Passport to Jewish Music Its History, Traditions, and Culture

Subjects:

• The Arts » Ethnomusicology
• Multicultural Studies » Jewish Studies

Reviews:

• ...all of the essays are concise and well written and, highly accessible. A broad spectrum of readers will find this work useful.
  —Choice
• This work fulfills overwhelmingly the promise of its title, being an exhaustive examination of the history, form and meaning of Jewish musical traditions. Passport to Jewish Music takes the reader beyond the potentially pedantic historical delineation to a wealth of information on "tradition and history, liturgy, and folklore, custom and artistry." For that reason it stands as a potential reference work not only in music, but in ethnography, religion, and biography as well. Highly recommended for academic libraries, for collections of music, religion and Jewish studies.
  —Notes
• Irene Heskes, the seemingly indefatigable bibliographer and promoter of Jewish music study, provides a sampling of the fruits of "several decades of dedicated study and scholarly labors in the field of Jewish music,"(p.ix). The volume contains a collection of newly compiled essays and preexistent lectures, chapters, journal articles, book reviews, and prefaces, arranged systematically to cover the diverse terrain of Jewish music. .../For the newcomer to Jewish music scholarship(to whom these writings seem mainly directed),the volume is particularly useful for its brief biographies and assessments of those who are fundamental to the field.
  —
  Music Reference Services Quarterly

Table of Contents:

• Documenting the Heritage
• A Duty of Preservation and Continuity: Collectors and Collections of Jewish Music in America
• Abraham Z. Idelsohn and Gershon Ephros: Creative Connection
• Builders of Sacred Bridges: Scholars and Studies in Jewish Music
• 
  Bible, Liturgy, and the Cantorial Art
• Jewish Music and Biblical Heritage
• An Historical and Bibliographical Perspective on Jewish Liturgical Music in the Settled Areas of Eastern Europe to 1900
• The Golden Age of the Cantorial Art
• Melodies of Prayer: The Jewish Liturgical Calendar
• 
  The Musical Heritage of Sephardic and Oriental Jewry
• Judeo-Spanish Moroccan Songs
• Three Important Collections of Sephardic Music
• Sephardic Music Conference in Jerusalem
• Sephardic Traditions and Mediterranean Styles
• The Music of Oriental Jewry
• 
  Music of Mysticism and Piety
• The Mystics: Poet-Bards of the Liturgy
• The Music of Hasidism: Melodies of Spiritual Ecstasy
• Collections of Hasidic Music
• 
  The Yiddish Musical World of Eastern Europe
• Music and Yiddish: Folksong Heritage
• Yiddish Musical Theater: Its Origins in Europe
• Russian Nationalism and Jewish Music
• 
  The Holocaust Era
• The Musical Legacy of the Holocaust
• 
  America
• Three Hundred Years of Jewish Music in America
• 
  Music of Zion and Israel
• Hope and the Man: Hatikvah and Naphtali Herz Imber
• Song and the Modern Return to Zion
• The Inspiration of Israeli Composers
• Musical Festivities in Israel
• 
  Composers and Compositions
• Reflections on Creativity and Heritage: [Salamone Rossi and His Era
• Meyerbeer, Halevy, Offenbach: The 19th Century
• Arnold Schoenberg: A 20th-Century Man
• Bloch, Milhaud, Castelnuovo-Tedesco
• An Emigre Sampler: Toch, Zeisl, Wolpe, Weill
• Leonard Bernstein
• Commissioning of Jewish Music
• Some Thoughts on American Popular Song Writers: Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Arlen]
• Scripture as Creative Inspiration
• 
  Women
• Miriam's Sisters: Jewish Women and Liturgical Music
• Afterword
• Index