Keith Bizeray wrote:

>...  Could it be that a composer might then have a sympathetic feel for a
>particular idiom, coming him(her)self from that cultural strain, whereas it
>is eminently possible to come from another strain or tradition, and despite
>being told that this is "your" folk music, find that it seems alien to you.
>I give up...  I really don't know the answer, but it's interesting to
>speculate none the less.

So, is the tune to which the text of Naftali Hertz Imber's poem Hatikvah
was set, and which is now the Israeli national song, itself a Bohemian folk
song or is it derived from one which also had as its progeny Smetana's
Moldau? Or are their similarities purely coincidental?

Walter Meyer