On music and non-music in early Christian and Jewish writings

Abstract

In a groundbreaking monograph on The Music Libel against the Jews Ruth HaCohen deals with music and noise as a dichotomy of conceptual and compositional relevance to works written or performed by Christians and Jews from the Middle Ages onward. She pays special attention to the repercussions of the dichotomy in music of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. The present study adds a new dimension to the topic by tracing the oscillation between music and noise, or non-music, in two further domains: Latin writings of Christian music theorists and Hebrew writings from within the rabbinical literature. Leading theorists and rabbis from the fifth to seventeenth centuries corroborate the dichotomy as an ideational backdrop to their discussion of music and its evaluation. One question among those asked at the end of the study is the extent to which the dichotomy partakes of the ‘universality’ of notions common to the Judeo-Christian tradition.