetry parallel the emerging attitudes of the first cohort of native Israeli composers and the gradual fading of the nation’s unisonality from their music.

eShofar as a Culturally Specific Live Electronic Performance System

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Jan 2007

Robert J. Gluck

QSketcher: An Environment for Composing Music for Film

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Jan 2002

We describe QSketcher, a new environment for composing music for film. The main focus is the support of early stages of the creative workflow, from idea conception through realization, rather than the order and synchronization of musical fragments with film. This paper describes the design process and rationale, the system, the user environment, and how they relate to one another. Novel aspects of the system include a free-form 'idea space', a main workspace that can be configured to individual needs, an "idea capturing" facility, a workflow tracking mechanism through which previous workspace states can be examined and restored, and the ability to create a variety of relationships among musical elements.

Studio Report: a New Icon Musical Notation System - TAL

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Jan 1992

Icon Notation for Electroacoustic and Computer Music

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Jan 1988

The Music of Israel: From the Biblical Era to Modern Times

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Mar 1998

The Sackbut Blues: Hugh Le Caine: Pioneer in Electronic Music

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Jan 1992

Twenty Israeli Composers: Voices of a Culture

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Sep 1998

Correspondence

Article

Jun 2012

Global Village, Local Universe: A Statement of Identity

Article

Dec 1999
Leonardo Music J

Rajmil Fischman

In this article, the author presents a personal view of his compositional identity as an instance of one of the innumerable possible outcomes within a civilization that has become global and individualistic at the same time. The author situates identity within the context of historical, political and social backgrounds and examines it from the point of view of the mechanics of its realization, social function and reach, and cultural baggageincluding musical influences from various traditions, technology and science.

Structural aspects of my music as illustrated in the tape work The Gown of Night and the cantata Like Two Branches

Article

Apr 1998

Tsippi Fleischer

This article deals with two of my works, both of which were composed to literary texts in Arabic. The first is one of my shortest compositions and the second is one of the longest. The Gown of Night (1988), for magnetic tape, is based on the voices of Bedouin children articulating a text by Muhammad Ghana’im (Israel) and lasts 2 minutes and 42 seconds. Like Two Branches (1989), a cantata for chamber choir, two oboes, kanun (or piano), violoncello and a set of supplemented tar drums, is based on text by Al-Khansa – who lived in the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth century AD – and lasts 42 minutes. The ongoing process involving the composition of these two works in the late 1980s resulted in their successive appearance in 1988 and 1990.

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

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