Sholom Secunda (4 September [O.S. 23 August] 1894, Oleksandriia, Kherson Governorate – 13 June[1] 1974, New York) was a Jewish composer.
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He was born in 1894 as Shloyme Sekunda in Kherson Gubernia,[2] part of the Russian Empire which later would become Ukraine, in the city of Alexandria, which had a population of over 10,000. In 1897 his father moved the family to Nikolaev, where he opened an iron bed factory.
At age 12 Shloyme played Abraham/Avrom in Abraham Goldfaden's Akeydes Yitskhok (The Sacrifice of Isaac) and Markus in The Kishef-Makherin (The Sorceress).
Later, like numerous other Jews of the Russian Empire (see History of the Jews in Russia), with his family he emigrated to United States in 1907 after series of pogroms that rocked the region in 1905. In January 1908 the family emigrated to New York as steerage passengers on board the S.S. Carmania and were inspected and briefly detained on Ellis Island. In New York City (they first lived on East 127th Street where his father had settled before sending for his wife and children), young Shlomo became a noted child khazn. When his voice changed he studied music and taught piano, then working in comedy theater in the chorus until his song "Amerike" was accepted by Jennie Goldstein, who sang it with great success in Kornblum's Undzere kinder (Our Children) In 1913 he worked at the Odeon Theater as chorist and composer; 1914 saw the premier of "Yoysher, music by Sholom Secunda and Solmon Shmulevitsh." He began working in "Lyric theater" as choir director, then as director and orchestrator of the old "historic" operetta repertoire; he studied orchestration for a year under Ernest Bloch.
In 1919-1920 he earned his first solo composer's credits with S. H. Kon's The Rabbi's Daughter and Free Slaves. He worked in Philadelphia's Metropolitan Opera House with director Boris Thomashevsky; in 1921-22 he was director and composer at Clara Young's Liberty Theater. He composed for Di Yidishe Shikse by Anshl Shor (1927) A nakht fun libe (A Night of Love) by Israel Rosenberg. An exhaustive list of his many works can be found in the Leksikon fun Yidishn Teater.
He wrote the melody for the popular song Bay mir bistu sheyn "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" in 1932. Together with Aaron Zeitlin he wrote the famous Yiddish song "Dos kelbl (The Calf)" (also known as "Donna Donna") which was covered by many musicians, including Donovan and Joan Baez.
Along with Abraham Ellstein, Joseph Rumshinsky, and Alexander Olshanetsky, he was one of the "big four" composers of his era in New York City's Second Avenue Yiddish theatre scene. [3]