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

Session Submission Type: Lightning Session

Abstract

Conventional overviews of Jewish music history either neglect to consider the early modern period or treat it inattentively. We can attribute this situation to the relative scarcity of sources compared to other periods or those of co-territorial cultures and to the persistent notational focus of Western musicology. Thus, the study of Jewish musics ca. 1500-1800 has been fuelled only in the last decades for reasons such as 1) the reconsideration of the early modern period as formative in Jewish history; 2) the shift of focus from a ‘high culture’ perspective to the history of everyday life and gender studies, including the vernaculars; 3 the rediscovery of material concerning the music of Western Sephardic and Italian Jewish communities; 4) the recent reconstruction of Jewish song culture and performance practice; 5) the re-examination of Christian sources on Jewish music, and 6) the analysis of processes of Jewish musical professionalization.
In Western musical history, the Renaissance and Baroque serve as the traditional markers standing for the ‘early modern’ in historical periodization. However, the flux of musical practices defies clear-cut dates, especially in the spheres and local chronologies of Jewish musicking. Various manifestations of Jewish music elude Western formal categories altogether, among them the greater proportion of synagogue music, semi-liturgical song, and traditions that would eventually evolve into klezmer. Thus, this lightning session invites scholars to frame the various Jewish musics in Europe as part of the ‘musical cultures in the early modern period’ and study cultural interdependence and porosity and processes of articulation between the “sacred and profane” and religious and popular.
This panel will map the territory that is the study of early modern Jewish musics to date. As such, this Lightning Session proposes to broaden the field of Jewish Music Studies by advancing approaches that bridge the gulf between historic musicology and ethnomusicology, performance practice, and Jewish Studies. Discussants will interrogate the current state of research, major current research questions and trends as well as performer’s approaches to the re-staging and re-discovery of Jewish musics between 1500 and 1800.

Sub Unit

• Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History, Literature, and Culture

Individual Presentations

• Surveying the Sephardic Musical ‘Baroque’ in the Amsterdam Esnoga - Paul Feller, Northwestern University

• Early Modern Jewish Choral Liturgical Music: A Practice in Formation - Mark Kligman, University of California, Los Angeles

• Jewish Hammered Dulcimer Players in Jewish and non-Jewish Contexts in the Eighteenth Century - Nadav Ovadia

• Mapping Early Modern Jewish Music Studies: Yiddish Song Cultures - Diana Matut, Old Synagogue Essen

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 06