Hebraeisch-orientalischer Melodienschatz, 09[E]: Der Volksgesang der osteuropaeischen Juden [The Folk Song of the East European Jews]

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This entry is part of an online exhibit entitled: 'Hava Nagila: From Idelsohn to Belafonte & Beyond,' prepared by Eva Heinstein with help from the JMRC staff. To view the exhibit in its entirety click on the link above.

This volume of HOM was also published in German. HOM Vol IX contains Jewish folk songs in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, and Ukranian. Each song is printed with text-underlay for the first stanza. Idelsohn's plan to publish the full texts with translation and commentary in a seperate volume was never materialized. This collection differs from other anthologies of East-European Jewish folk songs, in that the emphasis is on the structure of the music instead of the text. Musical considerations shaped Idelsohn's classification and order of presentation of the songs documented in Vol. IX. Idelsohn writes in the introduction: 'The method here pursued divides the songs primarily according to scale (minor, major etc.) and subdivides them following the various predominant characteristics within the scale.' This method of classification often makes it difficult to find specific songs, therefore Idelsohn includes an alphabetical list of the texts at the beginning of the volume, in lieu of a table of contents. The songs included in this volume were drawn form two primary sources: informants who sang for Idelsohn, and printed collections of Jewish songs.