The Sephardic Community of Spain

The Sephardic Jewish community was expelled from Spain in 1492 and, after a brief time in Portugal, many settled in Amsterdam.

Salzedo’s Grandparents

Leonard Salzedo’s grandparents, Jacob Lopes Salzedo and Angela Mendes da Costa, emigrated from Amsterdam to London in the 1850s, drawn to the richest city in the world. Jacob was a cigar maker and later a kosher butcher.

Leonard’s father Samuel was their second child and first son. He was 49 when Leonard, his only child, was born.

Leonard’s String Quartet no 7 was written in memory of his father and illustrated an unresolved inner tension in Samuel.

Leonard writing about his father Samuel

‘After my father died in 1957, I had the idea that I would like to write a work in his memory; this in spite of the fact that he did not like my music and said so in public (that story will follow in another post).

A String Quartet seemed the most appropriate combination as my father was an enthusiastic amateur musician and played the violin, viola and cello himself. He was born in Whitechapel in 1872 of Sephardic Jewish parents and was brought up an orthodox Jew. However, at the age of fourteen, he scandalised his family by announcing that he thought religion was ‘superstitious nonsense’ and that from then on he would be an atheist.

But despite his very materialist outlook on life, he could never cut himself off from his Jewish background and later in life would sometimes go to synagogue on holy days especially on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). It is this deep inner conflict between intellect and religious faith that I have tried to represent in this quartet.

The third movement uses a tune which was included in a book of Sephardic melodies published in London in 1931 by the Sephardic Synagogue Bevis Marks. It was one of my father’s favourites and is heard on the cello with the exaggerated expression which he used when playing it.’

Buy String Quartet no 7 here