Jews

Jews have done inestimable service to music. Never, even in its most fanatical moments, has Anti-Semiticism presented any serious argument to the contrary. Now as if to prove that which has needed no proof, Gdal Saleski has compiled a catalog* of famed Jewish musicians. He stresses individual contributions, the contribution of the Jewish people as a whole.

Writer Saleski defines "Jew" and "Jewish" at the start. He uses them not in "their religious or national sense. The method of approach is purely a racial one. He has isolated all these musicians into this one volume for the simple reason that all of them have in their veins that fire to which the Jewish prophets gave utterance in the time of Jerusalem's glory. . . . He is not concerned with their religion, past or present, but solely with their racial roots, as in the case of the Damrosch family. . . ." He proceeds then with his catalog. Among others, he includes in it:

Composers

Bizet Meyerbeer

Ernest Bloch Offenbach

George Gerswin Ravel

Halevy Rubinstein

Mendelssohn Saint-Saens

[But Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner, Tschaikovsky, Strauss, etc., etc., were not Jews.]

Conductors

Artur Bodanzky and Louis Hasselmans (Metropolitan Opera)

Dr. Leopold Damrosch, Walter Damrosch (New York Symphony)

Edwin Franko Goldman (Goldman's Band)

Alfred Hertz (San Francisco Symphony)

Serge Koussevitzky (Boston Symphony)

Pierre Monteux (now guest with the Philadelphia Orchestra)

Giorgio Polacco (Chicago Civic Opera)

Fritz Reiner (Cincinnati Symphony)

Nikolai Sokoloff (Cleveland Orchestra)

[But he who is considered the greatest conductor of modern times, Arturo Toscanini, is no Jew.]

Violinists

Leopold Auer Fritz Kreisler

Mischa Elman Yehudi Menuhin

Carl Flesch Efrem Zimbalist

Jascha Heifetz

[It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to match this list with a Gentile list.]

Pianists

Harold Bauer Josef Lhevinne

Ossip Gabrilowitsch Vladimir De Pachmann

Leopold Godowsky

Wanda Landowska Harold Samuel

[If not the best at least the best known pianist is a Gentile--Ignace Paderewski.]

Singers

Sophie Braslau Giacomo Rimini

Alma Gluck Ernestine Schumann-Heink

Lilli Lehmann

Rosa Raisa

Obviously, a brief list. Every concert goer could amplify with Caruso, Scotti, Gigli, Martinelli, Jeritza, etc., etc.

Gdal Saleski is himself a cellist, now with the New York Symphony. Press notices quoted in his own biography name him an artist of "graceful style which he is able to suit to many different moods." Writer Saleski can make no such claim. His sketches are cut and dried, peppered sparsely with long-familiar anecdotes. His enthusiasm for every Jew has robbed him of his discrimination, defeated his own humble purpose of segregating them. Superlatives are plentiful as periods. Elman, for instance, "alone can produce that broad, wholesome, spiritual tone which is characteristic of his playing and is so representative of the spirit dominating the long-suffering sons and daughters of his race." His tone "has been accepted as the standard by which violinists are measured." Heifetz is "the greatest technical genius of the violin of the present day." Kreisler is "the King of Violinists. Hats Off!"

*FAMOUS MUSICIANS OF A WANDERING RACE--Gdal Saleski -- Block ($5).