Alberto Hemsi

Composer Alberto Hemsi carried out ethnomusicological research on Sephardic Jewish music and created modern compositions based on Sephardic melodies. He is sometimes considered a Jewish counterpart to Béla Bartók, who integrated Eastern European folk music into a modern idiom. Hemsi began to notate the music he had collected and to write harmonizations for the tunes, although in many cases, this was difficult because the material did not follow the Western tonal system. These harmonizations he collected in ten volumes of pieces he called Coplas Sefardies. He also wrote choral music, chamber music, and orchestral music, drawing on traditional and Jewish liturgical music.