Secunda, Sholom

As a small child in the Ukraine, Secunda was known as a "boy cantor". He came to America in 1907 and immediately began singing in public. In 1914, he entered the Institute of Musical Art (later renamed the Juilliard School) and his extensive classical training included private lessons with composer Ernest Bloch. To support himself while a young student, he worked as an extra in the Yiddish theater.

While Secunda's first love was classical music, his livelihood came from his Yiddish theater compositions. For the 1916-17 season, he was engaged as resident composer and conductor for Brooklyn's Lyric Theater. In 1932, Secunda wrote the music for M'ken Lebn nor m'lazt nit (I would if I could) starring Aaron Lebedev and Lucy Levine. Included in the score was the song "Bei Mir Bist Du Sheyn" which when sung by the Andrew Sisters a few years later became the most popular worldwide hit of 1939.

From 1937 into the early 40's, Secunda was the composer for Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theater writing music for The Brother's Ashkenazi which toured North America and Europe. In 1940, Secunda composed the score for the popular musical Esterke which included "Dona, Dona, Dona" a song that was to resurface 25 years later as an international hit recorded by Joan Baez and others.

In the 1940s, he began working in radio, and from 1946 he was the music critic of the Jewish Daily Forward. In 1951, he wrote music for the Broadway review, Bagels and Lox. From 1945 to 1973, he was the music director of the Concord Hotel, where stars of the Yiddish theater (and many of the great stars of Broadway, Vaudeville, television, and movies) regularly appeared. At the Concord he also composed large amounts of Jewish liturgical music and regularly conducted performances of classical music with well-known classical musicians and opera singers.

Other Secunda compositions include America (1915); Honor Thy Father, (1923); Dos Yidishe Lid (1923); Faith Alone (1937); Dream of Me (1938); and the music for The Kosher Widow starring Molly Picon. His last musical score was for the 1973 production of Sholom Aleichem's Shver tsu Zayn a Yid. This show, starring Joseph Buloff and Miriam Kressyn is considered the last great production of the Yiddish stage.

His wife Betty Almer, the daughter of a Yiddish actress, was a dancer on the Yiddish stage before her marriage to Secunda in 1927. They met during rehearsals for Secunda's musical Margarita. They had two sons: Eugene and Sheldon.

Written by Ben Torpey, 1998

From the guide to the Sholom Secunda Papers, ca. 1926-1971, (© 2009 Fales Library and Special Collections)