On a Jewish musical Renaissance

Abstract

Daedalus Winter 2008 The title of this essay is best framed as a question: Did the Jews have a musical ‘renascence’ in the Renaissance? It is impossible to answer it without asking a host of others: What is meant by Renaissance? How valid is the term as a chronological or conceptual marker in present-day humanist scholarship? How does it apply to music? Is it relevant to Jewish scholarship–was there in fact a ‘Jewish Renaissance’? Does it include music composed by Jews? And even more fundamentally, what is ‘Jewish music’ and how does it differ, if at all, from ‘music composed by Jews’? That the literature contains no de1⁄2nitive responses to these admittedly trying questions dispenses me–to my relief– from wrestling with them here. But not completely: in order to continue, I shall have to come up with as many if not clear-cut, at least quick-cut, responses as reveal the assumptions behind the discussion. They are as follows: yes, for the sake of argument, let us agree that there was a Renaissance; and that it denotes some sort of ‘renewal’; and that thus construed, it pertains, in certain ways, to Jewish culture in the later 1⁄2fteenth to early seventeenth centuries; and that one can detect it in sacred and secular ‘art music,’ by which I mean, in the present case, music for two or more voices composed by Jews in Italy from the later sixteenth century on for use in the synagogue and often private Jewish or non-Jewish settings. Here is where the semantic problems begin: when written in Hebrew and meant for the synagogue or speci1⁄2cally Jewish celebrations (within the community or separate households), such music might rightly be called ‘Jewish art music.’ But when written in Italian and meant for nonreligious festivities in the courts, in public, or in the residences of the more affluent Jews, it should probably be called ‘art music by Jews, though not necessarily for Jews.’ Either variety is to be distinguished from the traditional types of Jewish song heard in the synagogue for reciting prayers or reading Scriptures. Nothing about them was ‘Renaissance’ or ‘artistic’; rather they perpetuated a medieval oral practice. Nor were the works of art music meant to replace them: their performance in the synagogue was occasional. We can glean evidence for a Jewish Renaissance in art music from two sources: Hebrew writings on music and the music itself. Their locus–until the later sevenDon Harran is Artur Rubinstein Professor Emeritus of Musicology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous books and has published widely in musicological and interdisciplinary journals on sixteenthand seventeenth-century Italian and Italo-Jewish musical topics. In 1999 he received the Michael Landau Prize for Scholarly Achievement in the Arts, and in 2006 was named Knight (Cavaliere) of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity. Don Harran