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-Saëns
[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.