Jewry in Music

David Conway examines how Jews developed a significant presence in early nineteenth-century Western music.

David Conway traces the progress of Jews in the burgeoning early nineteenth-century European music industry, analysing dynamic changes in economics, politics and technology during this time. Investigating musical biographies of the famous, the neglected and the forgotten, this study presents a radical contextualisation of Wagner's infamous 'Judaism in Music'.David Conway analyses why and how Jews, virtually absent from Western art music until the end of the eighteenth century, came to be represented in all branches of the profession within fifty years as leading figures – not only as composers and performers, but as publishers, impresarios and critics. His study places this process in the context of dynamic economic, political, sociological and technological changes and also of developments in Jewish communities and the Jewish religion itself, in the major cultural centres of Western Europe. Beginning with a review of attitudes to Jews in the arts and an assessment of Jewish music and musical skills, in the age of the Enlightenment, Conway traces the story of growing Jewish involvement with music through the biographies of the famous, the neglected and the forgotten, leading to a radical contextualisation of Wagner's infamous 'Judaism in Music'.