JEWISH SONGWRITERS & 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
  • Mario Davidovsky
  • David Diamond
  • Jacob Druckman
  • Paul Dukas
  • Hanns Eisler 1
  • Morton Feldman
  • Gerald Finzi
  • Lukas Foss
  • Hans Gál
  • George Gershwin
  • Philip Glass
  • Karl Goldmark
  • Osvaldo Golijov
  • Louis Moreau Gottschalk 2
  • Morton Gould
  • Jacques Halévy
  • Mauricio Kagel
  • Emmerich Kalman
  • Aaron Jay Kernis
  • Leon Kirchner
  • Erich Wolfgang Korngold
  • William Kraft
  • Hans Krása
  • Fritz Kreisler 3
  • György Kurtág
  • György Ligeti
  • Gustav Mahler
  • Fanny Mendelssohn
  • Felix Mendelssohn
  • Giacomo Meyerbeer
  • Darius Milhaud
  • Jacques Offenbach
  • Shulamit Ran
  • Steve Reich
  • George Rochberg
  • Anton Rubinstein
  • Alfred Schnittke 4
  • Arnold Schoenberg
  • Franz Schreker 5
  • Ervín Schulhoff
  • William Schuman
  • Robert Starer
  • Oscar Straus
  • Ernst Toch
  • Viktor Ullmann
  • Emil Waldteufel
  • Kurt Weill
  • Henryk (Henri) Wieniawski
  • Stefan Wolpe
  • John Zorn
TWO REMARKABLE PRODIGIES
POPULAR SONGWRITERS
For more Jewish songwriters, see also lists of Jewish-composed SONGS and MUSICALS.
  • Richard Adler
  • Lynn Ahrens
  • Harold Arlen
  • Burt Bacharach
  • Lionel Bart
  • Alan and Marilyn Bergman
  • Irving Berlin
  • Leonard Bernstein
  • Don Black
  • Jerry Bock
  • Alain Boublil
  • 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
  • Sherman Edwards
  • Ray Evans
  • Sammy Fain
  • Dorothy Fields
  • Charles Fox
  • George and Ira Gershwin
  • Norman Gimbel
  • Adolph Green
  • Johnny Green
  • Marvin Hamlisch
  • Oscar Hammerstein II 6
  • E. Y. Harburg
  • Sheldon Harnick
  • Lorenz Hart
  • Jerry Herman
  • James Horner
  • Billy Joel
  • John Kander
  • Jerome Kern
  • Carole King
  • Herbert Kretzmer
  • Burton Lane
  • Jerry Leiber
  • Mitch Leigh
  • Alan Jay Lerner
  • Jay Livingston
  • Frank Loesser
  • Frederick Loewe 7
  • Johnny Mandel
  • Barry Mann
  • Melissa Manchester
  • Barry Manilow
  • Michael Masser
  • Alan Menken
  • Anthony Newley 8
  • Randy Newman
  • Laura Nyro 9
  • Benj Pasek
  • Jerzy Petersburski
  • Richard Rodgers
  • Sigmund Romberg
  • Harold Rome
  • Jerry Ross
  • Carole Bayer Sager
  • Claude-Michel Schönberg 10
  • Arthur Schwartz
  • Stephen Schwartz
  • Neil Sedaka
  • Naomi Shemer
  • Richard and Robert Sherman
  • Carly Simon 11
  • Paul Simon
  • Stephen Sondheim
  • Mike Stoller
  • Charles Strouse
  • Jule Styne
  • Diane Warren
  • Paul Francis Webster
  • Cynthia Weil
  • Kurt Weill
  • Frank Wildhorn
  • Maury Yeston
  • 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
  • Saul Chaplin
  • Adolph Deutsch
  • Danny Elfman
  • Ernest Gold 12
  • Jerry Goldsmith
  • Johnny Green
  • Marvin Hamlisch
  • Bernard Herrmann
  • James Horner
  • James Newton Howard 13
  • 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
  • Richard and Robert Sherman
  • Howard Shore
  • Max Steiner
  • Morris Stoloff
  • Dimitri Tiomkin
  • Franz Waxman
  • Victor Young
  • Hans Zimmer 16
NOTES
1. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
2. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
3. Kreisler never acknowledged his Jewish background, but both of his parents came from Jewish families.  Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) lists his religion as "israelitisch dann katholisch" ("Jewish, then Catholic").  Amy Biancolli's biography Fritz Kreisler: Love's Sorrow, Love's Joy  (Amadeus Press, Portland Oregon, 1998) contains an extensive discussion  of Kreisler's Jewish background (see Chapter 8: "Kreisler the Catholic, Kreisler the Jew").    She cites a 1992 interview with Franz Rupp, Fritz Kreisler's piano accompanist in the 1930s, which was conducted by David Sackson.  Rupp is quoted as stating that he once asked Kreisler's brother, the cellist Hugo Kreisler, about their Jewish background, to which Hugo responded simply, "I'm a Jew, but my brother, I don't know."  Viennese Jewish communal archives contain the birth records of both Fritz and Hugo Kreisler, as well as Hugo's 1929 burial record.  They also contain the marriage record of their parents, Dr. Samuel Kreisler and Anna Reches.  The birth records of Fritz and Hugo give Anna Reches' Jewish name as "Chaje Riwe" (rendered as "Chaje Ribe" in Hugo's record).  There are numerous other individuals surnamed "Reches" in the Jewish archives.  Biancolli indicates that Fritz's mother was most probably not of Jewish origin, but this assertion is apparently incorrect.  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 entirely Jewish by descent 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. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.  See http://www.musicsalesclassical.com/composer/long-bio/Alfred-Schnittke.
5. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
6. Jewish father, non-Jewish mother.
7. Jewish father, opera singer Edmund Loewe, whose 16 December 1870 birth to Eduard Löwe and Phillippine Herlitzka is recorded in the Jewish communal records of Vienna.
8. 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."
9. Jewish mother, non-Jewish father.
10. See Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, by Mark Steyn (Routledge, NY, 1999, p. 87). According to Steyn, "Cameron Mackintosh isn't Jewish, but his writers on Les Miz and Miss Saigon, Boublil and Schönberg, are. 'Claude-Michel Schönberg,' he says, 'is Hungarian-Jewish.'"
11. Jewish father (publisher Richard Simon), non-Jewish mother.
12. Claims found elsewhere that Ernest Gold was only one-quarter Jewish are simply incorrect.  His grandparents were Moritz and Alice (née Jeiteles) Goldner and Dr. Siegmund and Anna (née Spitzer) Stransky.  The marriages of both sets of grandparents were performed at the Stadttempel in Vienna and recorded in the Jewish communal archives of that city.
13. Jewish father, 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).
16. Not widely known to be Jewish; see, however:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/culture/article/hans_zimmer_proud_to_say_my_people.

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