In Search of Ness-ness—Between Neutrality and Caricature in Jewish Film Music, Talk by Michael Beckerman at Sonic Representations of Jewishness on Screen and Off at UCLA, April 19-21, 2026.

Does the “ness” in Jewishness mean we understand what is meant by what comes before it, or does it imply that we don’t? Is film music…by a Jewish composer, with a Jewish subject, using audibly Jewish sonic materials…more Jewish than music with only one of these attributes? And if I pick (as a contrast) the least Jewish moment in a film score as part of my talk, have I somehow rendered it “Jewish” by presenting it in this context? This talk asks these questions in the context of several clips by such figures as Hugo Haas, Jerome Moross, and John Williams.

Michael Beckerman is Dean of The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is the author of eight books and more than 150 scholarly articles ranging from Brahms and Beethoven to often-overlooked topics from the “edges” of Europe, including exiled composers, the music of the Roma (Gypsies) filtered through the imagination of the German baroque, and the musical recordings that Roald Amundsen took with him to the South Pole. His current book project, The Doctrine of One, deals with how responses to sound can be deeply personal and even unique to the individual listener. Michael Beckerman is also known for his work on the music and lives of Czech composers Antonín Dvořák, Leos Janáček and Bohuslav Martinů and has earned many honors, among them the Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP, the Janáček Medal of the Czech Ministry of Culture, the Medal of the Dvořák Society, a Special Citation from the Czech Parliament, the Harrison Medal from the Society for Musicology in Ireland, as well as honorary doctorates from Palacký and Masaryk Universities in the Czech Republic.