What Is Jewish Music?




Jewish music could be studied from many diversified points of view. Among them historical, liturgical and non-liturgical music from the Hebrews dating in the pre-Biblical times (Pharaonic Egypt); religious music on the first and second Solomon's Temples; musical activities immediately following the Exodus; the seemingly impoverished religious musical activities during the early middle ages; the emergence with the idea of Jewish Music inside the mid-19th century; its nation-oriented sense as coined from the landmark book Jewish Music in their Historical Development (1929) by A. Z. Idelsohn (1882-1938) last but not least because the art and popular music of Israel. online jewish music



Early emergences of Jewish musical themes and also what might be called "the notion of being Jew" in European music could be first noticed in the whole shebang of Salamone Rossi (1570-1630). Beyond this concept they seem somewhat shaded in the works of the grandson with the well known Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn(1729-1786): Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847).
online jewish music


Fromental Halevy's (1799-1862) opera La Juive and its particular occasional usage of some Jewish themes is in opposition to the lack of "anything Jew" in the almost contemporary fellow composer Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) who was actually Jew and spent my youth in straight Jewish tradition.



Interestingly the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Music led by the composer-critic Joel Engel (1868-1927) reports how they found their Jewish roots. These folks were inspired by the Nationalistic movement inside the Russian Music personified by Rimsky-Korsakov, Cesar Cui among others, and records how set out to the Shtetls and meticulously recorded and transcribed 1000s of Yiddish folksongs.



Ernst Bloch's (1880-1959) Schelomo for cello and orchestra and specially the Sacred Service for orchestra, choir and soloists are efforts to produce a "Jewish Requiem".



Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968)'s Sephardic upbringings as well as their influences on his music as they come in his Second Violin Concerto as well as in a lot of his songs and choral works; cantatas Naomi and Ruth, Queen of Shiba and in the oratorio The Book of Jonah among others are worth noting too.



Many scholars failed to missed the Synagogue motives and melodies borrowed by George Gershwin in his Porgy and Bess. Gershwin biographer Edward Jablonski has claimed how the melody to "It Ain't Necessarily So" was taken from the Haftarah blessing among others have attributed it towards the Torah blessing.



In Gershwin's some 800 songs, allusions to Jewish music have been detected by other observers too. One musicologist detected "an uncanny resemblance" between your folk tune "Havenu Shalom Aleichem" and the spiritual "It Take a Long Pull to acquire There".



Most notcied contemporary Israeli composers are Chaya Czernowin, Betty Olivera, Tsippi Fleisher, Mark Kopytman, Yitzhak Yedid.



There are also essential operates by non-Jew composers inside the Jewish music. Maurice Ravel together with his Kaddish for violin and piano with different traditional liturgical melody and Max Bruch's famous arrangement of the Yom Kippur prayer Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra are probably the most commonly known.



Sergei Prokofieff's Overture sur des Themes Juives for string quartet, piano and clarinet clearly displays its inspirational sources in non-religious Jewish music. The melodic, modal, rhythmical materials as well as the use of the clarinet being a leading melodic instrument is a very typical sound in folk and non-religious Jewish music.



Dmitri Shostakovich was deeply affected by Jewish music too. This can be observed in many of his compositions, particularly inside the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, as well as in the next Piano Trio. However his most eminent contribution towards the Jewish culture is undoubtedly the 13th. Symphony "Babi Yar".



The number of Jewish Musics?



The world-wide dispersion of the Jews following a Exodus and its particular three main communities create the basic kayout with the world-wide Jewish music. Those communities in their geographical dispersion covering all continents and their unique relations with local communities have given birth to various kinds of music along with languages and customs.



Following the exile, in accordance with geographical settlements, Jews formed three main branches: Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi.



Roughly they may be located the subsequent: Ashkenazi in Eastern and The european union, the Balkans, (to some lesser extend) in Turkey and Greece; Sephardi in Spain, Maroc, North Africa and then in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey); Mizrahi in Lebanon, Syria, East Asia, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt.



The music activity of those communities naturally entered into connection with local traditions and evolved accordingly.



Ashkenazi as well as the Klezmer



"Ashkenazi" refers to Jews who within the 9.th century began to decide on the banks from the Rhine.

Today the word "Ashkenazi" designate the majority of the European and Western Jews.



Besides the Hebrew, Yiddish is commonly utilized in speech and songs.



The original Ashkenazi music, started in Eastern Europe, moved to all directions from there and created the main branch of Jewish Music in America. It includes the famous Klezmer music. Klezmer means "instruments of song", in the Hebrew word klei zemer. The phrase arrive at designate the musician himself which is somehow analogous towards the European troubadour.



Klezmer is definitely a popular genre which can be noticed in Hasidic and Ashkenazic Judaism, it really is however deeply connected with the Ashkenazi tradition.



Across the 15th century, a tradition of secular Jewish music was developed by musicians called kleyzmorim or kleyzmerim. They draw on devotional traditions extending into Biblical times, and their musical legacy of klezmer is constantly on the evolve today. The repertoire is essentially dance songs for weddings along with other celebrations. As a result of Ashkenazi lineage of this music, the lyrics, terminology and song titles happen to be in Yiddish.



Originally naming the musicians themselves in mid-20th Century the term started to identify a musical genre, it is also sometimes called "Yiddish" music.



Sephardi



"Sephardi" literally means Spanish, and designate Jews from mainly Spain but also North Africa, Greece and Egypt.



Following the expulsion of non-Christians, forced to become Christianism or the exile in 1492, ab muscles rich, cultivated and fruitful Jewish culture existing vacation has migrated massively in to the Ottoman Empire formed the key brach of Jews living currently in Turkey.



Their language besides the Hebrew is called Ladino. Ladino is really a 15th. century of Spanish. A lot of their musical repertoire is at that language. The Sephardi music mixes many components from traditional Arab, North African, Turkish idioms.



In medieval Spain, "canciones" being performed on the royal courts constitued the cornerstone with the Sephardic music.



Spiritual, ceremonial and entertainment songs all coexists in Sephardic music. Lyrics are generally Hebrew for religious songs and Ladino for other people.



The genre in the spread to North Africa, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and Egypt assimilated many musical elements. Including the North African high-pitched, extended ululations; Balkan rhythms, for example in 9/8 time; and the Turkish maqam modes.



Woman voice is frequently preferred while the instruments included the "oud" and "qanun" which are not traditionally Jewish instruments.



Some popular Sephardic music continues to be released as commercial recordings in early Last century. Among the first popular singers with the genre were men and included the Turks Jack Mayesh, Haim Efendi and Yitzhak Algazi. Later, a brand new generation of singers arose, a lot of whom weren't themselves Sephardic. Gloria Levy, Pasharos Sefardíes and Flory Jagoda.



Mizrahi



"Mizrahi" means Eastern and identifies Jews of Eastern Mediterranean and additional towards the East.



The music also mixes local traditions. Really a very "eastern flavored" musical tradition which encompasses Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq so when east as India.



Middle Eastern percussion instruments share an essential part using the violin in typical Mizrahi songs. The music is usually high pitched generally.



In Israel today Mizrahi music is quite popular.



A "Muzika Mizrahit" movement emerged inside the 1950s. Mostly with with performers in the ethnic neighborhoods of Israel: the Yemenite "Kerem HaTemanim" neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Moroccan, Iranian and Iraqi immigrants - who played at weddings and other events.



Songs were performed in Hebrew though an obvious Arabic style on traditional Arabic instruments: the "Oud", the "Kanun", as well as the "darbuka".



Classic Hebrew literature, including liturgical texts and poems by medieval Hebrew poets constitued the key supply of lyrics.



Music in Jewish Liturgy



There is a wide assortment of, sometimes conflicting, writings on every aspect of using music in the Judaic liturgy. The most agreed-upon truth is how the women voice ought to be excluded from religious ceremony and the usage of instruments should be banned in Synagogue service.



However, some Rabbinical authorities soften those straight positions but not about the exclusion of the female voice. In weddings, for example, the Talmudic statement "to gladden groom and bride with music" can be seen in an effort to allow making instrumental and non-religious music in the weddings however, this was probably to become done outside the Synagogue.



The influential writings from the Spanish Rabbi, additionally a physician and philosopher, Maimonides (1135-1204) similarly opposed harshly against all type of music not totally on the service of non secular worship and on another hand recommended instrumental music for the healing powers.



Healing powers and mysterious formul hidden inside musical scores was commonly sought after in music scores during middle-ages, renaissance and pre-Baroque epochs. Interestingly, inside a recently published fiction novel "Imprimatur" by the musicologist Rita Monaldi and co-author Francesco Solti the whole plot is built-up around a composition of Salomone Rossi (1570-1630), an essential Jewish composer.



Jewish mystical treatises, just like the Kabbala, particularly considering that the 13th. century often deal with ethical, magical and therapeutic powers of music. The enhancement from the religious exposure to music, particularly with singing is expressed in lots of places.



Despite the fact that there is no unified position concerning music in the Jewish thought a standard main ideas appears to emerge: that the music may be the authentic expression of human feelings in religious and secular life.








Jewish music could be studied from many diversified viewpoints. Included in this historical, liturgical and non-liturgical music of the Hebrews dating from your pre-Biblical times (Pharaonic Egypt); religious music in the first and second Solomon's Temples; musical activities rigtht after the Exodus; the seemingly impoverished religious musical activities noisy . dark ages; the emergence of the idea of Jewish Music in the mid-19th century; its nation-oriented sense as coined from the landmark book Jewish Music in their Historical Development (1929) with a. Z. Idelsohn (1882-1938) and finally because the art and popular music of Israel.



Early emergences of Jewish musical themes as well as what could be called "the idea of being Jew" in European music could be first noticed in the works of Salamone Rossi (1570-1630). After that they are somewhat shaded within the works of the grandson of the popular Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn(1729-1786): Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847).



Fromental Halevy's (1799-1862) opera La Juive and its occasional utilization of some Jewish themes is in opposition to the lack of "anything Jew" as part of his almost contemporary fellow composer Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) who was simply actually Jew and was raised in straight Jewish tradition.



Interestingly the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Music led by the composer-critic Joel Engel (1868-1927) reports how they found their Jewish roots. These were inspired by the Nationalistic movement in the Russian Music personified by Rimsky-Korsakov, Cesar Cui and others, and records how attempt to the Shtetls and meticulously recorded and transcribed thousands of Yiddish folksongs.



Ernst Bloch's (1880-1959) Schelomo for cello and orchestra and in particular the Sacred Service for orchestra, choir and soloists are attempts to produce a "Jewish Requiem".



Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968)'s Sephardic upbringings in addition to their influences on his music because they appear in his Second Violin Concerto and in a lot of his songs and choral works; cantatas Naomi and Ruth, Queen of Shiba plus the oratorio The ebook of Jonah among others can be worth noting too.



Many scholars did not missed the Synagogue motives and melodies borrowed by George Gershwin in the Porgy and Bess. Gershwin biographer Edward Jablonski has claimed that the melody to "It Ain't Necessarily So" was obtained from the Haftarah blessing and others have attributed it towards the Torah blessing.



In Gershwin's some 800 songs, allusions to Jewish music are already detected by other observers also. One musicologist detected "an uncanny resemblance" between your folk tune "Havenu Shalom Aleichem" and also the spiritual "It Have a Long Pull to Get There".



Most notcied contemporary Israeli composers are Chaya Czernowin, Betty Olivera, Tsippi Fleisher, Mark Kopytman, Yitzhak Yedid.



There's also essential operates by non-Jew composers in the Jewish music. Maurice Ravel together with his Kaddish for violin and piano with different traditional liturgical melody and Max Bruch's famous arrangement of the Yom Kippur prayer Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra are among the most commonly known.



Sergei Prokofieff's Overture sur des Themes Juives for string quartet, piano and clarinet clearly displays its inspirational sources in non-religious Jewish music. The melodic, modal, rhythmical materials and also the use of the clarinet being a leading melodic instrument is an extremely typical sound in folk and non-religious Jewish music.



Dmitri Shostakovich was deeply relying on Jewish music also. This could be seen in lots of his compositions, especially in the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, and in the Second Piano Trio. However his most outstanding contribution to the Jewish culture is without doubt the 13th. Symphony "Babi Yar".



The amount of Jewish Musics?



The world-wide dispersion of the Jews following the Exodus and its three main communities make the basic kayout with the world-wide Jewish music. Those communities within their geographical dispersion covering all continents and their unique relations with local communities have provided birth to varied forms of music in addition to languages and customs.



Following a exile, in accordance with geographical settlements, Jews formed three main branches: Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi.



Roughly they're located the following: Ashkenazi in Eastern and Western Europe, the Balkans, (with a lesser extend) in Turkey and Greece; Sephardi in Spain, Maroc, North Africa and later on in the Ottoman Empire (Turkey); Mizrahi in Lebanon, Syria, East Asia, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt.



The music activity of the communities naturally entered into connection with local traditions and evolved accordingly.



Ashkenazi as well as the Klezmer



"Ashkenazi" refers to Jews who in the 9.th century begun to decide on banks of the Rhine.

Today the word "Ashkenazi" designate a lot of the European and Western Jews.



Aside from the Hebrew, Yiddish is usually used in speech and songs.



The traditional Ashkenazi music, originated from Eastern Europe, gone to live in all directions after that and created the main branch of Jewish Music in North America. It offers the famous Klezmer music. Klezmer means "instruments of song", from your Hebrew word klei zemer. The word arrived at designate the musician himself and it's also somehow analogous for the European troubadour.



Klezmer is definitely a popular genre which may be observed in Hasidic and Ashkenazic Judaism, it's however deeply linked to the Ashkenazi tradition.



Around the 15th century, a convention of secular Jewish music originated by musicians called kleyzmorim or kleyzmerim. They draw on devotional traditions extending back into Biblical times, as well as their musical legacy of klezmer is constantly on the evolve today. The repertoire is basically dance songs for weddings as well as other celebrations. As a result of Ashkenazi lineage of the music, the lyrics, terminology and song titles are typically in Yiddish.



Originally naming the musicians themselves in mid-20th Century the phrase started to identify a musical genre, it's also sometimes known as "Yiddish" music.



Sephardi



"Sephardi" literally means Spanish, and designate Jews from mainly Spain but additionally North Africa, Greece and Egypt.



Following a expulsion of all non-Christians, forced to become Christianism or to the exile in 1492, the rich, cultivated and fruitful Jewish culture existing in Spain has migrated massively to the Ottoman Empire formed the key brach of Jews living currently in Turkey.



Their language in addition to the Hebrew is named Ladino. Ladino is a 15th. century of Spanish. A lot of their musical repertoire is in that language. The Sephardi music mixes many elements from traditional Arab, North African, Turkish idioms.



In medieval Spain, "canciones" being performed on the royal courts constitued the cornerstone from the Sephardic music.



Spiritual, ceremonial and entertainment songs all coexists in Sephardic music. Lyrics are usually Hebrew for religious songs and Ladino for others.



The genre in their spread to North Africa, Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and Egypt assimilated many musical elements. Such as the North African high-pitched, extended ululations; Balkan rhythms, for instance in 9/8 time; and also the Turkish maqam modes.



Woman voice is usually preferred as the instruments included the "oud" and "qanun" which are not traditionally Jewish instruments.



Some popular Sephardic music continues to be released as commercial recordings in the early Last century. The primary popular singers with the genre were men and included the Turks Jack Mayesh, Haim Efendi and Yitzhak Algazi. Later, a new generation of singers arose, a lot of whom weren't themselves Sephardic. Gloria Levy, Pasharos Sefardíes and Flory Jagoda.



Mizrahi



"Mizrahi" means Eastern and describes Jews of Eastern Mediterranean and further to the East.



The music also mixes local traditions. Is a very "eastern flavored" musical tradition which encompasses Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq so that as east as India.



Middle Eastern percussion instruments share an important part using the violin in typical Mizrahi songs. The music activity is generally high pitched generally speaking.



In Israel today Mizrahi music is extremely popular.



A "Muzika Mizrahit" movement emerged within the 1950s. Mostly with with performers in the ethnic neighborhoods of Israel: the Yemenite "Kerem HaTemanim" neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Moroccan, Iranian and Iraqi immigrants - who played at weddings as well as other events.



Songs were performed in Hebrew but with a definite Arabic style on traditional Arabic instruments: the "Oud", the "Kanun", and the "darbuka".



Classic Hebrew literature, including liturgical texts and poems by medieval Hebrew poets constitued the main source of lyrics.



Music in Jewish Liturgy



There's a wide variety of, sometimes conflicting, writings on every aspect of using music in the Judaic liturgy. The most agreed-upon fact is how the women voice ought to be excluded from religious ceremony and the use of musical instruments should be banned in Synagogue service.



However some Rabbinical authorities soften those straight positions but not concerning the exclusion of the female voice. In weddings, for example, the Talmudic statement "to gladden your daughter's groom and bride with music" is seen in an effort to allow making instrumental and non-religious music on the weddings however this was probably to become done outside the Synagogue.



The influential writings of the Spanish Rabbi, also a physician and philosopher, Maimonides (1135-1204) on one hand opposed harshly against all form of music not totally in the service of spiritual worship as well as on another hand recommended instrumental music for its healing powers.



Healing powers and mysterious formul hidden inside musical scores was commonly popular in music scores during middle-ages, renaissance and pre-Baroque epochs. Interestingly, in the recently published fiction novel "Imprimatur" through the musicologist Rita Monaldi and co-author Francesco Solti the whole plot is built-up around a composition of Salomone Rossi (1570-1630), an important Jewish composer.



Jewish mystical treatises, like the Kabbala, particularly considering that the 13th. century often handle ethical, magical and therapeutic powers of music. The enhancement from the religious exposure to music, particularly with singing is expressed in many places.



Even though there's no unified position concerning music in the Jewish thought a standard main ideas appears to emerge: the music may be the authentic expression of human feelings in religious and secular life.