Composer Zaidel-Rudolph tells the story behind the music

For decades Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph has composed music that has been performed in some of the world’s most prestigious concert halls. She helped shape South Africa’s national anthem, represented Africa at a United Nations concert, and balanced an international career with raising a family. Now, she has brought that extraordinary journey together in a memoir. 

Sound Me Out: A Lifetime of Music and Memories traces Zaidel-Rudolph’s life from her childhood as a musical prodigy to becoming one of South Africa’s most celebrated composers. Rather than focusing only on her compositions, the book explores the experiences, relationships, and moments that shaped both her life and her music. 

“I can really look in a rear-view mirror now,” she told the SA Jewish Report. “I’ve lived a very exciting and stimulating and wonderful music life. I couldn’t have wished for anything more inspiring and exhilarating.” 

She says the decision to write the book came from a desire to preserve those memories while they remained vivid. 

“Initially I thought it was mainly for my family and friends, but when I started writing, I realised there was so much that I could communicate to the general community as well as the music community.” 

She was determined that the memoir shouldn’t become a technical account of her career. “I didn’t want the book to be a textbook on music,” she says. “I wanted to record my life, not only in music, but how I managed to combine a very active personal life as a wife, mother, grandmother, and now great-grandmother with a career that took me all over the world.” 

That career included performances and festivals across North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Her compositions have been performed internationally, while her contribution to South African musical life has earned widespread recognition. Yet none of it would have been documented so accurately without an unexpected archivist. 

From the age of five, Zaidel-Rudolph started playing piano at exam and Eisteddfod level. Around the same time her mother started preserving newspaper clippings, concert programmes, examination reports, reviews, and photographs. Those records eventually grew into an archive spanning more than 70 years. 

“I don’t think I could have written the book with the correct dates and venues and places if she hadn’t filed absolutely everything,” says Zaidel-Rudolph. “She kept every newspaper cutting and every review from the time I was a little girl.” 

After her mother’s death in 2010, Zaidel-Rudolph continued adding to the archive herself. It became the foundation of the memoir and allowed her to recreate decades of performances, overseas tours, collaborations, and milestones with remarkable detail. 

Although she initially approached professional biographers to write her story, she eventually realised that no one else could truly capture the emotional journey behind her music. “How could somebody else know my feelings, my interactions with audiences, colleagues, orchestras, and friends? I realised I had to do it myself.” However, she credits her publisher at UJ Press, Wikus van Zyl, as being “an absolute angel” throughout the process. 

Over about 20 months, she typed the entire manuscript, despite never having learned to type formally. “I had to apply my piano fingers to a computer keyboard,” she laughs. 

For Zaidel-Rudolph, writing a memoir ultimately became another act of creation. “The excitement of producing a new work is like giving birth to a child,” she says. “You go through the labour pains of writing, and eventually you have the finished product.” 

In the memoir, she explores how family life shaped her creative voice. She believes becoming a mother transformed her compositions, making them more emotional and instinctive than the cerebral works of her earlier years. “I would be changing a baby’s nappy while musical ideas were racing through my mind.” 

Her identity as a South African Jewish woman also became a defining influence on her work. Zaidel-Rudolph says those different parts of her identity never competed with one another. Instead, they blended naturally in her compositions. 

“Jewishness has always been part of my DNA. A lot of my music has been inspired by Jewish themes.” At the same time, she drew inspiration from the country around her, including African musical traditions. “I love the environment that I live in. 

“The source of my inspiration has always been a combination of African music and Jewish music. In my own psyche, they blend very well together.” She believes that combination has given her music its distinctive voice. “I think the combination of being a white Jewish woman composer has brought a uniqueness to my music.” 

In one of the chapters in the memoir, she revisits one of the best-known times of her career, her role in creating South Africa’s post-apartheid national anthem. 

She recalls receiving a fax from President Nelson Mandela’s office in 1995 inviting her to join a committee tasked with creating a single national anthem for the new democratic South Africa. The committee included linguists, academics, religious leaders, and public figures. Zaidel-Rudolph was the only full-time composer. 

Mandela wanted an anthem that was shorter than the combined versions of Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika and Die Stem van Suid-Afrika, which together were considered too long for public occasions. “The job fell to me,” she says. “I had to cut sections, remove repeats, stitch everything together, and produce a bridge between the two melodies.” 

She recalls discussions about ensuring the anthem was inclusive of South Africans from different faiths. “Being Jewish, I felt we couldn’t really write about the Christian Trinity. The anthem needed to be more neutral while still referring to G-d.” 

Despite the anthem’s prominence, Zaidel-Rudolph says her proudest achievements remain her orchestral compositions. Among them is At the End of the Rainbow, which was selected for a United Nations concert celebrating women composers from around the world. She was the only one representing Africa. 

“That was pretty much a highlight. It was performed in New York, and I had to wake up at 03:00 to hear it because of the time difference.” She also remembers hearing her piano concerto, Pendulum, performed by the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra as another unforgettable moment. 

• Sound Me Out: A Lifetime of Music and Memories will be launched at the University of Johannesburg on 13 August. Journalist Gillian Anstey and composer Professor Hendrik Hofmeyr will interview Zaidel-Rudolph at the event.