Jewish Music Articles

Annotated references to interesting Jewish music articles on other websites.

• Josh Horowitz wrote an excellent article on Staygers, the system of Jewish prayer modes. Compare this with the maqam system of Arabic music.
• An outline of the different streams within Jewish music.
• Jewish Heritage Online features an article on the musical and cultural significance of Kol Nidrei. They provide some sound samples as well.
• Paul Vernon wrote an article on early Jewish records.
• Sam Weiss explains the history of the Chad Gadya and Ma Nishtana songs.
• Interesting series of articles, sketching the development and history of Jewish liturgy.
• Compilation of Encyclopedia articles explaining Jewish Liturgical Music.
• Review by George Robinson of the Mayer Davis CD 'Shabbat for Starters'. Review of Lorin Sklamberg's CD The Zmiros Project.
• An article on the 1997 conference on German-Jewish Liturgical Music, that took place at JTS. The article sketches the special charm and history of this disappearing tradition. Marc Howard wrote some more informal notes on the same topic, discussing the music of Louis Lewandowski and Salomon Sulzer. Leonard Lehrman reviewed a concert that was part of the JTS conference.
• German article outlining the history of synagogue music.
• An article on Francesco Spagnolo's CD with ancient Italian chazzanut.
• Bob Cohen explains what the traditional style of klezmer is all about.
• Very interesting article on Joseph Guzikow, the earliest well-documented klezmer musician. Part of Rainlore's World of Music, a site with many reviews of Klezmer CDs.
• Saul Berman (Yeshiva University) wrote an interesting study on Kol Isha, and so did Mendel Shapiro.
• Akiva Zimmermann wrote a Hebrew study on the Halachical rules involved in using a tuning fork.
• Israel Schneider wrote a study on what Jewish Law has to say about copyright.