Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack by Judah M. Cohen (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack by Judah M. Cohen Abigail Wood Judah M. Cohen. Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. 318 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000355 Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack opens with a bold mission: to restore both scholarly and musical attention to an eclectic but little-known repertory of mid- to late nineteenth-century synagogue music produced, published, and sung in the United States. Today, Cohen observes, cantors and scholars alike often casually dismiss this music as lacking musical quality, a poor imitation of better-known European counterparts. Recent scholarship on American Jewish musical practices has focused far more attention on the sound worlds of east European Jewish immigrants on the East Coast. Nevertheless, Cohen illustrates how, during the roughly six decades covered in this book, 1840–1900, German-speaking Jews in Cincinnati and the Midwest, together with their colleagues on the East Coast, undertook a vast array of musical activity, composing and performing within the synagogue and further afield and debating the appropriate styles and functions of Jewish music. Based on meticulous archival research, Cohen follows the careers of a number of cantors as they forge musical careers in Jewish America, negotiating [End Page 464] between their own desires for musical fulfilment, community needs, and the often-limited financial resources of their congregations. Via these case studies, the reader watches the emergence of the role of the professional cantor, whose function gradually shifts from a general-purpose prayer leader, teacher, and slaughterer, to become an elite (male) musical artist. Meanwhile, Cohen's account is structured around a series of substantial published collections of synagogue music, which attest to a huge volume of musical production catering to ever-changing tastes and practices. Even the monumental four-volume Zimrath Yah, published by cantors, including Samuel Welsch and Alois Kaiser, between 1871 and 1886 and comprising a full soundtrack for a liberal American Jewish liturgy, was quickly superseded by the 1897 Union Hymnal. Through these musical collections and the life stories of their creators, Cohen sheds light on little-known American Jewish practices and debates and, importantly, breaks down assumptions that have been taken for granted in previous research. He observes that while musical change and theological change have often been assumed to go hand in hand, during the nineteenth century, choral music was wielded by both Orthodox and Reform congregations to reinforce their theological positions. Across the theological spectrum, congregations debated the role of music in shaping decorum in services and grappled with whether choral singing by professionals or by children was superior to congregational singing, while finding ways to teach the congregation new melodies and encourage the participation of the younger generation. Rather than pitting new compositions against so-called "traditional" Jewish musical practice, Cohen notes that the latter was an option rather than a default. An "ethnic turn" in synagogue music was itself an innovation in the 1880s, linked to ideas of "ancientness" and self-exoticization prevalent in musical discourse at the time. Cohen also interrogates assumptions about the interrelation of Christian and Jewish musical practices. While he observes that hymn singing in Jewish communities mirrored neighboring Christian practices—and some cantors even urged the wholesale adoption of works of Christian choral music with minor changes to reflect theological difference—he urges caution about interpreting new musical practices only in terms of church influences. Though controversies continued throughout the century regarding the use of church repertory and musical styles and the employment of non-Jewish professional singers in the synagogue, Cohen notes that part singing was also a widely shared coterritorial musical practice that allowed American Jews to share in the sound worlds of their American compatriots, while also preserving links with the wider Germanophone community. While most of the book focuses on published musical repertory, perhaps equally important are the insights it offers into the then-nascent field of Jewish musical historiography. Particularly fascinating is the chapter focusing on the life and work of Gustav S. Ensel, a cantor, teacher, and musician born in Bavaria in 1827. While Ensel undertook much of...