BROD, Max [1884-1968]: Autographmusic manuscript "Sar hamemune" (After a melody from Yemen-Teman) Op. 31a with name in title. No place and date, [before 1947]. Folio 35 x 25 cm. 3,5 pages on double leaf with 12 staves. Somewhat dusted, crease, small water stain at lower margin. Signs of use.

Absolute rarity: the writer and executor of Franz Kafka's estate as a composer. Max Brod had studied musicology, composition and piano in addition to law and was an excellent pianist. Brod's musical output includes 38 opus numbers. He mainly created chamber music works, including 14 song cycles. From the 40's his songs showed the influences of contemporary music and, as in the present manuscript, the influences of Israeli folklore. The present work falls into the second, "Palestinian" creative period, in which Brod was in search of a "Mediterranean style." The manuscript of Max Brod's Yemenite Song, published by Merkaz le Tarbut in Tel Aviv in 1947, comprises 65 measures in a three-line system for voice and piano with underlying text and is part of a 2-part song cycle. Some annotations in pencil and crayon may not have been made by Brod. Brod wrote his arrangement of "Sar hamemune" (Crowned Prince) at the suggestion of and for the Israeli singer Bracha Zefira, whose father was from Yemen. - Cf. Y. Shaked, "In his own right. On Max Brod and Music. In: IMI News 91/1, pp. 1-4; cf. MGG², vol. 3, 965; cf. Deutsches Literaturlexikon. Das 20. Jahrhundert, IV, 301.