The Composer Matti Caspi's Harmonic Language: A Study of the Song "Mishehu"

Abstract

The composer Matti Caspi's harmonic language is the richest in musical resources to have emerged since the revival of Hebrew Song. During the twenty years of particularly intensive creativity (1970-1990), his "creative apparatus" had no need for a process of development: it was flawless from the very beginning. Early songs such as Shirsheli veshela or Ani met, still from the period of "Shlishiat Io ichpat lahem" (a trio from his army service days) are already clad in that immediately recognizable "Matti" language. As a child he devoted himself to the study of the guitar (his favorite instrument) and the piano, and since then he has been exposed, in a completely natural, undirected manner, to all kinds of music — there was no way he could avoid listening to whatever was playing on the radio, the television, on a record or in a concert. This total internalization of all kinds of music by a son of Kibbutz Hanita shot him up to any musical heights to which he aspired and later caused him to venture on a compositional journey of renewal of his own.