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