Joachim Stutschewsky

Stutschewsky’s impulse to spend such evenings with like-minded musicians was indicative of a larger movement that had sprouted in Russia and was spreading throughout Europe. He became increasingly aware that this wave of Jewish nationalism in music was happening independently at the same time in different places. Through the circulating scores of their publishing houses in Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Berlin, the cellist was able to familiarize himself with the music of composers from the Society for Jewish Folk Music.

A pivotal figure of Jewish art music in Russia was Joel Engel (1868–1927), whom Stutschewsky met at a concert in Berlin in 1923. They struck up a lasting friendship, which paved the way for Stutschewsky’s connections with the other members of the Society. He referred to Engel as ‘the lion in the group’ and testified to his impact:

I risked my entire career as cellist, as this activity of mine withdrew to the background. I was aware of it. Many of my friends were sorry for that. But what could I do? Someone had to take upon himself the important task of Jewish music and to continue the legacy of Joel Engel.^[11]

On their meeting, Stutschewsky showed Joel Engel his work Dwejkuth (Méditation Hebraïque). Although written after M’chol Kédem, Stutschewsky considered it his first rich, serious piece in Jewish style. The title and subtitle reveal a duality that established the basis of this piece. On the one hand, the Yiddish title Dwejkuth (Devotion), echoes the Hasidic movement’s ideal of heartfelt devotion for God. On the other hand, the subtitle – Méditation Hebraïque – express the harkening back to the Hebrew people’s biblical past. Impressed by the work, Engel accepted it for publication under his publishing house Juwal in Berlin.

Engel, after becoming more convinced by the Zionist cause, set an example for other Jewish composers by emigrating to Palestine in 1924. Stutschewsky would follow in Engel’s footsteps, almost literally, and take on the leadership in the research and diffusion of Jewish musical traditions in Israel after the premature death of the master in 1927. In many ways, Stutschewsky’s emigration and subsequent four decades of professional activities in British Palestine and the new State of Israel were an extension of Engel’s legacy.

Formative Years: Vienna, 1924–38

How did Stutschewsky find himself at the epicenter of the Central European musical avant-garde scene? A providential meeting with the violinist Rudolf Kolisch occurred in March 1924 during a concert of the Austrian Society for New Music, where Stutschewsky was invited to perform a solo cello sonata by Egon Wellesz. Kolisch, a protégé and eventual brother-in-law of Arnold Schoenberg, invited Stutschewsky to join him in Vienna where, in 1924, they established the Neue Wiener Streichquartett along with the violinist Fritz Rothschild and violist Marcel Dick. With the intention of becoming the leading interpreters of the Second Viennese School with an international touring schedule, they rehearsed twice a day and were coached at times by Schoenberg himself. On 8 January 1927, the Quartet gave the premiere of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite.

Stutschewsky’s membership in the Viennese String Quartet was short-lived.^[12] Although he admired the ‘authoritative and charismatic’ Arnold Schoenberg, he felt intimidated about writing his own music while learning the masterpieces of the modern quartet repertoire: “The connection with Viennese composers, the detailed learning of their […] compositional techniques, brought doubts and non-confidence to my own work.”

Free to pursue personal projects after leaving the Quartet in 1927, Stutschewsky began a six-volume cello method, ambitiously titled The Art of Playing the Violoncello: A System of Study from the Very Beginning to a Stage of Perfection, which would eventually cement his reputation as a pedagogue. For cellists wishing to follow his teachings, he organized summer camps held in the pastoral area of Obernberg, Austria, for three consecutive summers, from 1935 to 1937.           

His creative output in Vienna included works for piano solo and for cello and piano based on Jewish themes. In spite of the complexity of the music by Schoenberg, Berg, Bartók Hindemith and Webern, Stutschewsky was inspired by the innovative structures of these masters’ works and found freedom for his individual expression. Thus, while he remained within the confines of the tonal language, he incorporated harmonic surprises and more virtuosity in his own writing for both the cello and the piano.

The pieces for cello and piano included the compilation Trois Pièces Hébraïques: Kinah (Elegy), Meditation Chassidique, and Frejlachs, composed between 1933 and 1934, and ‘Jewish Song’ composed in 1937, at the eve of the Anschluss.

More significantly, Vienna in the 1920s and ’30s proved to be the first of two benchmark eras whereby Stutschewsky emerged as a central figure in the field of contemporary Jewish art music. As a writer, he presented his opinions in the Viennese Zionist journal Die Stimme and the Prague-based journal Selbstwehr. Taking a lead from his colleagues of the St Petersburg Society, he mounted concerts and lectures by organizing his own Verein zur Förderung jüdischer Musik (Society for the Promotion of Jewish Music) in 1927.

In the shadow of the growing anti-Jewish atmosphere in Central Europe, Stutschewsky maintained extensive correspondences about the state of Jewish music with friends and colleagues beyond the borders of Europe as an option for future steps. Indeed, thanks to the efforts of Dr Sally Levi and the journalist Hermann Swet, founders and directors of the World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, he received an invitation to work as the director of Jewish music at the newly-established Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS, established 1936).^[13] Stutschewsky and Regina Schein, his Swiss cello-student and fiancée, fled from Vienna to neutral Zürich in 1938, where they received the proper paperwork for immigration into Palestine. The Nazis marched into Vienna only weeks later.

Life in a New Land: Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1938–82

It was a marvellous sunrise in Jerusalem that morning [....] For the first time in my life I felt the Orient: Romantic, fantastic!^[14]

Thus, Stutschewsky described his first impression of Jerusalem upon his arrival. The Mediterranean landscapes, the sounds of Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish and other European languages, and the mixture of oriental and occidental sights were later reflected in his music. Palestine appeared to be the ideal birthing ground for Stutschewsky’s mission: a music for the renewing Jewish nation in its land.

But this sincere and noble vision immediately found itself at odds with reality. Stutschewsky had already programmed his first broadcast on behalf of the PBS, including specifically commissioned works, when he learned of his abrupt dismissal from the radio job that had been created for him and had probably saved his life. He had a strong vision in the field of music education in the Yishuv, a field where he acted enthusiastically with the title of Inspector for Jewish Music of the Va’ad Leumi.^[15] However, also in music education he suffered a considerable disappointment: his comprehensive plan – encompassing such necessary tools as musical instruments, Hebrew sheet-music for choirs and ensembles, recordings, trained teachers and educational concerts – was widely ignored. Although Jewish officials of the Yishuv encouraged his programs and intentions, no financial support was granted.

Another dream was shattered when The World Centre for Jewish Music in Palestine, the organisation that made possible Stutschewsky’s immigration, ‘was announced with such pathos and enthusiasm in the Jewish world at the beginning, but was found to be an ambitious fantasy-dream, with no basis in reality and with no real form, a terrible illusion’.^[16] In 1939, Stutschewsky moved to the more cosmopolitan city of Tel Aviv, where the atmosphere was more conducive to professional artistic opportunities. Nonetheless, large projects such as the undertaking of a publishing house exclusively dedicated to Jewish music failed to materialize, and plans for a Library for Jewish Music (Sifriya Le-musika Yehudit) were aborted as well.

These setbacks should be considered within the context of attitudes towards music in the Jewish society during the British Mandate period, and later in the early years of the State of Israel. We can distinguish three trends. The first one is the creation of a new song repertoire in Hebrew (disguised as “folk song”, Hebrew: shir ‘am) reflected the idea of the “negation of the [Jewish] Diaspora” (Shlilat Ha-golah) that dominated intellectual circles in the newly created State aspiring to implement a musical ‘melting pot’. The Zionist Labor establishment nurtured an image of the new, strong and proud ‘Hebrew man’ and rejected any reminiscence of the imagined fragile diasporic Jew and his musical traditions. On the other hand, composers of art music embraced progressive international trends like dodecaphony, atonality and electro-acoustic styles, and presented music as the individual’s mean of expression.^[17]

Another emerging trend was a ‘Mediterranean Style’ that reflected the freedom, landscapes, biblical allure and the exotic orientalism that the composers discovered in their new homeland.^[18] Any positive identification with cultural assets of the Diaspora, such as Yiddish language and literature or klezmer music, were regarded as an obsolete remnant of the past. Stutschewsky’s ideas about historical continuity and perpetuation of Jewish musical genius were thus at odds with the consensus in a Zionist society preoccupied with immediate concerns like establishment of the State of Israel and its security.

Stutschewsky, self-identified as a Jewish musician, was frustrated to find himself the minority in a country of Jews. Not only did he find a lack of support for his own musical projects, but he was also flummoxed by the lack of Jewish programming from the Classical-music establishment. As early as 1938 in Vienna he railed against the slavish devotion to ‘a few dead, baptised composers’ by Jewish musicians and musical organizations, such as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.^[19] He complained that

the directorship of the orchestra is unfortunately so inclined that this marvelous instrument has not and cannot have the slightest interest in our cultural aspirations [….] It has neither a connection to Jewishness nor to Eretz Yisrael nor to Jewish culture. But it is in itself not so bad that it does not have this connection; what is terrible is that it is not the least bit inclined to acquire this or to make any changes.^[20]

Although he experienced deep disappointment and faced continuous struggle in his forty-four years in Israel, Stutschewsky remained creative and forceful throughout his professional life, and his efforts were gradually recognized. He became known as a traveling cellist who, with his second wife, the soprano Julia Stutschewsky, visited kibbutzim and villages across the country to spread knowledge of and feeling for Jewish music. At the Workers’ Circle in Beit Brenner, Tel Aviv, for example, between 1938 and 1942 he succeeded in producing twenty-six Jewish art-music programs, including newly commissioned works by Israeli composers (although he often had to cover expenses out of his own pocket).

A constant concern of Stutschewsky was the creation of educational repertoire for Jewish children and youth. The mission of his educational works was both instrumental teaching, as well as the identification with Jewish musical heritage while fostering a new Israeli sound.  In consequence, Stutschewsky’s educational repertoire for piano, cello, voice, and chamber ensembles is set to Hebrew poetry as well as Jewish themes. This undertaking threaded since his Zürich and Vienna periods and throughout his life in Israel.

Stutschewsky’s research in both Jewish music and cello pedagogy yielded 385 published articles. His ground-breaking monograph Ha’Klezmerim: Toldotehem, Orah Hayehem ve-Yetzirotehem (‘Klezmorim: Their History, Folklore and Compositions’)^[21] was the first serious musicological study in Hebrew on klezmer music and earned him the prize named after his mentor, the Joel Engel Award. He received the Piatigorsky Prize in 1963 ‘in recognition of many years of devotion to music and to the art of cello-playing’, and was named an Honorary Citizen of Tel Aviv in 1977.

As a composer, Stutschewsky admitted that his ‘individual style’ finally took shape in Israel, where folk sources were infused into a more contemporary musical language. In addition to sixteen Jewish-themed works for cello and piano, there are forty-three chamber and unaccompanied instrumental pieces, a dozen piano works, two cantatas, and numerous vocal and choral song-cycles and collections in Hebrew. In 1961 and 1973 the Israel Philharmonic itself honored Stutschewsky with premieres of his major orchestral works: the symphonic poem Zfat (the Hebrew name of the city of Safed) and the symphonic suite Israel.

Stutschewsky’s diverse body of work—spanning composition, scholarship, and concert performance—was inextricably linked to his socio-political ideals. His career chronicles the life of a conscientious artist working within a transformative historical landscape marked by global conflict and national rebirth. He served as an influential mentor to a younger generation, encouraging composers and performers alike to bridge the Eastern European and Mediterranean dimensions of their heritage. His prolific and artful output reflected a profound commitment to the exploration of Jewish music, and his scholarly and artistic contributions remain a significant point of reference for those engaged today in research, performance, and pedagogy in the field.