Michtam L'David: A Reformed Klezmer from the Sixteenth Century

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

Abstract

Both Jewish Musicology and Jewish Studies over the last century have largely ignored cantors or cast the early modern period as a period of decadence in the Ashkenazic synagogue. This has obscured the complex and multifarious growth of Ashkenazi cantorial musicality in this period, including new experimentation with Western notation and theory. Yet despite this incipient experimentation with notation, cantors also acted as transformational social agents by absorbing and re-purposing the oral culture of the European street, including from beggars, carolers, church processions, and taverns. This paper will explore the state of research on the musical professionalism of early modern Ashkenazic cantors, inviting new directions for research in the social and musicological contours of its emergence.

Author

• Matthew Austerklein, Halle-Wittenberg University