Henech Kon or Henryk Kon (9 August 1890 – 20 April 1972) was a Polish

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...

performer The performing arts are The arts, arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art object ...

. Kon was born in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

to a

Chassid Ḥasīd ( he, חסיד, "pious", "saintly", "godly man"; plural "Hasidim") is a Jewish honorific, frequently used as a term of exceptional respect in the Talmudic and early medieval periods. It denotes a person who is scrupulous in his observ ...

ic family, and sent at the age of 12 to his grandfather in

Kutno Kutno is a city located in central Poland with 42,704 inhabitants (2021) and an area of . Situated in the Łódź Voivodeship since 1999, previously it was part of Płock Voivodeship (1975–1998) and it is now the capital of Kutno County. Dur ...

, where he studied

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...

but also studied with local

klezmer Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for l ...

s, absorbing folk music from players and badkhonim.Fater, Isaschar (1970). Jewish Music in Poland between the Two World Wars, pp. 200–206. When his family realized he would never be a rabbi, they sent him to music school in Berlin. In 1912 he returned to

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

where he was drawn into literary artistic circles of Jewish Warsaw, particularly the "artistic culture salon" of the famous Polish actress Tea Artsishevska (née Miryam Isroels), later a member of the revi-teater Azazel. Her then husband, sculptor Bernard Kratko, introduced Kon to

Isaac Leib Peretz Isaac Leib Peretz ( pl, Icchok Lejbusz Perec, yi, יצחק־לייבוש פרץ) (May 18, 1852 – April 3, 1915), also sometimes written Yitskhok Leybush Peretz was a Polish Jewish writer and playwright writing in Yiddish. Payson R. Stevens, Cha ...

and Kon set several of Peretz's works to music, including ''Treyst mayn folk'' (Comfort My People) and the play ''Bay nakht oyfn alten mark'' (A Night in the Old Marketplace). In 1922 "proletarian Lodz was tired of earnest dramas and light comedies." Responding to the new popularity of satire, Kon – with poet

Moishe Broderzon Moishe Broderzon ( yi, משה בראדערזאן, November 23, 1890 — August 17, 1956) was a Yiddish poet, theatre director, and the founder of the Łódź literary society, literary group ''Yung-yidish''. He was born 1890 in Moscow, but his f ...

and painter Yitschok Broyner – created the marionette theater ''Chad-Gadya'', the first of a string of revi-teaters (venues for music theater revues) in Polish towns and cities. He later was also closely associated with the kleynkunst venue ''Ararat''. He composed music for around 40 theater productions, including

Sholem Asch Sholem Asch ( yi, שלום אַש, pl, Szalom Asz; 1 November 1880 – 10 July 1957), also written Shalom Ash, was a Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States. Life and work Asch ...

's ''Kiddush ha-Shem'', Shakespeare's ''Shylock,''

Aaron Zeitlin Aaron Zeitlin (3 June 1898 – 28 September 1973) was a Jewish American educator and writer. He authored several books on Yiddish literature, poetry and parapsychology. Biography Zeitlin was born in Uvarovichi, Russia (now Belarus) to Hillel Z ...

's (Tseytlin's) ''Yidnshtot'', Moshe Lipshitz' ''Hershele Ostropolyer'', Dovid Bergelson's ''Di broytmil'' (The Bread Mill), H. Leyvik's '' Der Golem,'' and many others. His opera ''David and Batsheba'' was written (with Moishe Broderzon) and presented in Warsaw in 1924, in a

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

version. Kon himself sang in the production, as did Moshe Shneur's chorus. Ninety-five years later, the orchestral version was created in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

, on 16 August 2019, during the Yiddish Summer Weimar Festival. He is strongly associated with the Warsaw Yung-teater, the Yiddish avant-garde theater company which emerged from Michal Weichert's Yiddish Theater Studio. He wrote the music for ''Boston'', about

Sacco and Vanzetti Nicola Sacco (; April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (; June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were Italian immigrant anarchists who were controversially accused of murdering Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter, a ...

, ''Trupe Tanentzap'', an

Abraham Goldfaden Abraham Goldfaden (Yiddish: אַבֿרהם גאָלדפֿאַדען; born Avrum Goldnfoden; 24 July 1840 – 9 January 1908), also known as Avram Goldfaden, was a Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yid ...

spectacle, ''Napoleon's Treasure'', based on a

Sholem Aleichem ) , birth_date = , birth_place = Pereiaslav, Russian Empire , death_date = , death_place = New York City, U.S. , occupation = Writer , nationality = , period = , genre = Novels, sh ...

story, and many others. After the Second World War Henoch Kon worked with the Yiddish Art Theater in Paris. Beginning in 1934 he also worked in film; he composed the music for ''The Dibbuk'' and Zygmunt Turkow's '' Di freylekhe kabtsonim'' (The Jolly Paupers), among others. He moved to America, where he was never particularly successful,Yardeini, Mordecai (1979). ''Vort un klang: eseyen, eseytn, eseyetkes, poezie''. New York: Farlag Malka. Volume 3. and died in New York City.

References

External links

Kleynkunst
entry in ''

The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe ''The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe'' is a two-volume, English-language reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry in this region, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale Uni ...

'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kon, Henech 1890 births 1972 deaths 20th-century comedians Jewish cabaret performers Jewish composers Jewish songwriters Polish composers Polish cabaret performers 20th-century Polish Jews Yiddish theatre performers Musicians from Łódź