Jewish Identities and Ideologies in Music

Jewish Identities and Ideologies in Music

Chair: Boaz Tarsi


Ruth Davis, Cambridge University
Ethnomusicology and Zionist Ideology in Pre-State Israel

In 1905, the Latvian cantor Abraham Zvi Idelsohn came to Jerusalem on a mission to rediscover the authentic sources of Jewish song. On this basis, he believed, Jewish song could be restored to its former biblical glory, thus contributing to the spiritual renaissance of the Jewish people in Eretz Israel. Cultural Zionist ideology likewise inspired the American Reform Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, founding president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to invite the Berlin comparative musicologist Robert Lachmann to establish an Archive of Oriental Music there in 1935. Lachmann’s insistence on giving equal priority to the neighbouring non-Jewish traditions resonated with Magnes’s fervent belief in both the ethical and political necessity to foster understanding between Jews and Arabs. After 1948, as Jews from Arab lands flowed into the new state of Israel, Lachmann’s vision was revived by his former disciple Edith Gerson-Kiwi in her recording projects aimed at documenting the incomers’ musical traditions.
In this paper I consider how successive generations of Jewish music scholars applied methods of comparative musicology to engage variously with prevailing trends in Zionist ideology; and how, in particular, Lachmann’s scholarly vision and methods were adapted to accommodate the new realities of Israeli statehood.

align=right> Don Harrán
The Levi Clan: Three Generations of Jewish Musicians in Renaissance Mantua

This paper focuses on Jewish musicians, mainly harpists, who, as members of the Levi family, were active over three generations in sixteenth-century Mantua: Abraham, otherwise known as Abramo dall’Arpa, appearing in court records from 1542 until his death in 1566; his son Daniel, who not only performed in the Mantuan Jewish theatrical troupe but may also be traced, around 1560, to the Hapsburg court in Vienna; and, in court records from 1566 to 1593, Daniel’s son Abramino dall’Arpa, praised along with his forebear Abramo, by a contemporary poet, for his remarkable talents as an instrumentalist. The documents will be reviewed for their musical and biographical content and their unusual data on Jewish-Christian relations, particularly as they concern the unrelenting pressure brought on the Levis, in everyday life, to save their souls by converting to Christianity.

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