Alexander Uriyah Boskovich

Alexander Uriyah Boskovich (1907-1964), was one of the leading composers among the founders of Israeli art music and the most prominent and influential ideological theorist of his generation, was born in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania. He completed his music studies in Paris, studying piano with Alfred Cortot at the Ecole Normale de Musique and composition with Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger He also specialized in choral music at the Schola Cantorum (1925/6-1929). Upon returning to his hometown in 1929, he became active as composer, concert pianist and conductor of the National Opera and of the Goldmark Symphony Orchestra, which he founded in 1936.

In 1938 he was invited by the Palestine Symphony Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) to be present at the premiere of his suite Chansons Populaires Juives (later renamed The Golden Chain), based on seven Eastern European Jewish folksongs, under the baton of maestro Issai Dobrowen. He came as a visitor, but decided to make the Land of Israel his home. The encounter with a new socio-cultural reality, a new language and an unfamiliar landscape – all fundamentally different from those he knew in Europe – was not an easy one, but Boskovich identified absolutely with the historic “here” and “now”. He became intensely involved in the revival of art and culture in his old-new homeland as a composer, writer, lecturer, music critic – and as an educator who cultivated a new generation of composers and musicians.

Boskovich continuously strove to create a musical language suitable for expressing the new reality. Through in-depth study and personal acquaintances, he familiarized himself with the traditions, music and dances of diverse eastern Jewish communities – in particular with the artistically imaginative Yemenite folklore – as well as with the Arabic and Druze music and its indigenous instruments. This colorful cultural and musical mosaic exerted tremendous influence on his music. The poetic beauty of the Bible, its diverse cantillations and the revival of the Hebrew language were, for him, an inexhaustible fount of inspiration. By creating a synthesis between the archaic and the new, an amalgam of the cultural and musical traditions of his people, of eastern ethnical musical elements and western compositional achievements, he shaped the new idiom in his musical language, for which he coined the term “The Eastern Mediterranean Style”. His Oboe Concerto (1942), Violin Concerto (1942), Piano Pieces for the Youth (1944/5) and the Semitic Suite (1945/9) in all its versions, are among the key works in this style, and constitute important landmarks in Israeli art music.

After his Eastern Mediterranean period, Boskovich created a unique fusion between the serial technique and the Hebrew language by incorporating its melos, intonations, accentuations and rhythm into his musical language. The Hebrew language – both archaic and new – is the common denominator underlying his last four major works: Song of Ascent (1959/60), Daughter of Israel – a cantata for tenor, choir and symphony orchestra (1960), Concerto da Camera for violin and ten players (1962) and Ornaments for flute and symphony orchestra (1964). Boskovich’s works received prestigious prizes and were performed in Israel and abroad under the baton of distinguished conductors like Issai Dobrowen, Eduard van Beinum, Charles Munch, Sir John Barbirolli, Sergiu Celibidache, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Juan Jose Castro, Gary Bertini, Mendi Rodan, George Pehlivanian and Ilan Volkov.