Marc Lavry

Marc Lavry (Hebrew: מרק לברי) (December 22, 1903, Riga – March 24, 1967, Haifa) was an Israeli composer and conductor.

After graduating high school, he moved to Germany, where he earned a degree in architecture, and continued his music studies at the Leipzig Conservatory.

He became resident composer of the Ohel Theater in Tel Aviv in 1941, and also served as conductor of the Palestine Folk Opera.

In Palestine, Lavry joined a group of leading composers, many of whom had, like him, escaped from Nazi persecution, including Alexander Uriah Boskovich, Paul Ben-Haim, Ödön Pártos, and others.

These composers were actively seeking to create a new, national form of music for the emerging Jewish state.

Yet, as soon as I became encompassed with the influence of the country, when I found myself to be an integral part of Israel, when I mastered the Hebrew language — in the most natural way — I began composing in that style which I write till today."

But Lavry never saw himself as a writer of popular music, and his oeuvre reflects a merger of traditional folk and classical styles.

Lavry uses different musical styles to depict different ethnic types - "the augmented second for the old Polish Jews... a horra dance in parallel fifths for the festive event of the communal laundry...[and] operatic cliches, mostly derived from Puccini..." wrote Jehoash Hirshberg, a historian of Israeli music[8] Together with choreographer Gertrud Kraus, Lavry developed the art of dance and Israel ballet.