For the author of works on Judaism, science, and contemporary society see Yehuda (Leo) Levi

Yehuda (Leo) Levi

Yehuda Levi was Rector and Professor of Electro-optics at the Jerusalem College of Technology. He is best known as the author of several books on Science and Judaism, and Judaism in contemporary society, as well as on physics.-Biography:...

Leo Levi (1912 - 1982) was an Italian musicologist

Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

He was the first to study the oral musical traditions of Italian Jewry. Grandson of a rabbi, Levi’s attempt to submit a Ph.d thesis at the University of Turin

University of Turin

The University of Turin is a university in the city of Turin in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy...

 on the music in Italian synagogues was thwarted by the rise to power of Fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 and the spread of anti-Semitism in Italy. He was arrested on two occasions during his university studies for subversive activities. A fervent Zionist, he emigrated to Palestine in 1936.

He returned to Italy after World War II, dedicating himself to the study of Italian-Jewish music. He collaborated with the Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare

Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare

The Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare is a scholarly center for music studies in Italy. It is housed on the premises of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome....

 at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia

Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia is one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, based in Italy.It is based at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, and was founded by the papal bull, Ratione congruit, issued by Sixtus V in 1585, which invoked two saints prominent in Western...

in Rome and with other Italian ethnomusicologists

Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...

 working in the field, such as Giorgio Nataletti

Giorgio Nataletti

Giorgio Nataletti was an Italian musicologist, the first director of the Ethnomusicological Archives at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome....

. He was an active part of the project of field recordings done by the RAI

RAI

RAI — Radiotelevisione italiana S.p.A. known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane, is the Italian state owned public service broadcaster controlled by the Ministry of Economic Development. Rai is the biggest television company in Italy...

(the Italian Radio and Television service) to collect and preserve traditional Italian music, the results of which are preserved in the Santa Cecilia archives.

Levi was a research fellow at the Jewish Music Research Centre of the Hebrew university in Israel. Some of his research is available on a 2001 CD entitled Italian Jewish Musical Traditions from the Leo Levi Collection (1954-1961); recording number AMTI CD 0102 of the Jewish Music Research Centre and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome. He is also the father of Natan Levi.

He died in Jerusalem in 1992.