Mapping Early Modern Jewish Music Studies: Yiddish Song Cultures

• In Event: The Study of Early-Modern Jewish Musics: Mapping the Field (I)

Abstract

The textual transmissions of early-modern Yiddish songs are part and parcel of the scholarship on Early Yiddish literature since the late 19th century. Their social, religious, and historical functions, melodies, and performance practices, however, only became an intensive focus of scholarly research and performance studies in the last decades. This relatively young research field has been taken up by musicians of Early (Jewish) Music and their diverse approaches to historically informed performance practices. Thus, early-modern Yiddish songs have been brought back to life in recent years and are now entering a wider canon of stage-performances but re-enter the sphere of Jewish religious and social life occasionally as well.

This lightening paper will present the history of research and the current state of musical performance of Old Yiddish songs, thus "mapping the field."

Author

• Diana Matut, Old Synagogue Essen