Charles Davidson Obituary, Death – Highly regarded composer Charles Davidson (1929–2023) was well-known across the country for the numerous contracts he received from synagogues, Jewish organizations, cantors, and secular choruses. He received his doctorate in sacred music from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he was among the first graduates of the Cantors Institute (now the H. L. Miller Cantorial School). Since 1977, he has held the position of Nathan Cummings Professor on the faculty.
In addition, he studied under Howard Hanson at the Eastman School of Music and received a degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Davidson began his career as a conductor and music director for a number of groups, such as the Pittsburgh Contemporary Dance Association, the Hadassah Choral Society, and the University of Pittsburgh’s International Zionist Federation Association Orchestra. He studied at the Brandeis Arts Institute in Santa Susana, California, prior to attending the seminary.
Under the direction of conductor and composer Max Helfman, this exceptional program brought together the skills of seasoned Jewish artists and college students, creating a vibrant and inventive environment for modern Jewish artistic expression and offering a rich and stimulating platform for Jewish arts. Davidson studied with well-known resident artists including Julius Chajes, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Erich Zeisl, and Heinrich Schalit, along with other future notable composers like Yehudi Wyner and Jack Gottlieb.
A moving musical adaptation of children’s poems from the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” is one of Davidson’s most well-known compositions. Over 4,500 performances of this work, which is notable for its horrific tale of barely 100 survivors out of the 15,000 children imprisoned, have won praise from audiences all over the world. It has been included in many commercial records and is the topic of the two PBS documentaries,
“The Journey of Butterfly” and “Butterfly Revisited,” which have won awards. A unique performance was held at Terezin in 1991 to mark the camp’s founding’s 50th anniversary. Václav Havel, the newly elected president of the Czech Republic, presided over this gathering of Holocaust survivors, which was followed by concerts at the Jesuit Church in Brno and Smetana Hall in Prague.
