Music and Jews

Abstract

It is a distinct pleasure to introduce this special issue of The Musical Quarterly devoted to the subject of European Jewry and the musical culture of Europe. I want to express my thanks to my friend and distinguished colleague Halina Goldberg for editing this issue of essays dealing with the engagement with musical culture by parts of the Jewish population, especially in German- and Polish-speaking Europe. As the authors in this issue make plain, the musical practices that emerged in the late eighteenth century became a factor in the evolution of Jewish ethnic, religious, and political identity, and domestic mores and entertainment within Jewish families throughout Central Europe. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, music blossomed as a civic activity in urban centers. It took the form of amateur performing societies, choral groups, and the beginnings of a sustained commercial public concert life. The post-Napoleonic period was one of rapid growth in musical instruction, instrument manufacturing, music publishing, and music journalism. It was also an era of censorship, the unintended consequence of which was to raise the status of music as a vehicle of public expression and private communication and as a basis for legal public assembly. Censorship of words and images was much easier than censorship of music alone. Music, after 1815, flourished as a social arena of freedom in a dominant context of unfreedom.