The Jewish Music Forum
Complete Listing of Sessions (2005-12)
FIRST SEASON, SPRING 2005
January 28, 2005 – Inaugural Lecture
“Memory and History in Jewish Music”
Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music at Harvard University
February 11, 2005
“Studying Jewish Music in Israel: Achievements, Failures and Challenges for the Future”
Edwin Seroussi, Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Respondent: Stephen Blum, City University of New York
March 11, 2005
“Who Will Reclaim the Golden Sounds?: Judaism, Tradition, and Music Scholarship in an American Context”
Judah M. Cohen, New York University
Respondent: Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
April 8, 2005
“Beyond Yiddishland: New Studies from the Jewish Musical Mediterranean”
Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Respondent: Professor Uri Sharvit, Bar-Ilan University
May 13, 2005
“Between Wissenschaft and Etnografiia: The Search for a Jewish Musical Science in Eurasia, Past and Present”
James Loeffler, Columbia University
Respondent: Dr. Lyudmila Sholokhova, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
SECOND SEASON, 2005-2006
Friday, September 23, 2005
“The Philadelphia Russian Sher Medley: Viewing the Immigrant Experience through a Musical Text”
Hankus Netsky, New England Conservatory of Music
Respondent: Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Friday, November 4, 2005
“Between Church and Synagogue: The Organ in German- Jewish Culture”
Tina Frühauf,CUNY Graduate Center
Respondent: Dr. Philip Bohlman, University of Chicago
Friday, November 18, 2005
“The Sephardic Voice in Ottoman Song: The Life and Art of Tanburi Isak Fresco (1745-1814)”
Walter Zev Feldman, Bar-Ilan University
Respondent: Karl Signell, Editor, Ethnomusicology Online
Friday, December 2, 2005
“From Rossi to Rossini: Shifting Paradigms in Italian Jewish Musical Culture”
Francesco Spagnolo,Hebrew University/U.C.-Santa Cruz
Co-sponsored by the Centro Culturale Primo Levi as part of the
symposium “Humanism and the Rabbinic Tradition in Italy and Beyond”
Respondent: David Ruderman, University of Pennsylvania
Friday, January 20, 2006
“The Tradition Continues on the Lower East Side: Experimental Music and the American-Jewish Imaginary in 1990s New York City”
Tamar Barzel,Wellesley College
Respondent: Jonathan Freedman, University of Michigan
Friday, February 10, 2006
“Finding the Rhythm: Dance and Music in Jewish Studies”
Nina Spiegel, National Museum of American Jewish History
Respondent: Judah M. Cohen, New York University
Friday, March 17, 2006
“Assimilating (Post-Modern) Jewish Music: Ambivalence in Contemporary Composition”
David Schiller, University of Georgia
Respondent: Klara Moricz, Amherst College
Friday, March 31, 2006
“Energizing Jewish Musical Memory: Encounters with Sound and Text in Archives and Libraries”
Judith Pinnolis, Brandeis University
Respondents: Bret Werb, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Gina Genova, New York University / Milken Archive of American Jewish Music
Friday, April 28, 2006
“‘I am a Jew from eternal nowhere’: Yiddish song in the aftermath of the Holocaust”
Shirli Gilbert, University of Michigan
Respondent: Jeremy Dauber, Columbia University
Friday, May 12, 2006
“The Migration of Memory: New Contexts for Mizrahi and Bukharian Musical Poetic Traditions in Israel and the United States”
Evan Rapport,City University of New York and Galeet Dardashti, University of Texas at Austin
Respondent: Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute, New York
THIRD SEASON, 2006 – 2007
September 15, 2006
“How Do You Play the Musical Scream in Gideon Klein's Terezin Requiem?”
Michael Beckerman, New York University
Respondent: Gershon Kingsley, composer and conductor
October 20, 2006
“Music and Memory among Crypto-Jews in Portuguese Border Villages”
Judith Cohen, York University, Toronto
Respondent: Jane Gerber, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-sponsor: American Sephardi Federation
November 10, 2006
“Composing Herself: Finding Miriam Gideon in Her 1958 Opera Fortunato”
Lecture, Performance and Panel Discussion
Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, CUNY Graduate Center
Panel discussion: Ellie Hisama, Columbia University,
Bruce Saylor, CUNY Graduate Center, and Cantor Charles Osborne
December 8, 2006
“Mediterranean Israeli Music: The Politics of Aesthetics”
Amy Horowitz, Ohio State University
Respondent: Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, New York University
Co-sponsor: American Sephardi Federation
February 16, 2007
“Sephardic Music On Record: A Century of Commercial Ladino Recordings”
Edwin Seroussi, Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Joel Bresler, discographer
Respondent: Dr. Virginia Danielson, Harvard University
Co-sponsor: American Sephardi Federation
March 9, 2007
“The Media and the Messenger: Transforming the Cantor's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University
Respondents: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University, and
Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Co-sponsor: Working Group on Jews/Media/Religion at the Center for Religion and Media, New York University
April 27, 2007
“Blacks and Jews in American Popular Music: The Business of Cultural Mediation”
Jonathan Karp, SUNY Binghamton
Respondent: Jonathan Schorsch, Columbia University
May 8, 2007
“Kurt Weill's Kol Nidre: Lecture with Music Performance”
Tamara Levitz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Respondent: Kim Kowalke, Eastman School of Music, Kurt Weill
Foundation.
Co-sponsors: The Weill/Lenya Institute; Milken Archive.
FOURTH SEASON, 2007 – 2008
November 20, 2007
“Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive”
Chana Mlotek, YIVO Music Archivist
Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
with a performance by Zalmen Mlotek and Eleanor Reissa
January 25, 2008
“Felix Mendelssohn and the Jewish Question”
Professor Jeffrey Sposato, University of Houston
Respondent: Professor Michael A. Meyer, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
February 22, 2008
“Creating ‘New’ Jewish Sounds”
Josh Kun, University of Southern California,
Judah M. Cohen, Indiana University
Daniel Saks, member of the bands DeLeon and The LeeVees
FIFTH SEASON, 2008 – 2009
Note: During this season, for the first time, sessions of the Jewish Music Forum were held at sites outside of New York City, in the Northeast, in the mid-West, and on the West Coast.
November 14, 2008
“Beyond the Pale: The Russian Jewish Musical Experiment 100 Years Later”
Dr. James Loeffler, University of Virginia
Dr. Klára Móricz, Amherst College
Dr. Lyudmila Sholokhova, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
December 12, 2008
“American Jews, Music and the Memory of the Holocaust: 1945-1962”
Hasia Diner, New York University
Respondent: Cantor Bruce Ruben, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
January 16, 2009
“Ethel Raim and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance: Three Decades of Showcasing Jewish Music”
With Ethel Raim and Dr. Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Co-sponsored by the Working Group on Jews, Media and Religion at New York University
February 26, 2009
“The Jewish Self/The Jewish Other: Performing Identity in the ‘Majufes’"
Halina Goldberg, Indiana University
Held at and co-sponsored by the University of Chicago
April 24, 2009
"’Old Lamps for New:’ Alexander Krein and Jewish Neonationalism”
Dr. Klara Moricz, Amherst College
Respondent: Professor Alexander Rehding, Harvard University
Held at and co-sponsored by Harvard University
May 1, 2009
“The Participating Observer: Fieldwork in Jewish Settings”
Jeffrey A. Summit, Tufts University
Respondent: Henry Goldschmidt, Wesleyan University
Co-sponsored by the Working Group on Jews, Media and Religion at New York University
SIXTH SEASON, 2009 – 2010
Sunday, November 8, 2009
“Pulitzer Prize-winning Composer Steve Reich Talks about his Jewish Music:" A unique interview by fellow Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang
Steve Reich and David Lang
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Is Israeli Art Music Jewish?
Ronit Seter, Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Respondent: Dr. Klára Móricz, Amherst College
Held at and co-sponsored by Hebrew College, Boston
March 5, 2010
“Sacred and Secular Music Texts in Modern Times"
Dr. Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Dr. Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Co-sponsored by the Working Group on the Jewish Book at the Center for Jewish History
Saturday, March 14, 2010
"Back to the Roots: Notions of Jewish Musical Revival"
A panel discussion with Edwin Seroussi, The Hebrew University;
Benjamin Brinner, UC Berkeley; and Judah Cohen, Indiana University, curated and moderated by Francesco Spagnolo, The Magnes, and produced by Eleanor Shapiro, the Jewish Music Festival.
Co-sponsors: 25th Jewish Music Festival; The Magnes; Music Department and Jewish Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Held at the Berkeley-Richmond JCC, Berkeley, CA.
April 2, 2010
“’In a Land Large as an Apple Tree': Wolpe's Avant-Garde Music, Pedagogy, and Pacifist Zionism in 1930's Palestine”
Brigid Cohen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Respondent: Stephen Blum, City University of New York
April 15, 2010
“Imaginaries of Exile and Emergence in Israeli, Jewish and Palestinian Hip-Hop”
David A. McDonald, Indiana University
Respondent: Edwin Seroussi, Jewish Music Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Held at and co-sponsored by Indiana University
SEVENTH SEASON, 2010 – 2011
November 3, 2010
"Chinese Jews: Aspects of their History and their Music"
Alexander Knapp, Joe Loss Lectureship in Jewish Music, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, Emeritus
Respondent: Dr. Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York
November 18, 2010
“Reimagining Tradition or Preserving Its Legacy: Yiddish Songs in Hasidic Communities and in Contemporary Eastern Europe"
Asya Vaisman, Visiting Research Scholar in Jewish Studies at Indiana University
Respondent: Dr. Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York
Co-sponsored by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
February 16, 2011
“Robert Lachman's ‘Oriental Music Archive’ and Broadcasting Project in Mandatory Palestine”
Ruth Davis, University of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
Respondent: Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
March 24th, 2011
“The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire”
James Loeffler, University of Virginia at Charlottesville
Lecture with Performance by YIVO’s Sidney Krum Young Artists
Co-sponsored the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research
EIGHTH SEASON, 2011-12
One- Day Conference
German Jewish Aspirations in Music and Culture in 19th and 20th Century Germany
Monday November 14, 2011
The Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library, 415 South Street, Waltham, MA
Brandeis University
PROGRAM
8:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.—Breakfast Snacks
9:00-9:15—Welcome
Michael Leavitt, President, American Society of Jewish Music
Introductory Remarks
Dr. Sabine von Mering, Assoc. Prof. of German and Women’s and Gender Studies, Brandeis University
9:15-10:45—Panel Session One, 19th century
Dr. Mark L. Kligman, Prof. of Jewish Musicology, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
“Re-voicing Tradition: Theory and Practice of German Jewish Synagogue Music”
“Sounds of Early Modernity: Early 19th Century Synagogue Music of Israel Lovy” Salomon Sulzer is recognized as a significant innovator of synagogue music with the publication of his seminal work Schir Zion in 1840. Prior to this publication, Jewish liturgical music was transmitted through manuscripts. Hundreds of manuscripts prior to 1840 are extant which document the efforts of late 18th and early 19th century cantors to incorporate the music of their Western European environment into synagogue music . This presentation will focus on Israel Lovy (1773-1832) who worked as a cantor and musician in Fürth, Straussburg and Paris. Based on manuscripts containing his music, found in the EduardBirnbaum Collection in the Klau Library of Hebrew Union College- -Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, a discussion of his various styles of liturgical music from various points in his career will be provided with live musical demonstration by students from the cantorial program of the Department of Music at Hebrew College. This early modern period was a ripe time for growth of liturgical music in exploration of new styles to make the Germany synagogue experience new and inviting.
Special Thanks to Hebrew College singers:
Risa Wallach, soprano; Becky Wexler, alto; Kevin Margolius, tenor; Rick Lawrence, bass
Dr. Tina Frühauf, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University
“’Modern yet Jewish’: Searching for a Jewish Voice in Nineteenth-century Organ Music for the Synagogue”
With the introduction of the organ into the synagogue in the early nineteenth century, a novel repertoire for organ emerged. This repertoire reflects the religious, cultural, and musical developments that took place in German-speaking Central Europe. I will examine the evolution of this repertoire during the later nineteenth century and how it relates to a new musical identity and radical change in Jewish society.
Dr. Michael Zank, Acting Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University
“Die Form des Innern: The German-Jewish Musical Tradition and the Philosophical Anthropology of the Berlin School (Mendelssohn, Steinthal, Cohen)”
To our ears, the 19th-century German Jewish music tradition may sound like mere classical and romantic music of the kind one might have heard performed in the typical upper bourgeois salons of the time; but composers for synagogue music like Louis Lewandowski were driven by a neo-humanistic anthropological theory that can be traced back to the aesthetics of the Berlin Enlightenment associated with Moses Mendelssohn. The notion of an “inner form,” aptly associated with music as a non-verbal form of symbolic expression, was central to a widely disseminated theory of education as “self-formation” (Bildung), a theory about the human person as both formed and forming him /herself. With Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), a student of the great classicist August Boekh and the ethno-linguist H. Steinthal, Lewandowski’s compositions and Steinthal’s theory of the “inner form” coalesced into a philosophical theory of the formation of the self in the musical practice of Jewish prayer.
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Panel Session Two Complexity in Negotiating Contours of Jewish Music in the 20th Century
Contextualization by Dr. Eugene R. Sheppard
Dr. Pamela Potter, Prof. of Musicology, University of Wisconsin, Madison
“German Confrontations with Jewish Music: A Scholarly Dilemma”
Although Jews and Germans share many features in their passionate engagement with music, the discipline of musicology in German -speaking lands has shown a long-standing ambivalence toward treating Jewish music as a subject of scholarly inquiry. The forces of assimilation, anti-Jewish discrimination, and the lack of a Jewish presence after World War II served successively to hinder such developments, even—or especially—among German-Jewish musicologists. This paper will trace the history of this ambivalent relationship from the early days of musicological inquiry up to the present.
Dr. Anthony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Prof. of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University
“From Mendelssohn to Schönberg—the Problematic Place of Jews in German Music”
From the beginnings of integration, Jews played a significant role in the development of musical life in the German lands, as composers, conductors and as a significant part of the audience in concert halls and opera houses. Yet this Jewish presence aroused unease and irritation at the potential corruption of ‘German’ values and the commercialization and vulgarization of art. This paper will examine how composers of Jewish origin, such as Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg and Kurt Weill responded to this climate of opinion and how it affected their compositions.
Responses
Judith S. Pinnolis, Academic Outreach Librarian for Graduate Studies and Humanities
12:30-1:00 Discussion Forum/ Q & A
Dr. Eugene R. Sheppard, Associate Prof. of Modern Jewish History and Thought, Brandeis University
Sponsored by: The American Society for Jewish Music’s Jewish Music Forum,
Brandeis University’s: Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry,
Center for German and European Studies,
Library and Technology Services with thanks to the Department of Music, Hebrew College
Brandeis University, Jewish Music Forum, Center for German and European Studies, Do Deutsch, and Library and Technology Services
“Jewish Identities and the Quest for Purity in Twentieth-Century Art Music” by Dr. Klara Moricz
Friday December 9, 2011, 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, New York 10011
In this lecture Prof. Klára Móricz gives an overview of the anti -essentialist argument of her book Jewish Identities: Nationalism , Racism and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Art Music. She discusses the concept of Jewish music, the dangers of its various definitions and introduces the protagonists of her book: the Russian Jewish composers who founded the Society of Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg in 1908; Ernest Bloch, whose name is frequently associated with a racial perception of Jewish music; and Arnold Schoenberg, whose Jewish identity evolved around utopian ideals of art and Jewishness. She concludes her lecture by exploring the mythical, religious, secular, ethical, racial, and artistic connotations of purity‹a concept that provides a common thread between the various case studies of her book.
“The St. Petersburg School: The Music of Leo Zeitlin (1884-1930)” by Dr. Paula Eisenstein Baker
Thursday, Feb. 9th, 2012, 7:00 p.m. With music examples by YIVO's Sindney Krum Young Artists
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, New York 10011
Leo Zeitlin belonged to a group of early 20th- century young Russian-Jewish composers—mostly students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and members of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg—who were united by the idea of creating a Jewish national music movement. Fascinated by Zeitlin ‘s masterpiece “Eli Zion,” cellist Paula Eisenstein Baker started to investigate the life and works of this remarkable, but almost unknown, composer. The result was an important volume of chamber music coinciding with growing international interest in Jewish art music from early 20th-century Russia. Paula Eisenstein Baker, Houston cellist and musicologist, is an authority on the early twentieth-century Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg, Russia. She has published articles on composer and society member Leo Zeitlin (1884–1930) in the YIVO Annual, the International Journal of Musicology and Shofar, and is co-editor of the volume of Zeitlin’s chamber music that will be published by A-R Editions, Inc. She has spoken about and performed works by members of the society for audiences throughout the United States, as well as in St. Petersburg, Vilnius, and London.
NINTH SEASON, 2012-13
A Prayer for Modernity: Cantor Abraham Baer (1834-1894) and
the Jewish Reform Movement
Anders Hammarlund, Associate Professor, Center for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research
In 1877 Abraham Baer published his Baal t'fillah oder der practische Vorbeter, an epoch-making work in the history of Jewish liturgical music. Baer's publication is considered the most comprehensive documentation of traditional, 19th-century European hazzanut. While his work is well known, astonishingly little has been published or written about Baer's biography. Hammarlund's work sheds new light on the cantor's early years in the German/Polish province of Posen, and on his cultural environment in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he served as cantor, shochet and mohel from 1857. It is demonstrated that the very peculiar and specific cultural climate of the Swedish city considerably encouraged Baer in his efforts. His Baal t'fillah emerged from a fascinating interplay between Jewish, Swedish and German cultures characteristic of "the Gothenburg spirit." Further, Baer could be described as a pioneer of Swedish ethnomusicology.
Monday, 29 October 2012
(Live presentation cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy - Soon Available Online)
1:45 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Hebrew Union College, Chapel
1 West 4th Street, NYC
Please RSVP to info@jewishmusicforum.org
Photo ID Needed on Entry
Dr Anders Hammarlund is a Swedish ethnomusicologist and cultural historian. He has served as a music researcher and producer at Sveriges Radio (the Swedish public service broadcaster) and as a university professor in Uppsala, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. Currently Dr. Hammarlund serves as research archivist in charge of multicultural affairs at Music Development and Heritage Sweden (Statens musikverk), the government institution for the music scene in Sweden. At Statens musikverk, Dr. Hammarlund coordinates and supports collaborative projects of national interest as well as works to preserve, promote and make the cultural heritage within theatre, dance and music accessible.
Hammarlund's research has focussed on topics of music and migration, cultural identity, and Jewish cultural history. From 2009 to 2011 he was in charge of the research project Gestaltung Identity Integration, which dealt with the life and work of the Jewish Cantor Abraham Baer (1834-1894).
Complete Listing of Sessions (2005-12)
FIRST SEASON, SPRING 2005
January 28, 2005 – Inaugural Lecture
“Memory and History in Jewish Music”
Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music at Harvard University
February 11, 2005
“Studying Jewish Music in Israel: Achievements, Failures and Challenges for the Future”
Edwin Seroussi, Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Respondent: Stephen Blum, City University of New York
March 11, 2005
“Who Will Reclaim the Golden Sounds?: Judaism, Tradition, and Music Scholarship in an American Context”
Judah M. Cohen, New York University
Respondent: Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
April 8, 2005
“Beyond Yiddishland: New Studies from the Jewish Musical Mediterranean”
Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Respondent: Professor Uri Sharvit, Bar-Ilan University
May 13, 2005
“Between Wissenschaft and Etnografiia: The Search for a Jewish Musical Science in Eurasia, Past and Present”
James Loeffler, Columbia University
Respondent: Dr. Lyudmila Sholokhova, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
SECOND SEASON, 2005-2006
Friday, September 23, 2005
“The Philadelphia Russian Sher Medley: Viewing the Immigrant Experience through a Musical Text”
Hankus Netsky, New England Conservatory of Music
Respondent: Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Friday, November 4, 2005
“Between Church and Synagogue: The Organ in German- Jewish Culture”
Tina Frühauf,CUNY Graduate Center
Respondent: Dr. Philip Bohlman, University of Chicago
Friday, November 18, 2005
“The Sephardic Voice in Ottoman Song: The Life and Art of Tanburi Isak Fresco (1745-1814)”
Walter Zev Feldman, Bar-Ilan University
Respondent: Karl Signell, Editor, Ethnomusicology Online
Friday, December 2, 2005
“From Rossi to Rossini: Shifting Paradigms in Italian Jewish Musical Culture”
Francesco Spagnolo,Hebrew University/U.C.-Santa Cruz
Co-sponsored by the Centro Culturale Primo Levi as part of the
symposium “Humanism and the Rabbinic Tradition in Italy and Beyond”
Respondent: David Ruderman, University of Pennsylvania
Friday, January 20, 2006
“The Tradition Continues on the Lower East Side: Experimental Music and the American-Jewish Imaginary in 1990s New York City”
Tamar Barzel,Wellesley College
Respondent: Jonathan Freedman, University of Michigan
Friday, February 10, 2006
“Finding the Rhythm: Dance and Music in Jewish Studies”
Nina Spiegel, National Museum of American Jewish History
Respondent: Judah M. Cohen, New York University
Friday, March 17, 2006
“Assimilating (Post-Modern) Jewish Music: Ambivalence in Contemporary Composition”
David Schiller, University of Georgia
Respondent: Klara Moricz, Amherst College
Friday, March 31, 2006
“Energizing Jewish Musical Memory: Encounters with Sound and Text in Archives and Libraries”
Judith Pinnolis, Brandeis University
Respondents: Bret Werb, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Gina Genova, New York University / Milken Archive of American Jewish Music
Friday, April 28, 2006
“‘I am a Jew from eternal nowhere’: Yiddish song in the aftermath of the Holocaust”
Shirli Gilbert, University of Michigan
Respondent: Jeremy Dauber, Columbia University
Friday, May 12, 2006
“The Migration of Memory: New Contexts for Mizrahi and Bukharian Musical Poetic Traditions in Israel and the United States”
Evan Rapport,City University of New York and Galeet Dardashti, University of Texas at Austin
Respondent: Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute, New York
THIRD SEASON, 2006 – 2007
September 15, 2006
“How Do You Play the Musical Scream in Gideon Klein's Terezin Requiem?”
Michael Beckerman, New York University
Respondent: Gershon Kingsley, composer and conductor
October 20, 2006
“Music and Memory among Crypto-Jews in Portuguese Border Villages”
Judith Cohen, York University, Toronto
Respondent: Jane Gerber, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-sponsor: American Sephardi Federation
November 10, 2006
“Composing Herself: Finding Miriam Gideon in Her 1958 Opera Fortunato”
Lecture, Performance and Panel Discussion
Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, CUNY Graduate Center
Panel discussion: Ellie Hisama, Columbia University,
Bruce Saylor, CUNY Graduate Center, and Cantor Charles Osborne
December 8, 2006
“Mediterranean Israeli Music: The Politics of Aesthetics”
Amy Horowitz, Ohio State University
Respondent: Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, New York University
Co-sponsor: American Sephardi Federation
February 16, 2007
“Sephardic Music On Record: A Century of Commercial Ladino Recordings”
Edwin Seroussi, Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Joel Bresler, discographer
Respondent: Dr. Virginia Danielson, Harvard University
Co-sponsor: American Sephardi Federation
March 9, 2007
“The Media and the Messenger: Transforming the Cantor's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Jeffrey Shandler, Rutgers University
Respondents: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University, and
Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Co-sponsor: Working Group on Jews/Media/Religion at the Center for Religion and Media, New York University
April 27, 2007
“Blacks and Jews in American Popular Music: The Business of Cultural Mediation”
Jonathan Karp, SUNY Binghamton
Respondent: Jonathan Schorsch, Columbia University
May 8, 2007
“Kurt Weill's Kol Nidre: Lecture with Music Performance”
Tamara Levitz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Respondent: Kim Kowalke, Eastman School of Music, Kurt Weill
Foundation.
Co-sponsors: The Weill/Lenya Institute; Milken Archive.
FOURTH SEASON, 2007 – 2008
November 20, 2007
“Yiddish Folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive”
Chana Mlotek, YIVO Music Archivist
Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
with a performance by Zalmen Mlotek and Eleanor Reissa
January 25, 2008
“Felix Mendelssohn and the Jewish Question”
Professor Jeffrey Sposato, University of Houston
Respondent: Professor Michael A. Meyer, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
February 22, 2008
“Creating ‘New’ Jewish Sounds”
Josh Kun, University of Southern California,
Judah M. Cohen, Indiana University
Daniel Saks, member of the bands DeLeon and The LeeVees
FIFTH SEASON, 2008 – 2009
Note: During this season, for the first time, sessions of the Jewish Music Forum were held at sites outside of New York City, in the Northeast, in the mid-West, and on the West Coast.
November 14, 2008
“Beyond the Pale: The Russian Jewish Musical Experiment 100 Years Later”
Dr. James Loeffler, University of Virginia
Dr. Klára Móricz, Amherst College
Dr. Lyudmila Sholokhova, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
December 12, 2008
“American Jews, Music and the Memory of the Holocaust: 1945-1962”
Hasia Diner, New York University
Respondent: Cantor Bruce Ruben, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
January 16, 2009
“Ethel Raim and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance: Three Decades of Showcasing Jewish Music”
With Ethel Raim and Dr. Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Co-sponsored by the Working Group on Jews, Media and Religion at New York University
February 26, 2009
“The Jewish Self/The Jewish Other: Performing Identity in the ‘Majufes’"
Halina Goldberg, Indiana University
Held at and co-sponsored by the University of Chicago
April 24, 2009
"’Old Lamps for New:’ Alexander Krein and Jewish Neonationalism”
Dr. Klara Moricz, Amherst College
Respondent: Professor Alexander Rehding, Harvard University
Held at and co-sponsored by Harvard University
May 1, 2009
“The Participating Observer: Fieldwork in Jewish Settings”
Jeffrey A. Summit, Tufts University
Respondent: Henry Goldschmidt, Wesleyan University
Co-sponsored by the Working Group on Jews, Media and Religion at New York University
SIXTH SEASON, 2009 – 2010
Sunday, November 8, 2009
“Pulitzer Prize-winning Composer Steve Reich Talks about his Jewish Music:" A unique interview by fellow Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lang
Steve Reich and David Lang
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Is Israeli Art Music Jewish?
Ronit Seter, Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Respondent: Dr. Klára Móricz, Amherst College
Held at and co-sponsored by Hebrew College, Boston
March 5, 2010
“Sacred and Secular Music Texts in Modern Times"
Dr. Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University
Dr. Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Co-sponsored by the Working Group on the Jewish Book at the Center for Jewish History
Saturday, March 14, 2010
"Back to the Roots: Notions of Jewish Musical Revival"
A panel discussion with Edwin Seroussi, The Hebrew University;
Benjamin Brinner, UC Berkeley; and Judah Cohen, Indiana University, curated and moderated by Francesco Spagnolo, The Magnes, and produced by Eleanor Shapiro, the Jewish Music Festival.
Co-sponsors: 25th Jewish Music Festival; The Magnes; Music Department and Jewish Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Held at the Berkeley-Richmond JCC, Berkeley, CA.
April 2, 2010
“’In a Land Large as an Apple Tree': Wolpe's Avant-Garde Music, Pedagogy, and Pacifist Zionism in 1930's Palestine”
Brigid Cohen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Respondent: Stephen Blum, City University of New York
April 15, 2010
“Imaginaries of Exile and Emergence in Israeli, Jewish and Palestinian Hip-Hop”
David A. McDonald, Indiana University
Respondent: Edwin Seroussi, Jewish Music Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Held at and co-sponsored by Indiana University
SEVENTH SEASON, 2010 – 2011
November 3, 2010
"Chinese Jews: Aspects of their History and their Music"
Alexander Knapp, Joe Loss Lectureship in Jewish Music, University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, Emeritus
Respondent: Dr. Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York
November 18, 2010
“Reimagining Tradition or Preserving Its Legacy: Yiddish Songs in Hasidic Communities and in Contemporary Eastern Europe"
Asya Vaisman, Visiting Research Scholar in Jewish Studies at Indiana University
Respondent: Dr. Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York
Co-sponsored by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
February 16, 2011
“Robert Lachman's ‘Oriental Music Archive’ and Broadcasting Project in Mandatory Palestine”
Ruth Davis, University of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
Respondent: Mark Kligman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
March 24th, 2011
“The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire”
James Loeffler, University of Virginia at Charlottesville
Lecture with Performance by YIVO’s Sidney Krum Young Artists
Co-sponsored the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research
EIGHTH SEASON, 2011-12
One- Day Conference
German Jewish Aspirations in Music and Culture in 19th and 20th Century Germany
Monday November 14, 2011
The Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library, 415 South Street, Waltham, MA
Brandeis University
PROGRAM
8:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m.—Breakfast Snacks
9:00-9:15—Welcome
Michael Leavitt, President, American Society of Jewish Music
Introductory Remarks
Dr. Sabine von Mering, Assoc. Prof. of German and Women’s and Gender Studies, Brandeis University
9:15-10:45—Panel Session One, 19th century
Dr. Mark L. Kligman, Prof. of Jewish Musicology, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
“Re-voicing Tradition: Theory and Practice of German Jewish Synagogue Music”
“Sounds of Early Modernity: Early 19th Century Synagogue Music of Israel Lovy” Salomon Sulzer is recognized as a significant innovator of synagogue music with the publication of his seminal work Schir Zion in 1840. Prior to this publication, Jewish liturgical music was transmitted through manuscripts. Hundreds of manuscripts prior to 1840 are extant which document the efforts of late 18th and early 19th century cantors to incorporate the music of their Western European environment into synagogue music . This presentation will focus on Israel Lovy (1773-1832) who worked as a cantor and musician in Fürth, Straussburg and Paris. Based on manuscripts containing his music, found in the EduardBirnbaum Collection in the Klau Library of Hebrew Union College- -Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, a discussion of his various styles of liturgical music from various points in his career will be provided with live musical demonstration by students from the cantorial program of the Department of Music at Hebrew College. This early modern period was a ripe time for growth of liturgical music in exploration of new styles to make the Germany synagogue experience new and inviting.
Special Thanks to Hebrew College singers:
Risa Wallach, soprano; Becky Wexler, alto; Kevin Margolius, tenor; Rick Lawrence, bass
Dr. Tina Frühauf, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University
“’Modern yet Jewish’: Searching for a Jewish Voice in Nineteenth-century Organ Music for the Synagogue”
With the introduction of the organ into the synagogue in the early nineteenth century, a novel repertoire for organ emerged. This repertoire reflects the religious, cultural, and musical developments that took place in German-speaking Central Europe. I will examine the evolution of this repertoire during the later nineteenth century and how it relates to a new musical identity and radical change in Jewish society.
Dr. Michael Zank, Acting Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University
“Die Form des Innern: The German-Jewish Musical Tradition and the Philosophical Anthropology of the Berlin School (Mendelssohn, Steinthal, Cohen)”
To our ears, the 19th-century German Jewish music tradition may sound like mere classical and romantic music of the kind one might have heard performed in the typical upper bourgeois salons of the time; but composers for synagogue music like Louis Lewandowski were driven by a neo-humanistic anthropological theory that can be traced back to the aesthetics of the Berlin Enlightenment associated with Moses Mendelssohn. The notion of an “inner form,” aptly associated with music as a non-verbal form of symbolic expression, was central to a widely disseminated theory of education as “self-formation” (Bildung), a theory about the human person as both formed and forming him /herself. With Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), a student of the great classicist August Boekh and the ethno-linguist H. Steinthal, Lewandowski’s compositions and Steinthal’s theory of the “inner form” coalesced into a philosophical theory of the formation of the self in the musical practice of Jewish prayer.
10:45-11:00 Break
11:00-12:30 Panel Session Two Complexity in Negotiating Contours of Jewish Music in the 20th Century
Contextualization by Dr. Eugene R. Sheppard
Dr. Pamela Potter, Prof. of Musicology, University of Wisconsin, Madison
“German Confrontations with Jewish Music: A Scholarly Dilemma”
Although Jews and Germans share many features in their passionate engagement with music, the discipline of musicology in German -speaking lands has shown a long-standing ambivalence toward treating Jewish music as a subject of scholarly inquiry. The forces of assimilation, anti-Jewish discrimination, and the lack of a Jewish presence after World War II served successively to hinder such developments, even—or especially—among German-Jewish musicologists. This paper will trace the history of this ambivalent relationship from the early days of musicological inquiry up to the present.
Dr. Anthony Polonsky, Albert Abramson Prof. of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University
“From Mendelssohn to Schönberg—the Problematic Place of Jews in German Music”
From the beginnings of integration, Jews played a significant role in the development of musical life in the German lands, as composers, conductors and as a significant part of the audience in concert halls and opera houses. Yet this Jewish presence aroused unease and irritation at the potential corruption of ‘German’ values and the commercialization and vulgarization of art. This paper will examine how composers of Jewish origin, such as Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg and Kurt Weill responded to this climate of opinion and how it affected their compositions.
Responses
Judith S. Pinnolis, Academic Outreach Librarian for Graduate Studies and Humanities
12:30-1:00 Discussion Forum/ Q & A
Dr. Eugene R. Sheppard, Associate Prof. of Modern Jewish History and Thought, Brandeis University
Sponsored by: The American Society for Jewish Music’s Jewish Music Forum,
Brandeis University’s: Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry,
Center for German and European Studies,
Library and Technology Services with thanks to the Department of Music, Hebrew College
Brandeis University, Jewish Music Forum, Center for German and European Studies, Do Deutsch, and Library and Technology Services
“Jewish Identities and the Quest for Purity in Twentieth-Century Art Music” by Dr. Klara Moricz
Friday December 9, 2011, 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, New York 10011
In this lecture Prof. Klára Móricz gives an overview of the anti -essentialist argument of her book Jewish Identities: Nationalism , Racism and Utopianism in Twentieth-Century Art Music. She discusses the concept of Jewish music, the dangers of its various definitions and introduces the protagonists of her book: the Russian Jewish composers who founded the Society of Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg in 1908; Ernest Bloch, whose name is frequently associated with a racial perception of Jewish music; and Arnold Schoenberg, whose Jewish identity evolved around utopian ideals of art and Jewishness. She concludes her lecture by exploring the mythical, religious, secular, ethical, racial, and artistic connotations of purity‹a concept that provides a common thread between the various case studies of her book.
“The St. Petersburg School: The Music of Leo Zeitlin (1884-1930)” by Dr. Paula Eisenstein Baker
Thursday, Feb. 9th, 2012, 7:00 p.m. With music examples by YIVO's Sindney Krum Young Artists
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, New York 10011
Leo Zeitlin belonged to a group of early 20th- century young Russian-Jewish composers—mostly students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and members of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg—who were united by the idea of creating a Jewish national music movement. Fascinated by Zeitlin ‘s masterpiece “Eli Zion,” cellist Paula Eisenstein Baker started to investigate the life and works of this remarkable, but almost unknown, composer. The result was an important volume of chamber music coinciding with growing international interest in Jewish art music from early 20th-century Russia. Paula Eisenstein Baker, Houston cellist and musicologist, is an authority on the early twentieth-century Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg, Russia. She has published articles on composer and society member Leo Zeitlin (1884–1930) in the YIVO Annual, the International Journal of Musicology and Shofar, and is co-editor of the volume of Zeitlin’s chamber music that will be published by A-R Editions, Inc. She has spoken about and performed works by members of the society for audiences throughout the United States, as well as in St. Petersburg, Vilnius, and London.
NINTH SEASON, 2012-13
A Prayer for Modernity: Cantor Abraham Baer (1834-1894) and
the Jewish Reform Movement
Anders Hammarlund, Associate Professor, Center for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research
In 1877 Abraham Baer published his Baal t'fillah oder der practische Vorbeter, an epoch-making work in the history of Jewish liturgical music. Baer's publication is considered the most comprehensive documentation of traditional, 19th-century European hazzanut. While his work is well known, astonishingly little has been published or written about Baer's biography. Hammarlund's work sheds new light on the cantor's early years in the German/Polish province of Posen, and on his cultural environment in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he served as cantor, shochet and mohel from 1857. It is demonstrated that the very peculiar and specific cultural climate of the Swedish city considerably encouraged Baer in his efforts. His Baal t'fillah emerged from a fascinating interplay between Jewish, Swedish and German cultures characteristic of "the Gothenburg spirit." Further, Baer could be described as a pioneer of Swedish ethnomusicology.
Monday, 29 October 2012
(Live presentation cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy - Soon Available Online)
1:45 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Hebrew Union College, Chapel
1 West 4th Street, NYC
Please RSVP to info@jewishmusicforum.org
Photo ID Needed on Entry
Dr Anders Hammarlund is a Swedish ethnomusicologist and cultural historian. He has served as a music researcher and producer at Sveriges Radio (the Swedish public service broadcaster) and as a university professor in Uppsala, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. Currently Dr. Hammarlund serves as research archivist in charge of multicultural affairs at Music Development and Heritage Sweden (Statens musikverk), the government institution for the music scene in Sweden. At Statens musikverk, Dr. Hammarlund coordinates and supports collaborative projects of national interest as well as works to preserve, promote and make the cultural heritage within theatre, dance and music accessible.
Hammarlund's research has focussed on topics of music and migration, cultural identity, and Jewish cultural history. From 2009 to 2011 he was in charge of the research project Gestaltung Identity Integration, which dealt with the life and work of the Jewish Cantor Abraham Baer (1834-1894).
