A Crossroads of Jewish Music Scholarship: A. Z. Idelsohn and the Publication of Jewish Music in its Historical Development

The Fifteenth World Congress Of Jewish Studies Jerusalem

Special panel (Plenary of Literatures, Languages and Arts Section) In collaboration with the Jewish Music Forum, USA

Assessing Abraham Zvi Idelsohn’s Legacy: Eighty Years after the Publication of Jewish Music in its Historical Development
5.8.09
Respondent: Prof. Edwin Seroussi

Summary:

In 1929, musicologist and composer Abraham Zvi Idelsohn published his major study Jewish Music in its Historical Development. Viewed today as a foundational work in its field, Idelsohn’s book attempted for the first time to bring together many fragments of Jewish musical knowledge into a single, grand English language narrative. Merging wide-ranging archival, textual and ethnographic research with analytical techniques acquired through his own education, Idelsohn attempted to give the Jewish people a clear sonic origin and epistemology, with its own consistent (if sometimes obscured) musical tradition. While Idelsohn’s treatise was in one sense a single voice among many, it nonetheless received wide coverage, succeeding at least metaphorically in giving Jewish sound a continuous, usable past for musical practice and thought in the present. In this paper, I will analyze the publication history of this work, from Idelsohn’s predecessor treatise Toldot HaNeginah HaIvrit, (1924) to his dealings with mainline publisher Henry Holt & Company, to the book’s reception in lay and scholarly Jewish music circles, and finally to its subsequent republications and canonization. In doing so, I will argue that Jewish Music in its Historical Development helped redefine the borders, and perhaps geographical center, of Jewish music scholarship.