The Basques are a distinct ethnic group with a unique language. I don’t know what their religion would be, but it would not be Jewish. Salzedo’s family were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who moved to southern France to escape the Inquisition. The families are Salzedo and Silva, both distinguished names with long histories. While he had a mystical identification with the number five, the origin is unknown to me. He certainly may have adopted Basque culture quite naturally from his nanny. Losing his mother so young had to have had quite an impact on his life. I think that using the 5/4 meter, however natural to him, was another way to be a distinctive, modern composer, as no other composer used it so frequently or so well. Salzedo is the only composer I have seen whose 5/4 cannot be divided into groups of 2 and 3. It is whole, like the prime number it is.
How extraordinary it is to be so close in life to a composer as to have first-hand information on how to play his music. Imagine how pianists hunger to have that on Chopin. I would like to know which European harpists have a sufficient background, aside from those who trained extensively here. For some reason, few Salzedo-trained harpists ever lived in Europe, except for the years Alice Giles spent in Germany, and two students of Lucile Lawrence I know of who live there.
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