JEWISH SONGWRITERS AND COMPOSERS
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CLASSICAL COMPOSERS
  • Charles Alkan
  • David Amram
  • Lera Auerbach
  • Milton Babbitt
  • Leonard Bernstein
  • Marc Blitzstein
  • Ernest Bloch
  • Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
  • Aaron Copland
  • Richard Danielpour 
  • David Diamond
  • Paul Dukas
  • Hanns Eisler 1
  • Gerald Finzi
  • Lukas Foss
  • Hans Gál
  • George Gershwin
  • Philip Glass
  • Osvaldo Golijov
  • Louis Moreau Gottschalk 2
  • Morton Gould
  • Jacques Halévy
  • Mauricio Kagel
  • Emmerich Kalman
  • Aaron Jay Kernis
  • Leon Kirchner
  • Erich Korngold
  • Hans Krása
  • Fritz Kreisler 3
  • György Kurtág 4
  • György Ligeti
  • Gustav Mahler
  • Felix Mendelssohn
  • Giacomo Meyerbeer
  • Darius Milhaud
  • Jacques Offenbach
  • Shulamit Ran
  • Steve Reich
  • George Rochberg
  • Alfred Schnittke 5
  • Arnold Schoenberg
  • Franz Schreker 6
  • Ervín Schulhoff
  • William Schuman
  • Robert Starer
  • Oscar Straus
  • Ernest Toch
  • Viktor Ullmann
  • Emil Waldteufel
  • Kurt Weill
  • Henryk (Henri) Wieniawski
  • John Zorn
POPULAR SONGWRITERS
For more Jewish songwriters, see also lists of Jewish-composed SONGS and MUSICALS.
  • Harold Arlen
  • Burt Bacharach
  • Lionel Bart
  • Alan and Marilyn Bergman
  • Irving Berlin
  • Leonard Bernstein
  • Don Black
  • Jerry Bock
  • Sammy Cahn
  • Eric Carmen
  • Leonard Cohen
  • Cy Coleman
  • Betty Comden
  • Hal David
  • Neil Diamond
  • Howard Dietz
  • Ervin Drake
  • Al Dubin
  • Isaak Dunaevsky
  • Bob Dylan
  • Fred Ebb
  • Ray Evans
  • Sammy Fain
  • Dorothy Fields
  • Charles Fox
  • George and Ira Gershwin
  • Norman Gimbel
  • Adolph Green
  • Johnny Green
  • Marvin Hamlisch
  • Oscar Hammerstein II 7
  • E. Y. Harburg
  • Sheldon Harnick
  • Lorenz Hart
  • Jerry Herman
  • James Horner
  • Billy Joel
  • John Kander
  • Jerome Kern
  • Carole King
  • Burton Lane
  • Jerry Leiber
  • Mitch Leigh 8
  • Alan Jay Lerner
  • Jay Livingston
  • Frank Loesser
  • Frederick Loewe 9
  • Johnny Mandel
  • Barry Mann
  • Melissa Manchester
  • Barry Manilow
  • Alan Menken
  • Anthony Newley 10
  • Randy Newman
  • Laura Nyro 11
  • Richard Rodgers
  • Sigmund Romberg
  • Harold Rome
  • Claude-Michel Schönberg 12
  • Arthur Schwartz
  • Stephen Schwartz
  • Neil Sedaka
  • Carly Simon 13
  • Paul Simon
  • Stephen Sondheim
  • Mike Stoller
  • Charles Strouse
  • Jule Styne
  • Cynthia Weil
  • Kurt Weill
  • Victor Young
FILM SCORE COMPOSERS
For more Jewish film music composers, see:
Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Motion Picture
Academy Award for Best Original Song.
  • Elmer Bernstein
  • Adolph Deutsch
  • Danny Elfman
  • Jerry Goldsmith
  • Johnny Green
  • Bernard Herrmann
  • James Horner
  • Erich Wolfgang Korngold
  • Irwin Kostal
  • Johnny Mandel
  • Alan Menken
  • Stanley Myers
  • Alfred Newman
  • Thomas Newman 14
  • Alex North 
  • Michael Nyman
  • André Previn
  • David Raksin
  • Leonard Rosenman
  • Miklós Rózsa 15
  • Lalo Schifrin
  • Howard Shore
  • Max Steiner
  • Morris Stoloff
  • Dimitri Tiomkin
  • Franz Waxman
  • Victor Young
NOTES
1. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
2. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
3. Amy Biancolli's recent biography Fritz Kreisler: Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy  (Amadeus Press, Portland Oregon, 1998) contains an extensive discussion  of Kreisler's Jewish background, which he never acknowledged and which his wife adamantly denied (see Chapter 8: "Kreisler the Catholic, Kreisler the Jew").    Biancolli cites a 1992 interview by  David Sackson of Franz Rupp, Fritz Kreisler's piano accompanist in the 1930s.  Rupp states that he once asked Kreisler's brother, the cellist Hugo Kreisler, about the Kreislers' Jewish background, to which Hugo responded simply, "I'm a Jew, but my brother, I don't know."  According to Biancolli, Kreisler's father, Salomon Severin Kreisler (also called Samuel Severin Kreisler), a physician and amateur violinist from Krakow, was almost certainly Jewish.  Fritz's mother, Anna, was a Roman Catholic, and probably an "Aryan."  According to Louis Lochner's 1950 biography Fritz Kreisler, Kreisler was reared as a Roman Catholic.  However, according to unpublished parts of the manuscript uncovered by Biancolli in the Library of Congress, he was baptized only at the age of twelve.  The bottom line seems to be that Kreisler was at least half-Jewish and his reticence on the subject primarily an attempt to placate his highly anti-Semitic wife Harriet.  ("Fritz hasn't a drop of Jewish blood in his veins!" she is said to have vehemently responded to an inquiry from Leopold Godowsky.  Godowsky retorted: "He must be very anemic.")
4. See Ismerjük''oket?: zsidó származású nevezetes magyarok arcképcsarnoka, by István Reményi Gyenes (Ex Libris, Budapest, 1997, p. 145).
5. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.  See http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&composerId_2872=1389.
6. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
7. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
8. Born Irwin Michnick. Man of La Mancha lyricist Joe Darion is also Jewish, according to his entry in Marquis Who's Who in America.
9. Jewish father.
10. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father.  In an interview with Francine Cohen published in the Arts and Leisure Guide of the November 4, 1994 issue of The Jewish Chronicle (London), Newley stated concerning his 'Jewish genes': "My mum's side is Jewish and so is Joan Collins's dad's side, so I suppose you could say we had a full set between us.  We both always used to say that whatever talent we had came from our Jewish backgrounds."
11. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father.
12. See Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, by Mark Steyn (Routledge, NY, 1999, p. 87).
13. Jewish father (publisher Richard Simon), non-Jewish mother.
14. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.  In addition to Thomas Newman's father, Alfred Newman, his uncles Lionel and Emil Newman were also prominent film composers, as are his brother David and his cousin Randy Newman.
15. See Ismerjük''oket?: zsidó származású nevezetes magyarok arcképcsarnoka, by István Reményi Gyenes (Ex Libris, Budapest, 1997, p. 144).

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