Jewish music
Encyclopedia
Jewish music is the music and melodies of the Jewish People
which have evolved over time throughout the long course of Jewish History
. In some instances Jewish Music is of a religious nature, spiritual songs and refrains are common in Jewish Services throughout the world, while other times, it is of a secular nature. The rhythm and sound of Jewish Music varies greatly depending on the origins of the Jewish composer and the time period in which the piece was composed.
As Velvel Pasternak
writes, "The importance of music in the life of the Jewish people is found almost at the beginning of Genesis... [musicians are] mentioned among the three fundamental professions.... Music was viewed as a necessity in everyday life, as a beautifying and enriching complement of human existence."
melodies from Biblical to Modern times. The earliest synagogal music was based on the same system used in the Temple in Jerusalem
. According to the Mishnah
, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and a choir of twelve male singers. A number of additional instruments were known to the ancient Israelites, though they were not included in the regular orchestra of the Temple, such as the uggav. Though scholars do not completely agree what the Uggav looked like, some believe the known interpreter "Unkelus" who translated scriptures into Aramaic, and other biblical scholars, are correct in explaining that this instrument was the panflute or panpipes.
After the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent diaspora
of the Jewish people
, music was initially banned in Babylon and Persia. This law had an exception on Shabbat (i.e. the Sabbath), during which Jewish people were required to sing with their family, later, all restrictions were relaxed. As is recorded in Psalm 137; "Our tormentors [the Babylonians] asked of us, sings us one of the songs of Zion... How shall we sing the Lord's song...?." Originally, It was with the piyyutim
(liturgical poems)in which Jewish music began to crystallize into definite form. The cantor
sang the piyyutim to melodies selected by their writer or by himself, thus introducing fixed melodies into synagogal music. The music may have preserved a few phrases in the reading of Scripture which recalled songs from the Temple itself (Ashkenazic Jews named this official tune 'trope';) but generally it echoes the tones and rhythms, in each country and in each age, in which Jews lived, not merely in the actual borrowing of tunes, but more in the tonality on which the local music was based.
's nigunim to Debbie Friedman
's Jewish feminist folk. Velvel Pasternak
has spent much of the late twentieth century acting as a preservationist and committing what had been a strongly oral tradition to paper. In the 1970s, Mordechai Ben David, Avrohom Fried, Abie Rottenburg and Jewish boys choirs such as Yigal Calek's London Pirchei became popular.
Much of Orthodox Jewish music is performed by men due to religious restrictions on men hearing women sing. In the 1980s, Tofa'ah was the first female Orthodox band and has paved the road for Orthodox Jewish female performers.
A large body of music produced by Orthodox Jews is geared toward teaching religious and ethical traditions and laws. The lyrics of these songs are either in English or Hebrew, often using phrases from the Jewish prayerbook.
Many of today's Hazzanim belong to the Cantors Assembly
which teaches and publishes Jewish liturgy, music and songs.
Periodically Jewish music jumps into mainstream consciousness. An example of this is the reggae artist Matisyahu
.
. Piyyutim have been written since Mishnaic
times. Most piyyutim are in Hebrew
or Aramaic
, and most follow some poetic scheme, such as an acrostic
following the order of the Hebrew alphabet
or spelling out the name of the author.
Many piyyutim are familiar to regular attendees of synagogue services. For example, the best-known piyyut may be Adon Olam ("Master of the World"), sometimes attributed to Solomon ibn Gabirol
in 11th century Spain
. Its poetic form simply consists of rhyming eight-syllable lines, and it is so beloved that it is often sung at the conclusion of many synagogue services, after the ritual nightly saying of the Shema, and during the morning ritual of putting on tefillin
. Another well-beloved piyyut is Yigdal ("May God be Hallowed"), which is based upon the Thirteen Principles of Faith developed by Maimonides
.
. The best known zemiros are those sung around the table during Shabbos and Jewish holiday
s. Some of the Shabbos zemiros are specific to certain times of the day, such those sung for the Friday evening meal, the Saturday noon meal, and the third Sabbath meal just before sundown on Saturday afternoon. In some editions of the Jewish prayerbook (siddur
), the words to these hymns are printed after the opening prayer (kiddush
) for each meal. Other zemirot are more generic and can be sung at any meal or other sacred occasion.
The words to many zemirot are taken from poems written by various rabbis and sages during the Middle Ages
. Others are anonymous folk songs that have been passed down from generation to generation.
s, bar mitzvah
s, weddings and other ceremonies. Pizmonim are traditionally associated with Middle Eastern Sephardic Jews, although they are related to Ashkenazi Jews
' zemirot
. The best known tradition is associated with Jews descended from Aleppo
, though similar traditions exist among Iraqi Jews
(where the songs are known as shbaִhoth, praises) and in North Africa
n countries. Jews of Greek, Turkish and Balkan origin have songs of the same kind in Ladino, associated with the festivals: these are known as coplas.
The texts of many pizmonim date back to the Middle Ages or earlier, and are often based on verses in the Bible
. Many are taken from the Tanakh
, while others were composed by poets such as Yehuda Halevi
and Israel Najara
of Gaza. Some melodies are quite old, while others may be based on popular Middle Eastern music
, with the words composed specially to fit the tune.
The custom of singing Baqashot originated in Spain towards the time of the expulsion, but took on increased momentum in the Kabbalistic
circle in Safed
in the 16th century. Baqashot probably evolved out of the tradition of saying petitionary prayers before dawn and was spread from Safed by the followers of Isaac Luria
(16th century). With the spread of Safed Kabbalistic doctrine, the singing of Baqashot reached countries all round the Mediterranean and became customary in the communities of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Rhodes, Greece, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Turkey and Syria. It also influenced the Kabbalistically oriented confraternities in 18th-century Italy, and even became customary for a time in Sephardic communities in western Europe, such as Amsterdam and London, though in these communities it has since been dropped. By the turn of the 20th century Baqashot had become a widespread religious practice in several communities in Jerusalem as a communal form of prayer.
, which serves to both identify different types of prayer, as well as to link those prayers to the time of year, or even time of day in which they are set. There are three main modes, as well as a number of combined or compound modes. The three main modes are called Ahavah Rabbah, Magein Avot and Adonai Malach. Traditionally, the Cantor (Hazzan
) improvised sung prayers within the designated mode, while following a general structure of how each prayer should sound. Over time many of these chants have been written down and standardized, yet the practice of improvisation still exists to this day.
traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time.
i music is heavily influenced by its constituents, which include Jewish immigrants from more than 120 countries around the world, which have brought their own musical traditions, making Israel a global melting pot
. The Israeli music is very versatile and combines elements of both western and eastern music. It tends to be very eclectic and contains a wide variety of influences from the Diaspora
and more modern cultural importation to Hassidic songs, Asian and Arab pop, especially Yemenite singers, and hip hop
or heavy metal
.
From the earliest days of Zionist settlement, Jewish immigrants wrote popular folk music. At first, songs were based on borrowed melodies from German, Russian, or traditional Jewish folk music with new lyrics written in Hebrew. Starting in the early 1920s, however, Jewish settlers made a conscious effort to create a new Hebrew style of music, a style that would tie them to their earliest Hebrew origins and that would differentiate them from the style of the Jewish diaspora of Eastern Europe, which they viewed as weak. This new style borrowed elements from Arabic and, to a lesser extent, traditional Yemenite and eastern Jewish styles: the songs were often homophonic (that is, without clear harmonic character), modal, and limited in range. "The huge change in our lives demands new modes of expression", wrote composer and music critic Menashe Ravina in 1943. "... and, just as in our language we returned to our historical past, so has our ear turned to the music of the east ... as an expression of our innermost feelings."
The youth, labor and kibbutz movements played a major role in musical development before and after the establishment of Israeli statehood in 1948, and in the popularization of these songs. The Zionist establishment saw music as a way of establishing a new national identity, and, on a purely pragmatic level, of teaching Hebrew to new immigrants. The national labor organization, the Histadrut, set up a music publishing house that disseminated songbooks and encouraged public sing-alongs (שירה בציבור). This tradition of public sing-alongs continues to the present day, and is a characteristic of modern Israeli culture.
"), folk songs are meant mainly to be sung in public by the audience or in social events. Some are children's songs; some combine European folk tunes with Hebrew lyrics; some come from military bands and others were written by poets such as Naomi Shemer
and Chaim Nachman Bialik.
The canonical songs of this genre often deal with Zionist
hopes and dreams and glorify the life of idealistic Jewish youth who intend on building a home and defending their homeland. A common theme is Jerusalem as well as other parts of Eretz Israel. Tempo
varies widely, as do the content. Some songs show a leftist or right-wing bent, while others are typically love songs, lullabies or other formats; some are also socialist in subject, due to the long-standing influence of socialism
on Jews in parts of the Diaspora.
Patriotic folk songs are common, mostly written during the wars of Israel. They typically concern themselves with soldiers' friendships and the tragedy of death during war. Some are now played at memorials or holidays dedicated to the Israeli dead.
traditions extending back into Biblical times, and their musical legacy of klezmer continues to evolve today. The repertoire is largely dance songs for weddings and other celebrations. They are typically in Yiddish.
being performed at the royal courts. Since then, it has picked up influences from across Spain, Morocco
, Argentina
, Turkey
, Greece
and various popular tunes from Spain and further abroad. There are three types of Sephardic songs—topical and entertainment songs, romance songs and spiritual or ceremonial songs. Lyrics can be in several languages, including Hebrew for religious songs, and Ladino.
These song traditions spread from Spain to Morocco (the Western Tradition) and several parts of the Ottoman Empire
(the Eastern Tradition) including Greece, Jerusalem, the Balkans
and Egypt
. Sephardic music adapted to each of these locals, assimilating North African high-pitched, extended ululations; Balkan rhythms, for instance in 9/8 time; and the Turkish maqam
mode
.
ic and Mediterranean (especially Greek) music. Typical Mizrahi songs will have a dominant violin
or string
sound as well as Middle Eastern percussion elements. Mizrahi music is usually high pitched. In today's Israeli music scene, Mizrahi music is very popular. A popular singer whose music typifies the Mizrahi music style is Zohar Argov.
community developed its own dance traditions for wedding celebrations and other distinguished events. For Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe
, for example, dances, whose names corresponded to the different forms of klezmer
music that were played, were an obvious staple of the wedding ceremony of the shtetl
. Jewish dances both were influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. "Nevertheless the Jews practiced a corporeal expressive language that was highly differentiated from that of the non-Jewish peoples of their neighborhood, mainly through motions of the hands and arms, with more intricate legwork by the younger men." Additionally, in religious communities, members of the opposite sex do not dance together.
(1819–1880), a leading composer of opera and operetta in the 19th century, was the son of a cantor, and grew up steeped in traditional Jewish music. Yet there is nothing about his music which could be characterized as Jewish in terms of style, and he himself did not consider his work to be Jewish. As another example, Felix Mendelssohn
, the grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
, continued to identify himself as a Jew, even though he was baptized as a Lutheran at the age of seven. Yet, while he occasionally draws inspiration from Christian sources (one of the themes in his second piano trio, opus 66, is the Lutheran doxology), there is nothing characteristically Jewish about any of his music. "Music written by Jews is not necessarily Jewish music", wrote Erich Werner in 1938 in a seminal essay on the subject in the journal "Musica Hebraica".
That said, there are nonetheless a number of composers who wrote music that they considered Jewish, even if stylistically there was nothing to tie their compositions to traditional Jewish music of liturgy or to the Eastern European klezmer tradition. The first, and one of the most important of these, was Salamone Rossi
(1570–1630). As court composer in Mantua, Rossi was instrumental in the development of the Baroque trio sonata
form. Rossi composed a song cycle called "The Songs of Solomon", which drew on Jewish liturgical and biblical texts.
Other composers who drew on Jewish subjects include
and others, these Jewish composers set out to the "Shtetls" - the Jewish villages of Russia - and meticulously recorded and transcribed thousands of Yiddish folksongs. They then set these songs to both vocal and instrumental ensembles. The resulting music is a marriage between often melancholy and "krekhtsen" (moaning) melodies of the Shtetl with late Russian romantic harmonies of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff.
The Jewish national revival
in music was not only in Russia. A number of Western European composers took an interest in their Jewish musical roots, and tried to create a unique Jewish art style. Ernest Bloch
(1880–1959), a Swiss composer who emigrated to the United States, composed Schelomo for cello and orchestra, Suite Hebraique for violin and piano, and Sacred Service, which is the first attempt to set the Jewish service in a form similar to the Requiem
, for full orchestra, choir and soloists. Bloch described his connection to Jewish music as intensely personal:
Darius Milhaud
(1892–1974) was one of the leaders of the French modernist school. As a child in Aix-en-Provence
, Milhaud was exposed to the music of the Provençal Jewish community. "I have been greatly influenced by the character" of this music, he wrote. His opera Esther de Carpentras draws on this rich musical heritage.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
(1895–1968), an Italian composer who immigrated to America on the eve of World War II, was strongly influenced by his Sephardic Jewish upbringing. His second violin concerto draws on Jewish themes, as do many of his songs and choral works: cantata
s Naomi and Ruth, Queen of Sheba, and the oratorio The Book of Jonah, among others. Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a number of songs in Ladino, which was the language of Sephardic Jews.
, Erich Walter Sternberg, Marc Lavri, Oeden Partos, and Alexander Uria Boskovitch. These composers were all concerned with forging a new Jewish identity in music, an identity which would suit the new, emerging identity of Israel. While the response of each of these composers to this challenge was intensely personal, there was one distinct trend to which many of them adhered: many of these and other composers sought to distance themselves from the musical style of the Klezmer, of eastern European Jewry, (this is notably also true of the chosen way Israel pronounces Hebrew, which specifically left out all European Jewish shibboleths in Hebrew accent) which they viewed as weak and unsuitable for the new national ethos. Many of the stylistic features of Klezmer and Yiddish were abhorrent to them. "Its character is depressing and sentimental", wrote music critic and composer Menashe Ravina in 1943. "The healthy desire to free ourselves of this sentimentalism causes many to avoid this...".
Perhaps the most radical in his search for a new (more Sefaradi) Jewish identity was Alexander Boskovitch. His Semitic Suite for piano, written in 1945, draws much from Arabic music: it is nonharmonic, almost homophonic. He uses repeated notes to imitate the sound of a Kanun.
From these early experiments a large corpus of original Israeli art music has been developed, much of it specifically seeking a return to the composers' roots in Jewish musical tradition. Notable among modern Israeli composers are
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
which have evolved over time throughout the long course of Jewish History
Jewish history
Jewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
. In some instances Jewish Music is of a religious nature, spiritual songs and refrains are common in Jewish Services throughout the world, while other times, it is of a secular nature. The rhythm and sound of Jewish Music varies greatly depending on the origins of the Jewish composer and the time period in which the piece was composed.
As Velvel Pasternak
Velvel Pasternak
Velvel Pasternak is a musicologist, conductor, arranger, producer, and publisher specializing in Jewish music. In 1981 he was described as "an expert on the music of the Hasidic sect and probably the largest publisher of Jewish music anywhere, although he is quick to note that publishing Jewish...
writes, "The importance of music in the life of the Jewish people is found almost at the beginning of Genesis... [musicians are] mentioned among the three fundamental professions.... Music was viewed as a necessity in everyday life, as a beautifying and enriching complement of human existence."
History of Religious Jewish Music
The history of religious Jewish music spans the evolution of cantorial, synagogal, and TempleTemple
A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur. It has the same root as the word "template," a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out...
melodies from Biblical to Modern times. The earliest synagogal music was based on the same system used in the Temple in Jerusalem
Temple in Jerusalem
The Temple in Jerusalem or Holy Temple , refers to one of a series of structures which were historically located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the current site of the Dome of the Rock. Historically, these successive temples stood at this location and functioned as the centre of...
. According to the Mishnah
Mishnah
The Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah". It is also the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism. It was redacted c...
, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and a choir of twelve male singers. A number of additional instruments were known to the ancient Israelites, though they were not included in the regular orchestra of the Temple, such as the uggav. Though scholars do not completely agree what the Uggav looked like, some believe the known interpreter "Unkelus" who translated scriptures into Aramaic, and other biblical scholars, are correct in explaining that this instrument was the panflute or panpipes.
After the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
of the Jewish people
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, music was initially banned in Babylon and Persia. This law had an exception on Shabbat (i.e. the Sabbath), during which Jewish people were required to sing with their family, later, all restrictions were relaxed. As is recorded in Psalm 137; "Our tormentors [the Babylonians] asked of us, sings us one of the songs of Zion... How shall we sing the Lord's song...?." Originally, It was with the piyyutim
Piyyut
A piyyut or piyut is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually designated to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious services. Piyyutim have been written since Temple times...
(liturgical poems)in which Jewish music began to crystallize into definite form. The cantor
Hazzan
A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish cantor, a musician trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer.There are many rules relating to how a cantor should lead services, but the idea of a cantor as a paid professional does not exist in classical rabbinic sources...
sang the piyyutim to melodies selected by their writer or by himself, thus introducing fixed melodies into synagogal music. The music may have preserved a few phrases in the reading of Scripture which recalled songs from the Temple itself (Ashkenazic Jews named this official tune 'trope';) but generally it echoes the tones and rhythms, in each country and in each age, in which Jews lived, not merely in the actual borrowing of tunes, but more in the tonality on which the local music was based.
Contemporary Jewish religious music
Religious Jewish Music in the 20th century has varied greatly. It has spanned the gamut from Shlomo CarlebachShlomo Carlebach
Shlomo Carlebach , known as Reb Shlomo to his followers, was a Jewish rabbi, religious teacher, composer, and singer who was known as "The Singing Rabbi" during his lifetime...
's nigunim to Debbie Friedman
Debbie Friedman
Deborah Lynn "Debbie" Friedman was an American composer and singer of songs with Jewish religious content. She was born in Utica, New York but moved with her family to Minnesota at age 5. She is best known for her setting of “Mi Shebeirach”, the prayer for healing, which is used by hundreds of...
's Jewish feminist folk. Velvel Pasternak
Velvel Pasternak
Velvel Pasternak is a musicologist, conductor, arranger, producer, and publisher specializing in Jewish music. In 1981 he was described as "an expert on the music of the Hasidic sect and probably the largest publisher of Jewish music anywhere, although he is quick to note that publishing Jewish...
has spent much of the late twentieth century acting as a preservationist and committing what had been a strongly oral tradition to paper. In the 1970s, Mordechai Ben David, Avrohom Fried, Abie Rottenburg and Jewish boys choirs such as Yigal Calek's London Pirchei became popular.
Much of Orthodox Jewish music is performed by men due to religious restrictions on men hearing women sing. In the 1980s, Tofa'ah was the first female Orthodox band and has paved the road for Orthodox Jewish female performers.
A large body of music produced by Orthodox Jews is geared toward teaching religious and ethical traditions and laws. The lyrics of these songs are either in English or Hebrew, often using phrases from the Jewish prayerbook.
Many of today's Hazzanim belong to the Cantors Assembly
Cantors Assembly
The Cantors Assembly is the international association of hazzanim affiliated with Conservative Judaism. The CA was founded in 1947 to develop the profession of the hazzan, to foster the fellowship and welfare of hazzanim, and to establish a conservatory for hazzanim...
which teaches and publishes Jewish liturgy, music and songs.
Periodically Jewish music jumps into mainstream consciousness. An example of this is the reggae artist Matisyahu
Matisyahu
Matthew Paul Miller , better known by his Hebrew name and stage name Matisyahu, is an American Hasidic Jewish reggae and alternative rock musician....
.
Piyyut
A piyyut is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually designated to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious servicesJewish services
Jewish prayer are the prayer recitations that form part of the observance of Judaism. These prayers, often with instructions and commentary, are found in the siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book....
. Piyyutim have been written since Mishnaic
Mishnah
The Mishnah or Mishna is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah". It is also the first major work of Rabbinic Judaism. It was redacted c...
times. Most piyyutim are in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
or Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
, and most follow some poetic scheme, such as an acrostic
Acrostic
An acrostic is a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message. As a form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous...
following the order of the Hebrew alphabet
Hebrew alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...
or spelling out the name of the author.
Many piyyutim are familiar to regular attendees of synagogue services. For example, the best-known piyyut may be Adon Olam ("Master of the World"), sometimes attributed to Solomon ibn Gabirol
Solomon ibn Gabirol
Solomon ibn Gabirol, also Solomon ben Judah , was an Andalucian Hebrew poet and Jewish philosopher with a Neoplatonic bent. He was born in Málaga about 1021; died about 1058 in Valencia.-Biography:...
in 11th century Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. Its poetic form simply consists of rhyming eight-syllable lines, and it is so beloved that it is often sung at the conclusion of many synagogue services, after the ritual nightly saying of the Shema, and during the morning ritual of putting on tefillin
Tefillin
Tefillin also called phylacteries are a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during weekday morning prayers. Although "tefillin" is technically the plural form , it is loosely used as a singular as...
. Another well-beloved piyyut is Yigdal ("May God be Hallowed"), which is based upon the Thirteen Principles of Faith developed by Maimonides
Maimonides
Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn in Arabic, or Rambam , was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages...
.
Zemiros
Zemiros are Jewish hymns, usually sung in the Hebrew or Aramaic languages, but sometimes also in Yiddish or LadinoJudaeo-Spanish
Judaeo-Spanish , in Israel commonly referred to as Ladino, and known locally as Judezmo, Djudeo-Espanyol, Djudezmo, Djudeo-Kasteyano, Spaniolit and other names, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish...
. The best known zemiros are those sung around the table during Shabbos and Jewish holiday
Jewish holiday
Jewish holidays are days observed by Jews as holy or secular commemorations of important events in Jewish history. In Hebrew, Jewish holidays and festivals, depending on their nature, may be called yom tov or chag or ta'anit...
s. Some of the Shabbos zemiros are specific to certain times of the day, such those sung for the Friday evening meal, the Saturday noon meal, and the third Sabbath meal just before sundown on Saturday afternoon. In some editions of the Jewish prayerbook (siddur
Siddur
A siddur is a Jewish prayer book, containing a set order of daily prayers. This article discusses how some of these prayers evolved, and how the siddur, as it is known today has developed...
), the words to these hymns are printed after the opening prayer (kiddush
Kiddush
Kiddush , literally, "sanctification," is a blessing recited over wine or grape juice to sanctify the Shabbat and Jewish holidays.-Significance:...
) for each meal. Other zemirot are more generic and can be sung at any meal or other sacred occasion.
The words to many zemirot are taken from poems written by various rabbis and sages during the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
. Others are anonymous folk songs that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Nigun
Nigun refers to religious songs and tunes that are sung by groups. It is a form of voice instrumental music, often without any lyrics or words. Two examples of well known niguns (nigunim in Hebrew) are the Erev Shabbos Nigun, and Rebbe Nachman's Lecha Dodi Nigun, both of which can be found on well known video sharing sites. In the first case since the majority of the song is singing without words, it is called a nigun. In the second case, Lecha Dodi is a well-known song that all observant Jews sing on Friday night in Kabbalat Shabbat. There are a number of different tunes for the song, of which Rebbe Nachman's Lecha Dodi Nigun is one of the most well known.Pizmonim
Pizmonim are traditional Jewish songs and melodies with the intentions of praising God as well as describing certain aspects of traditional religious teachings. They are sung throughout religious rituals and festivities such as prayers, circumcisionBrit milah
The brit milah is a Jewish religious circumcision ceremony performed on 8-day old male infants by a mohel. The brit milah is followed by a celebratory meal .-Biblical references:...
s, bar mitzvah
B'nai Mitzvah
Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah are Jewish coming of age rituals. According to Jewish law, when Jewish boys reach 13, they become responsible for their actions and become a Bar Mitzvah . The age for girls is 12...
s, weddings and other ceremonies. Pizmonim are traditionally associated with Middle Eastern Sephardic Jews, although they are related to Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
' zemirot
Zemirot
Zemirot or Z'mirot are Jewish hymns, usually sung in the Hebrew or Aramaic languages, but sometimes also in Yiddish or Ladino. The best known zemirot are those sung around the table during Shabbat and Jewish holidays...
. The best known tradition is associated with Jews descended from Aleppo
Aleppo
Aleppo is the largest city in Syria and the capital of Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 2,301,570 , expanding to over 2.5 million in the metropolitan area, it is also one of the largest cities in the Levant...
, though similar traditions exist among Iraqi Jews
History of the Jews in Iraq
The history of the Jews in Iraq is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BCE. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and most historically significant Jewish communities....
(where the songs are known as shbaִhoth, praises) and in North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
n countries. Jews of Greek, Turkish and Balkan origin have songs of the same kind in Ladino, associated with the festivals: these are known as coplas.
The texts of many pizmonim date back to the Middle Ages or earlier, and are often based on verses in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. Many are taken from the Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
, while others were composed by poets such as Yehuda Halevi
Yehuda Halevi
Judah Halevi was a Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher. He was born in Spain, either in Toledo or Tudela, in 1075 or 1086, and died shortly after arriving in Palestine in 1141...
and Israel Najara
Israel ben Moses Najara
Israel ben Moses Najara was a Jewish liturgical poet, preacher, Biblical commentator, kabbalist, and rabbi of Gaza.- Biography :...
of Gaza. Some melodies are quite old, while others may be based on popular Middle Eastern music
Middle Eastern music
The music of Western Asia and North Africa spans across a vast region, from Morocco to Afghanistan, and its influences can be felt even further afield. Middle Eastern music influenced the music of India, as well as Central Asia, Spain, Southern Italy, the Caucasus and the Balkans, as in chalga...
, with the words composed specially to fit the tune.
Baqashot
The Baqashot are a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung for centuries by the Sephardic Aleppian Jewish community and other congregations every Shabbat morning from midnight until dawn. Usually they are recited during the weeks of winter, when the nights are much longer.The custom of singing Baqashot originated in Spain towards the time of the expulsion, but took on increased momentum in the Kabbalistic
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
circle in Safed
Safed
Safed , is a city in the Northern District of Israel. Located at an elevation of , Safed is the highest city in the Galilee and of Israel. Due to its high elevation, Safed experiences warm summers and cold, often snowy, winters...
in the 16th century. Baqashot probably evolved out of the tradition of saying petitionary prayers before dawn and was spread from Safed by the followers of Isaac Luria
Isaac Luria
Isaac Luria , also called Yitzhak Ben Shlomo Ashkenazi acronym "The Ari" "Ari-Hakadosh", or "Arizal", meaning "The Lion", was a foremost rabbi and Jewish mystic in the community of Safed in the Galilee region of Ottoman Palestine...
(16th century). With the spread of Safed Kabbalistic doctrine, the singing of Baqashot reached countries all round the Mediterranean and became customary in the communities of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Rhodes, Greece, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Turkey and Syria. It also influenced the Kabbalistically oriented confraternities in 18th-century Italy, and even became customary for a time in Sephardic communities in western Europe, such as Amsterdam and London, though in these communities it has since been dropped. By the turn of the 20th century Baqashot had become a widespread religious practice in several communities in Jerusalem as a communal form of prayer.
Jewish Prayer Modes
Jewish liturgical music is characterized by a set of musical modes. These modes make up musical nusachNusach
Nusach is a concept in Judaism that has two distinct meanings. One is the style of a prayer service ; another is the melody of the service depending on when the service is being conducted.-Meaning of term:Nusach primarily means "text" or "version", in...
, which serves to both identify different types of prayer, as well as to link those prayers to the time of year, or even time of day in which they are set. There are three main modes, as well as a number of combined or compound modes. The three main modes are called Ahavah Rabbah, Magein Avot and Adonai Malach. Traditionally, the Cantor (Hazzan
Hazzan
A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish cantor, a musician trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer.There are many rules relating to how a cantor should lead services, but the idea of a cantor as a paid professional does not exist in classical rabbinic sources...
) improvised sung prayers within the designated mode, while following a general structure of how each prayer should sound. Over time many of these chants have been written down and standardized, yet the practice of improvisation still exists to this day.
Secular Jewish music
Since Biblical times, music and dance have held an important role in many Jews' lives. Secular Jewish music (and dances) have both been influenced by surrounding GentileGentile
The term Gentile refers to non-Israelite peoples or nations in English translations of the Bible....
traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time.
Israeli music
Modern IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i music is heavily influenced by its constituents, which include Jewish immigrants from more than 120 countries around the world, which have brought their own musical traditions, making Israel a global melting pot
Melting pot
The melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...
. The Israeli music is very versatile and combines elements of both western and eastern music. It tends to be very eclectic and contains a wide variety of influences from the Diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...
and more modern cultural importation to Hassidic songs, Asian and Arab pop, especially Yemenite singers, and hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
or heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...
.
From the earliest days of Zionist settlement, Jewish immigrants wrote popular folk music. At first, songs were based on borrowed melodies from German, Russian, or traditional Jewish folk music with new lyrics written in Hebrew. Starting in the early 1920s, however, Jewish settlers made a conscious effort to create a new Hebrew style of music, a style that would tie them to their earliest Hebrew origins and that would differentiate them from the style of the Jewish diaspora of Eastern Europe, which they viewed as weak. This new style borrowed elements from Arabic and, to a lesser extent, traditional Yemenite and eastern Jewish styles: the songs were often homophonic (that is, without clear harmonic character), modal, and limited in range. "The huge change in our lives demands new modes of expression", wrote composer and music critic Menashe Ravina in 1943. "... and, just as in our language we returned to our historical past, so has our ear turned to the music of the east ... as an expression of our innermost feelings."
The youth, labor and kibbutz movements played a major role in musical development before and after the establishment of Israeli statehood in 1948, and in the popularization of these songs. The Zionist establishment saw music as a way of establishing a new national identity, and, on a purely pragmatic level, of teaching Hebrew to new immigrants. The national labor organization, the Histadrut, set up a music publishing house that disseminated songbooks and encouraged public sing-alongs (שירה בציבור). This tradition of public sing-alongs continues to the present day, and is a characteristic of modern Israeli culture.
Israeli folk
Termed in Hebrew שירי ארץ ישראל ("songs of the land of IsraelLand of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
"), folk songs are meant mainly to be sung in public by the audience or in social events. Some are children's songs; some combine European folk tunes with Hebrew lyrics; some come from military bands and others were written by poets such as Naomi Shemer
Naomi Shemer
Naomi Shemer was a leading Israeli songwriter hailed as the "first lady of Israeli song and poetry."-Biography:Naomi Sapir was born on Kvutzat Kinneret, a kibbutz her parents had helped found, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. In the 1950s she served in the Israeli Defense Force's Nahal...
and Chaim Nachman Bialik.
The canonical songs of this genre often deal with Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
hopes and dreams and glorify the life of idealistic Jewish youth who intend on building a home and defending their homeland. A common theme is Jerusalem as well as other parts of Eretz Israel. Tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
varies widely, as do the content. Some songs show a leftist or right-wing bent, while others are typically love songs, lullabies or other formats; some are also socialist in subject, due to the long-standing influence of socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
on Jews in parts of the Diaspora.
Patriotic folk songs are common, mostly written during the wars of Israel. They typically concern themselves with soldiers' friendships and the tragedy of death during war. Some are now played at memorials or holidays dedicated to the Israeli dead.
Klezmer
Around the 15th century, a tradition of secular (non-liturgical) Jewish music was developed by musicians called kleyzmorim or kleyzmerim by Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe. They draw on devotionalDevotional song
A devotional song is a hymn which accompanies religious observances and rituals.Each major religion has its own tradition with devotional hymns. In the West, the devotional has been a part of the liturgy in Roman Catholicism, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, and others, since...
traditions extending back into Biblical times, and their musical legacy of klezmer continues to evolve today. The repertoire is largely dance songs for weddings and other celebrations. They are typically in Yiddish.
Sephardic/Ladino
Sephardic music is the unique music of the Sephardic Jews. Sephardic music was born in medieval Spain, with cancionesSong
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
being performed at the royal courts. Since then, it has picked up influences from across Spain, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and various popular tunes from Spain and further abroad. There are three types of Sephardic songs—topical and entertainment songs, romance songs and spiritual or ceremonial songs. Lyrics can be in several languages, including Hebrew for religious songs, and Ladino.
These song traditions spread from Spain to Morocco (the Western Tradition) and several parts of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
(the Eastern Tradition) including Greece, Jerusalem, the Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. Sephardic music adapted to each of these locals, assimilating North African high-pitched, extended ululations; Balkan rhythms, for instance in 9/8 time; and the Turkish maqam
Arabic maqam
Arabic maqām is the system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music, which is mainly melodic. The word maqam in Arabic means place, location or rank. The Arabic maqam is a melody type...
mode
Musical mode
In the theory of Western music since the ninth century, mode generally refers to a type of scale. This usage, still the most common in recent years, reflects a tradition dating to the middle ages, itself inspired by the theory of ancient Greek music.The word encompasses several additional...
.
Mizrahi
Mizrahi music usually refers to the new wave of music in Israel which combines Israeli music with the flavor of ArabArab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
ic and Mediterranean (especially Greek) music. Typical Mizrahi songs will have a dominant violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
or string
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
sound as well as Middle Eastern percussion elements. Mizrahi music is usually high pitched. In today's Israeli music scene, Mizrahi music is very popular. A popular singer whose music typifies the Mizrahi music style is Zohar Argov.
Dancing
Deriving from Biblical traditions, Jewish dance has long been used by Jews as a medium for the expression of joy and other communal emotions. Each Jewish diasporicJewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
community developed its own dance traditions for wedding celebrations and other distinguished events. For Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, for example, dances, whose names corresponded to the different forms of klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
music that were played, were an obvious staple of the wedding ceremony of the shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
. Jewish dances both were influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. "Nevertheless the Jews practiced a corporeal expressive language that was highly differentiated from that of the non-Jewish peoples of their neighborhood, mainly through motions of the hands and arms, with more intricate legwork by the younger men." Additionally, in religious communities, members of the opposite sex do not dance together.
Preclassical, Classical, Romantic and 20th-Century composers
Jewish musicians in the Western European classical tradition have long debated the question of what is Jewish music. Most musicians of Jewish origin in the 19th century composed music that could not be considered Jewish in any sense, either by critics or by the musicians themselves. For example, Jacques OffenbachJacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
(1819–1880), a leading composer of opera and operetta in the 19th century, was the son of a cantor, and grew up steeped in traditional Jewish music. Yet there is nothing about his music which could be characterized as Jewish in terms of style, and he himself did not consider his work to be Jewish. As another example, Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
, the grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn was a German Jewish philosopher to whose ideas the renaissance of European Jews, Haskalah is indebted...
, continued to identify himself as a Jew, even though he was baptized as a Lutheran at the age of seven. Yet, while he occasionally draws inspiration from Christian sources (one of the themes in his second piano trio, opus 66, is the Lutheran doxology), there is nothing characteristically Jewish about any of his music. "Music written by Jews is not necessarily Jewish music", wrote Erich Werner in 1938 in a seminal essay on the subject in the journal "Musica Hebraica".
That said, there are nonetheless a number of composers who wrote music that they considered Jewish, even if stylistically there was nothing to tie their compositions to traditional Jewish music of liturgy or to the Eastern European klezmer tradition. The first, and one of the most important of these, was Salamone Rossi
Salamone Rossi
Salamone Rossi or Salomone Rossi was an Italian Jewish violinist and composer. He was a transitional figure between the late Italian Renaissance period and early Baroque.-Life:...
(1570–1630). As court composer in Mantua, Rossi was instrumental in the development of the Baroque trio sonata
Trio sonata
The trio sonata is a musical form that was popular in the 17th and early 18th centuries.A trio sonata is written for two solo melodic instruments and basso continuo, making three parts in all, hence the name trio sonata...
form. Rossi composed a song cycle called "The Songs of Solomon", which drew on Jewish liturgical and biblical texts.
Other composers who drew on Jewish subjects include
- Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote the oratorio ElijahElijah (oratorio)Elijah, in German: Elias, is an oratorio written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1846 for the Birmingham Festival. It depicts various events in the life of the Biblical prophet Elijah, taken from the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings in the Old Testament....
. While Mendelssohn never acknowledged that his choice of a topic was influenced by his Jewish origins, it is probable that his intimate familiarity with the biblical text came from his childhood. - Fromental HalévyFromental HalévyJacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...
was a well-known composer of opera in the second half of the nineteenth century. He drew occasionally on Jewish themes for his operas, most notably, La JuiveLa JuiveLa Juive is a grand opera in five acts by Fromental Halévy to an original French libretto by Eugène Scribe; it was first performed at the Opéra, Paris, on February 23, 1835.-Composition history:...
. - Giacomo MeyerbeerGiacomo MeyerbeerGiacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
, also a leading opera composer, arranged a number of liturgical songs, including a motet arrangement for double choir a capella of Psalm 91. - Gustav MahlerGustav MahlerGustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
used Klezmer-influenced motives in the third movement of his first symphonySymphony No. 1 (Mahler)The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany...
(though ostensibly imitating the sound of a local Moravian town band). - Arnold SchoenbergArnold SchoenbergArnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
composed a number of works on Jewish themes including Kol Nidre (chorus and orchestra), A Survivor from Warsaw (male chorus and orchestra), Psalm 130 “De Profundis”, Prelude to Genesis Suite (chorus and orchestra), and the opera Moses und Aron [Moses and Aaron], in three acts (1930–32, unfinished). - Leonard BernsteinLeonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
incorporated Jewish material into his symphonies no.1 (Jeremiah) and no. 3 (Kaddish).
The Jewish National Revival in Art Music
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries many Jewish composers sought to create a distinctly Jewish national sound in their music. Notable among these were the composers of the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folkmusic. Led by composer-critic Joel Engel, these graduates of the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories rediscovered their Jewish national roots, and created a new genre of Jewish art music. Inspired by the nationalist movement in Russian music, exemplified by Rimsky-Korsakov, CuiCésar Cui
César Antonovich Cui was a Russian of French and Lithuanian descent. His profession was as an army officer and a teacher of fortifications; his avocational life has particular significance in the history of music, in that he was a composer and music critic; in this sideline he is known as a...
and others, these Jewish composers set out to the "Shtetls" - the Jewish villages of Russia - and meticulously recorded and transcribed thousands of Yiddish folksongs. They then set these songs to both vocal and instrumental ensembles. The resulting music is a marriage between often melancholy and "krekhtsen" (moaning) melodies of the Shtetl with late Russian romantic harmonies of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff.
The Jewish national revival
Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
in music was not only in Russia. A number of Western European composers took an interest in their Jewish musical roots, and tried to create a unique Jewish art style. Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch
Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...
(1880–1959), a Swiss composer who emigrated to the United States, composed Schelomo for cello and orchestra, Suite Hebraique for violin and piano, and Sacred Service, which is the first attempt to set the Jewish service in a form similar to the Requiem
Requiem
A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead or Mass of the dead , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal...
, for full orchestra, choir and soloists. Bloch described his connection to Jewish music as intensely personal:
It is not my purpose, nor my desire, to attempt a 'reconstitution' of Jewish music, or to base my work on melodies more or less authentic. I am not an archeologist... It is the Jewish soul that interests me... the freshness and naiveté of the Patriarchs; the violence of the Prophetic books; the Jewish savage love of justice...
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...
(1892–1974) was one of the leaders of the French modernist school. As a child in Aix-en-Provence
Aix-en-Provence
Aix , or Aix-en-Provence to distinguish it from other cities built over hot springs, is a city-commune in southern France, some north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, in the département of Bouches-du-Rhône, of which it is a subprefecture. The population of Aix is...
, Milhaud was exposed to the music of the Provençal Jewish community. "I have been greatly influenced by the character" of this music, he wrote. His opera Esther de Carpentras draws on this rich musical heritage.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he migrated to the United States and became a film composer for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next...
(1895–1968), an Italian composer who immigrated to America on the eve of World War II, was strongly influenced by his Sephardic Jewish upbringing. His second violin concerto draws on Jewish themes, as do many of his songs and choral works: cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
s Naomi and Ruth, Queen of Sheba, and the oratorio The Book of Jonah, among others. Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a number of songs in Ladino, which was the language of Sephardic Jews.
Art Music in Palestine and Israel
The 1930s saw an influx of Jewish composers to British Colonial Mandatory Palestine Territory, later Palestine/Trans-Jordan and Palestine/Israel, among them musicians of stature in Europe. These composers included Paul Ben-HaimPaul Ben-Haim
Paul Ben-Haim was an Israeli composer. Born Paul Frankenburger in Munich, Germany, he studied composition with Friedrich Klose and he was assistant conductor to Bruno Walter and Hans Knappertsbusch from 1920 to 1924...
, Erich Walter Sternberg, Marc Lavri, Oeden Partos, and Alexander Uria Boskovitch. These composers were all concerned with forging a new Jewish identity in music, an identity which would suit the new, emerging identity of Israel. While the response of each of these composers to this challenge was intensely personal, there was one distinct trend to which many of them adhered: many of these and other composers sought to distance themselves from the musical style of the Klezmer, of eastern European Jewry, (this is notably also true of the chosen way Israel pronounces Hebrew, which specifically left out all European Jewish shibboleths in Hebrew accent) which they viewed as weak and unsuitable for the new national ethos. Many of the stylistic features of Klezmer and Yiddish were abhorrent to them. "Its character is depressing and sentimental", wrote music critic and composer Menashe Ravina in 1943. "The healthy desire to free ourselves of this sentimentalism causes many to avoid this...".
Perhaps the most radical in his search for a new (more Sefaradi) Jewish identity was Alexander Boskovitch. His Semitic Suite for piano, written in 1945, draws much from Arabic music: it is nonharmonic, almost homophonic. He uses repeated notes to imitate the sound of a Kanun.
From these early experiments a large corpus of original Israeli art music has been developed, much of it specifically seeking a return to the composers' roots in Jewish musical tradition. Notable among modern Israeli composers are
- Betty Olivero, composer in residence at Bar Ilan University. Olivero takes traditional Jewish melodies – both Ashkenazic and Sephardic – and sets them in complex, profoundly dissonant contexts. The result, surprisingly, is not something sounding ultramodern, but rather a natural extension of the folk traditions she draws on. Her work Serafim for soprano, clarinet, violin, cello and piano is a good example of this.
- Tsippi Fleischer, who has composed vocal works that merge contemporary Western compositional techniques with the modal, quartertone scales of Arabic music.
- Mark Kopytman, whose compositions draw heavily on both Eastern European Klezmer and Oriental Jewish sources.
- Yitzhak YedidYitzhak YedidYitzhak Yedid is an Israeli Australian composer of classical music and jazz pianist.-Biography:Yitzhak Yedid was born on September 29, 1971 in Jerusalem, Israel. His family immigrated from Syria. He studied at the Rubin Academy of Music and the New England Conservatory in Boston with Ran Blake...
, Israeli composer, strives to merge classical genres with free modern improvisation and Eastern and Jewish music styles, breaking out of defined frameworks to produce an original sound.
Non-Jewish Contributors to Jewish Music
A number of non-Jewish composers have adapted traditional Jewish music to their compositions. Some notable examples are:- Maurice RavelMaurice RavelJoseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
wrote Kaddisch for violin and piano, based on a traditional Jewish liturgical melody. - Max BruchMax BruchMax Christian Friedrich Bruch , also known as Max Karl August Bruch, was a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire.-Life:Bruch was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, where he...
was a German Protestant, though he is often mistakenly identified as a Jew, because of his famous arrangement, Kol Nidrei, of the Jewish Yom Kippur prayer Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra. Bruch also wrote a cycle of Hebrew songs for choir and orchestra, called Hebraeische Gesaenge. - Sergei ProkofievSergei ProkofievSergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
wrote Overture on Hebrew Themes, an arrangement of traditional Jewish folksongs for clarinet, string quartet, and piano. - Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri ShostakovichDmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
was profoundly influenced by Jewish folk music, and incorporated Jewish music in many of his compositions. Most notable are the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, the second piano trio, and the 13th symphony titled Babi Yar. - There are critics who identify Jewish elements in Beethoven's String Quartet in C♯ minor, Op. 131String Quartet No. 14 (Beethoven)The String Quartet No. 14 in C minor, Op. 131, by Ludwig van Beethoven was completed in 1826. About 40 minutes in length, it consists of seven movements to be played without a break, as follows:#Adagio ma non troppo e molto...
; however, there is no evidence that Beethoven was actually influenced by Jewish music when composing this quartet.
Jewish Rock & Pop Musicians
List of Jewish rock musicians :- Steven AdlerSteven AdlerSteven Adler is an American musician. He is best known as the former drummer of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s...
from Guns N' RosesGuns N' RosesGuns N' Roses is an American hard rock band, formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album... - Bob DylanBob DylanBob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
- Robbie RobertsonRobbie RobertsonRobbie Robertson, OC; is a Canadian singer-songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known for his membership as the guitarist and primary songwriter within The Band. He was ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time...
- Donald FagenDonald FagenDonald Jay Fagen is an American musician and songwriter, best known as the co-founder, lead singer, and the principal songwriter of the rock band Steely Dan ....
and Walter BeckerWalter BeckerWalter Carl Becker is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the co-founder, guitarist, bassist and a co-writer of Steely Dan.-Career:...
from Steely DanSteely DanSteely Dan is an American rock band; its core members are Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. The band's popularity peaked in the late 1970s, with the release of seven albums blending elements of jazz, rock, funk, R&B, and pop... - Jim SteinmanJim SteinmanJames Richard "Jim" Steinman is an American composer, lyricist, and Grammy Award-winning record producer responsible for several hit songs. He has also worked as an arranger, pianist, and singer...
from Meat LoafMeat LoafMichael Lee Aday , better known by his stage name, Meat Loaf, is an American hard rock musician and actor... - Lou ReedLou ReedLewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
from Velvet Underground - Leonard CohenLeonard CohenLeonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
- Beastie BoysBeastie BoysBeastie Boys are an American hip hop trio from New York City. The group consists of Mike D who plays the drums, MCA who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock who plays the guitar....
(band) - BeckBeckBeck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
- David Lee RothDavid Lee RothDavid Lee Roth is an American rock vocalist, songwriter, actor, author, and former radio personality. Roth was ranked nineteenth by Hit Parader on their list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Singers of All Time....
from Van HalenVan HalenVan Halen is an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California, in 1972. The band has enjoyed success since the release of its debut album, Van Halen, . As of 2007 Van Halen has sold 80 million albums worldwide and has had the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart... - Gene SimmonsGene SimmonsGene Simmons is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, singer-songwriter, actor, and rock bassist. Known as "The Demon", he is the bassist/vocalist of Kiss, a hard rock band he co-founded in the early 1970s.-Early life:...
and Paul StanleyPaul StanleyStanley Harvey Eisen , better known by his stage name Paul Stanley, is an American hard rock guitarist, singer, musician, painter and songwriter best known for being the rhythm guitarist and primary lead vocalist of the rock band Kiss. He is the writer or co-writer of many of the band's...
from KissKISS (band)Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,... - Eric BloomEric BloomEric Bloom is an American singer, songwriter and musician. He is best known as the main vocalist, and "stunt guitar" for the long-running band Blue Öyster Cult, with work on over 20 albums...
from Blue Öyster CultBlue Öyster CultBlue Öyster Cult, often abbreviated BÖC, is an American rock band, most of whose members first came together in Long Island, NY in 1967 as the band Soft White Underbelly... - Neil DiamondNeil DiamondNeil Leslie Diamond is an American singer-songwriter with a career spanning over five decades from the 1960s until the present....
- Carole KingCarole KingCarole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...
- Trevor RabinTrevor RabinTrevor Charles Rabin is a South African born musician, best known as a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for the British progressive rock band Yes from 1983–1994, and since then, as a film composer.- Early years :...
from Yes (band)Yes (band)Yes are an English rock band who achieved worldwide success with their progressive, art, and symphonic style of rock music. Regarded as one of the pioneers of the progressive genre, Yes are known for their lengthy songs, mystical lyrics, elaborate album art, and live stage sets... - Rob Tyner and Wayne KramerWayne Kramer (guitarist)Wayne Kramer is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer and film and television scorer....
from MC5MC5The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson... - Handsome Dick Manitoba from The DictatorsThe DictatorsThe Dictators are an American punk rock band formed in New York City in 1973. Critic John Dougan said that they were "one of the finest and most influential proto-punk bands to walk the earth." The Dictators are represented in the "Punk Wing" of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland, Ohio...
and MC5MC5The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson... - Joey RamoneJoey RamoneJoey Ramone was an American vocalist and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist in the punk rock band the Ramones. Joey Ramone's image, voice and tenure as frontman of the Ramones made him a countercultural icon.-Early life:Joey Ramone was born Jeffry Hyman to parents Noel and Charlotte Hyman...
from The Ramones - David JohansenDavid JohansenDavid Roger Johansen is an American rock, protopunk, blues, and pop singer, as well as a songwriter and actor. He is best known as a member of the seminal protopunk band The New York Dolls and also achieved commercial success under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter.-Early life:Johansen was born in...
and Sylvain SylvainSylvain SylvainSylvain Sylvain is an American rock guitarist, most notable for being a member of the New York Dolls.-Early years:...
from New York DollsNew York DollsThe New York Dolls is an American rock band, formed in New York in 1971. The band's protopunk sound prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era; their visual style influenced the look of many new wave and 1980s-era glam metal groups, and they began the local New York scene that later... - Gary GlitterGary GlitterGary Glitter is an English former glam rock singer-songwriter and musician.Glitter first came to prominence in the glam rock era of the early 1970s...
- Dee SniderDee SniderDaniel "Dee" Snider is an American singer-songwriter, screenwriter, radio personality, and actor. Snider is most famous for his role as the frontman of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister...
from Twisted Sister (band) - Carly SimonCarly SimonCarly Elisabeth Simon is an American singer-songwriter, musician, and children's author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records, and has since been the recipient of two Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Golden Globe Award for her work...
- Warren ZevonWarren ZevonWarren William Zevon was an American rock singer-songwriter and musician noted for including his sometimes sardonic opinions of life in his musical lyrics, composing songs that were sometimes humorous and often had political or historical themes.Zevon's work has often been praised by well-known...
- Ike TurnerIke TurnerIsaac Wister Turner was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, arranger, talent scout, and record producer. In a career that lasted more than half a century, his repertoire included blues, soul, rock, and funk...
- Randy NewmanRandy NewmanRandall Stuart "Randy" Newman is an American singer-songwriter, arranger, composer, and pianist who is known for his mordant pop songs and for film scores....
- The J. Geils Band
- PhishPhishPhish is an American rock band noted for its musical improvisation, extended jams, and exploration of music across genres. Formed at the University of Vermont in 1983 , the band's four members – Trey Anastasio , Mike Gordon , Jon Fishman , and Page McConnell Phish is an American rock band...
(band) - George GershwinGeorge GershwinGeorge Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
- Mark KnopflerMark KnopflerMark Freuder Knopfler, OBE is a Scottish-born British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977...
and David KnopflerDavid KnopflerDavid Knopfler is a British singer-songwriter, rhythm guitarist, pianist and cofounder of the critically acclaimed rock band Dire Straits....
from Dire StraitsDire StraitsDire Straits were a British rock band active from 1977 to 1995, composed of Mark Knopfler , his younger brother David Knopfler , John Illsley , and Pick Withers .Dire Straits' sound drew from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and came closest... - Peter HimmelmanPeter HimmelmanPeter Himmelman is a singer-songwriter from Minnesota, who formerly played in the band Sussman Lawrence.-Family life:He is Bob Dylan's son-in-law, being married to his daughter Maria Dylan...
- Jorma KaukonenJorma KaukonenJorma Ludwik Kaukonen Jr. is an American blues, folk, and rock guitarist, best known for his work with Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna.-Biography:...
from Jefferson AirplaneJefferson AirplaneJefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success.... - Herb AlpertHerb AlpertHerbert "Herb" Alpert is an American musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, or TJB. He is also a recording industry executive — he is the "A" of A&M Records...
- Jennifer Trynin
- Kenny GKenny GKenneth Bruce Gorelick , better known by his stage name Kenny G, is an American, adult contemporary and smooth jazz saxophonist. His fourth album, Duotones, brought him breakthrough success in 1986...
- Mick RonsonMick RonsonMichael "Mick" Ronson was an English guitarist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, arranger and producer. He is best known for his work with David Bowie, as one of The Spiders from Mars...
, guitarist of David BowieDavid BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s... - Paul KossoffPaul KossoffPaul Francis Kossoff was an English rock guitarist best known as a member of the band Free.Kossoff was ranked 51st in Rolling Stone magazine list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" -Early days:...
from FreeFree (band)Free were an English rock band, formed in London in 1968, best known for their 1970 signature song "All Right Now". They disbanded in 1973 and lead singer Paul Rodgers went on to become a frontman of the band Bad Company along with Simon Kirke on drums; lead guitarist Paul Kossoff died from a... - Paul DesmondPaul DesmondPaul Desmond , born Paul Emil Breitenfeld, was a jazz alto saxophonist and composer born in San Francisco, best known for the work he did in the Dave Brubeck Quartet and for penning that group's greatest hit, "Take Five"...
- Lenny KravitzLenny KravitzLeonard Albert "Lenny" Kravitz is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and arranger, whose "retro" style incorporates elements of rock, soul, R&B, funk, reggae, hard rock, psychedelic, folk and ballads...
- SlashSlash (musician)Saul Hudson , known by his stage name Slash, is a British-American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the former lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his later years with Guns N'...
from Guns n' RosesGuns N' RosesGuns N' Roses is an American hard rock band, formed in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, in 1985. The band has released six studio albums, three EPs, and one live album... - Andrew Dice ClayAndrew Dice ClayAndrew Dice Clay is an American comedian and actor who played the lead role in the film The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.Clay has been in several movies and has released a number of stand-up albums...
- Cass ElliotCass ElliotCass Elliot , born Ellen Naomi Cohen and also known as Mama Cass, was an American singer and member of The Mamas & the Papas. After the group broke up, she released five solo albums. Elliot was found dead in her room in London, England, from an apparent heart attack after two weeks of sold-out...
from The Mamas & the PapasThe Mamas & the PapasThe Mamas & the Papas were a Canadian/American vocal group of the 1960s . The group recorded and performed from 1965 to 1968 with a short reunion in 1971, releasing five albums and 11 Top 40 hit singles... - John ZornJohn ZornJohn Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
- Marc RibotMarc RibotMarc Ribot born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.His own work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.-Biography:Ribot was...
- Yo La TengoYo La TengoYo La Tengo, sometimes abbreviated as YLT, is an American alternative rock band formed in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1984. Since 1992, the lineup has consisted of Ira Kaplan , Georgia Hubley , and James McNew .Despite achieving limited mainstream success, Yo La Tengo has been called "the quintessential...
- Barbra StreisandBarbra StreisandBarbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
- Barry ManilowBarry ManilowBarry Manilow is an American singer-songwriter, musician, arranger, producer, conductor, and performer, best known for such recordings as "Could It Be Magic", "Mandy", "Can't Smile Without You", and "Copacabana ."...
- Bette MidlerBette MidlerBette Midler is an American singer, actress, and comedian, also known by her informal stage name, The Divine Miss M. She became famous as a cabaret and concert headliner, and went on to star in successful and acclaimed films such as The Rose, Ruthless People, Beaches, and For The Boys...
- Kinky FriedmanKinky FriedmanRichard S. "Kinky" Friedman is an American Texas Country singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain. He was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election...
- Arlo GuthrieArlo GuthrieArlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...
- Dave Bromberg
- Michael BloomfieldMike BloomfieldMichael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
- Paul SimonPaul SimonPaul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
- Art GarfunkelArt GarfunkelArthur Ira "Art" Garfunkel is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and actor, best known as being a member of the folk duo Simon & Garfunkel...
- David BuskinDavid BuskinDavid Buskin is a singer, songwriter, performer, author, playwright, jingle composer and girls’ basketball coach. He is well known for composing numerous television and radio commercials produced in the 1980s and 1990s. He won a Clio Award in 1983 for Just Watch Us Now, NBC's signature...
- Sammy Davis Jr
- Marvin HamlischMarvin HamlischMarvin Frederick Hamlisch is an American composer. He is one of only thirteen people to have been awarded Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and a Tony . He is also one of only two people to EGOT and also win a Pulitzer Prize...
- Mickey KatzMickey KatzMickey Katz , was an American comedian and musician who specialized in Jewish humor. He was the father of actor Joel Grey and grandfather of actress Jennifer Grey.-Family:...
- Paul ShafferPaul ShafferPaul Allen Wood Shaffer, CM is a Canadian musician, actor, voice actor, author, comedian, and composer who has been David Letterman's sidekick since 1982.-Early years:...
- Billy JoelBilly JoelWilliam Martin "Billy" Joel is an American musician and pianist, singer-songwriter, and classical composer. Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973, Joel has become the sixth best-selling recording artist and the third best-selling solo artist in the United States, according to...
- Jakob DylanJakob DylanJakob Luke Dylan is the lead singer and songwriter of the rock band The Wallflowers and is a son of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and Sara Dylan. He has also recorded two solo albums.-Personal life:...
, Rami Jaffe from Wallflowers - Geddy LeeGeddy LeeGary Lee Weinrib, OC, better known as Geddy Lee , is a Canadian musician, best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush...
from RushRush (band)Rush is a Canadian rock band formed in August 1968, in the Willowdale neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario. The band is composed of bassist, keyboardist, and lead vocalist Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson, and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart... - Susanna HoffsSusanna HoffsSusanna Lee Hoffs is an American vocalist, guitarist and actress. She is best known as a member of the all-female pop band The Bangles.-Early life:...
from The BanglesThe BanglesThe Bangles are an American all-female band that originated in the early 1980s, scoring several hit singles during the decade.-Formation and early years :... - Paula AbdulPaula AbdulPaula Julie Abdul is an American singer-songwriter, dancer, choreographer, actress and television personality.In the 1980s, Abdul rose from cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers to highly sought-after choreographer at the height of the music video era before scoring a string of pop music-R&B hits...
- Dan BernDan BernDan Bern is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, novelist and painter. His music is often compared to that of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs and Elvis Costello....
- Lucy KaplanskyLucy KaplanskyLucy Kaplansky is an American folk musician based in New York City. Kaplansky also has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University.-Biography:...
- Olivia Newton-JohnOlivia Newton-JohnOlivia Newton-John AO, OBE is a singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles and 14 of her albums have been certified gold by the RIAA...
- Sha Na NaSha Na NaSha Na Na is an American rock and roll group. The name is taken from a part of the long series of nonsense syllables in the doo-wop hit song "Get a Job", originally recorded in 1957 by the Silhouettes....
(band) - Manfred MannManfred MannManfred Mann was a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboardist, Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band...
- Marc BolanMarc BolanMarc Bolan was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist and poet. He is best known as the founder, frontman, lead singer & guitarist for T. Rex, but also a successful solo artist...
from T Rex - Neil SedakaNeil SedakaNeil Sedaka is an American pop/rock singer, pianist, and composer. His career has spanned nearly 55 years, during which time he has sold millions of records as an artist and has written or co-written over 500 songs for himself and other artists, collaborating mostly with lyricists Howard...
- Leslie WestLeslie WestLeslie West is an American rock guitarist, singer and songwriter.-Biography:Originally named Leslie Weinstein, West was born in New York City, grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey, and in East Meadow, Forest Hills and Lawrence. After his parents divorced, he changed his surname to West...
from Mountain (band)Mountain (band)Mountain is an American hard rock band that formed in Long Island, New York in 1969. Originally comprising vocalist and guitarist Leslie West, bassist Felix Pappalardi and drummer N. D. Smart, the band broke up in 1972 before reuniting in 1974 and remaining active until today... - Al KooperAl KooperAl Kooper is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears , providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and also bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to...
- Tasseomancy
External links
- London Jewish Male Choir - Perform wide range of Jewish music
- Jewish Sheet Music Archive
- Milken Archive of Jewish Music
- The Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive
- Jewish Music Research Center
- Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University Libraries
- Jewish Music Wiki
- shulmusic.org A collection representing the Anglo-German choral tradition, in sheet music and sound files
- The Jewish Music WebCenter
- Tavim.net (Hebrew site) - Chords and Sheet Music for Israeli Songs
- Jewish art songs for voice with violin or viola accompaniment.
- Music and the Holocaust Articles, images and recordings of music from 1933-1945.