Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity

Musicians should be aware of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity. According to their mission statement, the Center is:
"A non-profit educational institution in both the United States and Israel, the Center functions as a global fellowship of creative and performing artists, scholars and benefactors committed to evolving the dynamic national Jewish culture envisioned by Zionist philosopher Ahad Ha'am. To preclude the fossilization of Jewish culture, the Center stimulates and facilitates the creation of serious new cultural works from a Jewish perspective and the dissemination of the resulting artistic expression in respected public venues, thereby broadening the horizons of Jewish culture and ensuring an ongoing Jewish contribution to universal civilization."
Lots of artists are participating in Israel and the US. For more information see:
http://www.jewishcreativity.org/home.htm

World of the Piyut in English

Top musicologists and other scholars from Snunit, Avi Chai Foundation, and Hebrew University, among others, have a new website with an English version up and running: An Invitation to Piyut. Accroding to the site: "There are two archives at the core of the website. The central archive is a collection of piyutim and melodies. Here you can find piyutim divided into various categories and run a general search on all of the piyutim. Each piyut has two central “pages.” The first offers an in-depth look at the piyut, presenting different perspectives of background, commentary, and explanation. The second is a list of melodies, including a range of melodies and performances of the piyut. The second archive contains texts and melodies not classically defined as piyutim – such as selections from Psalms or traditional Jewish prayers. This category of the archive is necessary because there is a close functional relationship between these types of texts and melodies and the world of piyut, both aesthetically and in terms of practical traditional uses."
You can explore, hear and read about this amazing collection of Jewish traditional music at:
http://www.piyut.org.il/english/

Happy 10th Anniversary JMWC !!

The Jewish Music Web Center is celebrating 10 years online this month! My first research bibliography and organized list of Jewish websites appeared in February, 1997. I went live with the www.jmwc.org domain name the following February-- making this our 10th anniversary year. In 1997, there were fewer than 75 websites devoted to Jewish music. Today, there are hundreds. The astounding growth of the Internet has allowed connections to people devoted to Jewish music all over the world.

Thank you ALL for a wonderful 10 years!

Yours,

Judy
--Boston, MA

Jewish Musicians Remembered

Much information from Isaachar Fater's book on Jewish musicians in Poland between the World Wars is now available through the Internet. There is a list of Jewish musicians who worked and lived in Poland between the two world wars. http://www.zchor.org/fater/musicians.htm

Two New Discographies of Jewish Music

Julian Futter wrote: Dr Rainer Lotz, who was behind the 11 CD set "Vorbei" - Beyond recall, the survey of Jewish recordings in the Nazi era, has just released a discography of Jewish recordings in German speaking countries. "Discographie der Judaica-Aufnahmen". This book covers 78rpm recordings made from 1901 up to 1960. It is complimentary to Spottswood since Spottwood only covers recordings made in the USA. It is nearly 600 pages long and covers more than 400 performers. Covering all aspects of Jewish life, culture, religion and anti-semitism it therefore also includes entries for Thomas Mann, Ze'ev Jabotinsky and many of the leaders and functionaries of the 3rd Reich. Among other performers there are full details for S Kwartin, J. Rosenblatt, Julius Guttmann and many others. Although entirely in German, the material is so well laid out that a knowledge of German is not necessary to be able to make full use of it. It costs 60 Euros and can be obtained directly from him at Birgit Lotz Verlag, Jean Paul Str 6, 53173 Bonn, Germany email: disc@lotz-verlag.de

Tomasz Lerski in Warsaw has produced an extraordinary discography and history of the Jewish owned Syrena record label. Among the hundreds of artists who recorded for this label, before and after the First World War, were Belf's orchestra, Aaron Lebedeff, Sirota, David Oistrakh, Moses Kussevitsky, Wladyslaw Szpilman (the subject of Polanski's "The Pianist") and pretty much anyone who recorded in Poland. It is copiously illustrated and includes a biographical dictionary containing nearly 900 entries. However unless you can read Polish much of the information will be hard to decipher. This book has been an incredible labour of love and is an absolutely invaluable tool for any serious student of Jewish recordings and culture in Poland. It cost about 75 Euros It can be obtained direct from Mr Lerski at Blekitna 83, 04-663 Warsaw Poland or Rokosowska 7/5,02-348 Warsaw Poland. His email is tomasz.lerski@post.pl

Center for Jewish History opens NEW joint catalog in 2007

The Center for Jewish History officially declared opening of a new joint catalog (for all 5 partners) through the Center's official website www.cjh.org This new catalog currently has records for the holdings of the library and archival collections of the Partners, which include YIVO, Yeshiva University Museum, Leo Baeck Institute, American Sephardi Federation, and the American Jewish Historical Society. Here is a link to the new catalog: http://aleph.cjh.org:81/F

7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval

The 7th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, ISMIR 2006, will be held at the Fairmont Empress Hotel in Victoria, Canada, from Sunday October 8th to Thursday October 12th, 2006.

The annual ISMIR Conference is the first established international forum for those involved in work on accessing digital musical materials. It reflects the tremendous growth of music-related data available either locally or remotely and the consequent need to search this content and retrieve music and musical information efficiently and effectively. http://ismir2006.ismir.net/

Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University Libraries

Located in the Wimberly Library at Florida Atlantic University's Boca Raton, Florida campus, the Judaica Sound Archives has grown, since its inception in 2002, into a center for the collection and preservation of Judaica sound recordings. Its unique and rapidly expanding website (www.fau.edu/jsa) allows browsers to search their 78 rpm database by artist or song title, hear the recorded works of prominent artists, and learn more about the program to rescue recorded Jewish music. The JSA's collection includes Yiddish theater, Israeli folk, cantorial, and Sephardic music. Their goal is to be as inclusive as possible. Access to all of the digitized recordings in the JSA’s collection is possible through dedicated “research and listening stations” in the Wimberly Library. Off-site “research and listening stations” are planned for the future. The JSA gratefully accepts phonograph recordings of Yiddish, Hebrew and Sephardic music (both secular and religious) for inclusion in its collection. For further information call Nathan Tinanoff, Director, at 561-297-2207.

WorldCat.org Now Available

OCLC, the central catalog organization of most major college, university and public libraries, announces the release of the new WorldCat.org Web site.

This site---and a downloadable WorldCat search box you can easily add to your Web site---opens the complete WorldCat database to the public, not just the smaller data subsets utilized by Open WorldCat partner sites such as Google, Yahoo! Search and others. WorldCat.org builds on the success of OCLC’s Open WorldCat Program that has elevated the visibility of library materials on the open Web since the summer of 2003.

The main attraction of the new site is the WorldCat search box. Web users can now search the entire WorldCat database with the method most familiar to them: simple keywords. As in Open WorldCat, each linked result leads to a "Find in a Library" information page. From there, users can enter geographic information such as a zip or postal code, receive a list of nearby libraries that own the item, and link right to a library's online catalog record to initiate circulation activity or access electronic content directly. Users can also create their own WorldCat account and add book reviews, table-of-contents information and notes to many WorldCat items, helping to personalize their library search experience.

From WorldCat.org, any Web user or organization can also easily download and install the free, WorldCat search box to their personal or commercial Web page, allowing even more people to discover library content through WorldCat. Libraries and other groups inside and outside the OCLC cooperative are encouraged to add the box to their sites. ... the ability to search for library materials to as many other sites as possible will help increase the awareness of libraries as primary sources of reliable information and helpful personal assistance.

In terms of music searching, the WorldCat catalog includes books, names of journals, 78s, LPs, CDs, DVDs, sheet music, scores and musical anthologies that are held by many libraries in the US, Canada, Europe and other places. To try the new WorldCat search box and download the box to your own Web site, visit the site at http://worldcat.org.

Jewish National and University Library Digitized Books includes Song Books

The Jewish National and University Library's Digitized Books Repository continues to grow and now contains 340 titles of rare and out-of-print books.
Among the items added this week:
mi-zimrat ha-arets : American national songs in Hebrew / [translated by Gerson Rosenzweig] (New York, 1898) which contains the songs: "America, or My country tis of thee" (le-artsenu mizmor shir), "Columbia, the gem of the ocean (adom, lavan u-tekhelet), and "The Star spangled banner" (degel ha-kokhavim), along with notes for singing them in Hebrew.

The Digital Repository can be accessed via the Library homepage at:
http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/eng/digibook.html
or directly at:
http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/books/html/bk1946517.htm
It may be noted that this software to view the items works in Internet Explorer, but won't work with Mozilla or Firefox browsers.

Jim Loeffler Explains

Jim Loeffler, a professor of Jewish history at the University of Virginia, and the director of the Jewish Music Forum, explains the origins of the song "Hava Nagila". You can read about it online at http://hillel.myjewishlearning.com/culture/Music/IsraeliMusicTO/IsraeliFolkMusic/Hava.htm

New Additions to Mahler Archive Online

Teng-Leong Chew and James L. Zychowicz have announced that the following articles have been added to the Mahler Archives:

From Symphonic Poem to Symphony: The Evolution of Mahler's First Symphony
by James L. Zychowicz
Naturlaut 4(3): 2-7, 2005
http://mahlerarchives.net/archives/symp1.html

Mahler's Sketches for the Tenth Symphony
by Steven D. Coburn
Naturlaut, 4(3): 13-18, 2005
http://mahlerarchives.net/archives/symp10.html

Mahler's Sixth Symphony and the Challenge of a Critical Edition: A Cautionary Tale
by James L. Zychowicz
Naturlaut 4(4):2-7, 2006
http://mahlerarchives.net/archives/symp6.html

Mahler's Sixth Symphony in Context: What the History of Minor-key Symphonies Can Tell Us about Mahler's Decision about Movement Order
by Stephen D. Chakwin
Naturlaut 4(4):8-11, 2006
http://mahlerarchives.net/archives/symp6.html

American Performances of Mahler's Sixth Symphony
by Mary Wagner
Naturlaut 4(4):13-16, 2006
http://mahlerarchives.net/archives/symp6.html

Gustav Mahler's Sixth Symphony: Toward a Critical Discography
by Steven Vasta
Naturlaut 4(4):19-20, 2006
http://mahlerarchives.net/archives/symp6.html

Bruckner and Mahler
by Bruno Walter
Naturlaut 4(3): 9-11, 2005
http://mahlerarchives.net/archives/mahleretal.html

Brown University Launches Online Yiddish Sheet Music Collection

Brown University has launced a Yiddish Sheet Music Collection as part of its Center for Digital Initiatives. So far, it's a work in progress... they've digitized and catalogued about 200 pieces from holdings of around 2000 pieces of Yiddish sheet music. The project is impressive for ease of use, featuring both browsing and searching capabilities. The librarian who has catalogued this is Rosemary Cullen of the John Hay Library, featured in an article in the Forward on March 24 . The music is available for you to enjoy (non-commercially) online, and there are lots of rewarding images of the stars of yesteryear from the Yiddish stage . Go to the Center for Digital Initiatives, at http://dl.lib.brown.edu. Toward the bottom of the screen in the bottom navigation bar, click on "Collections". You will see many interesting digital collections. Toward the bottom of the page is the icon for the Yiddish Sheet music. Click on the picture and it will take you to the "home" screen of the Yiddish sheet music collection. At this time, the "search" and the "browse" are active. In the search area you will have "basic" and "advanced". where you can search. Congratulations to Rosemary and thanks to Brown for launching this!

Harvey Sheldon Jewish American Music Video Research Library at UPenn

If you haven't already noticed, the Unviersity of Pennsylvania has a finding aid for its Harvey Sheldon Jewish American Music Video Research Library. This is "part of the University of Pennsylvania Library's Judaica collections, which is one of the largest and most distinguished in the world. In particular, the Sheldon collection complements Penn's reknown Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Music Archive". This has VHS and DVD formats which include works by renowned Jewish composers and performances by some of America's outstanding singers. There is an entire section devoted to Broadway/Hollywood Musicals composed by Jewish Composers and lyricists , or performers and arrangers, ranging from such works as Annie Get Your Gun to Showboat.
http://www.library.upenn.edu/cajs/sheldon.html
Even if you can't make it to UPenn, your local public library may have many of the same items. It's an interesting mix and speaks to the increasing recognition of Jewish composers' contributions to American music in the twentieth century.

Michael Lukin Catalogues the Dov Noy Collection at JNUL

Congratulations to flautist Michael Lukin on the completion of the Song Index to the Dov Noy Collection in the Jewish National University Library (JNUL) in Jerusalem. This event will be of world wide interest to those who love Yiddish and Hebrew songs. The project involved meticulous cataloging that allows a searcher to find individual songs within a large number of Yiddish and Hebrew song anthologies and other works in this collection. Each song is searchable in the vernacular including keyword, title and author (composer and lyricist) searching. In addition, the incipit of the song, that is, the opening lines, or in some cases, some line of the refrain which may be more identifying to the song, are included in the record. Searchers may try typing in their title or even just a word of the title (keyword) to find which volumes this song may be in. The incipits are included as an "alternate title field". The item record will also indicate which anthology the song comes from in the signature field. There is also a genres and origins fields, so there are geographic breakdown, sometimes to the village level, for searching song origins. Broader and narrower fields of geography are not available, but keyword searching may be able to pick up some of the broader geographic areas. The host item gives the bibliographic location (such as microform or in a printed book). There are over 13,400 individual songs indexed in this marvelous new research tool, including items from the Cahan book from YIVO, the Mlotek series published by Tara, the Hebrew University anthologies and much more. You can also "browse title" which will give a searcher all the versions of one song and the places they are published. Nice. Yes, Very Sweet.
To access the Song Index: First go to the Jewish National University Library Catalog:
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/eng/aleph500
At the Basic Search screen, use the pull down menu under "Select Database" (it's the top box, on the left side).
Choose either Music: Yiddish Songs Index or Music: Hebrew Songs Index
It's better to search in Hebrew and Yiddish script on your computer. Special thanks to Gila Flam for hosting my visit to the library.

Jewish National Library in Jerusalem Digital Idelssohn

The Jewish National Library in Jerusalem has worked the miracle of digitizing, among other works, the 10-volumes of the Abraham Zvi Idelssohn Thesaurus of Oriental Hebrew Melodies, first published in 1923. Idelssohn, known as the father of Jewish musicology, participated nearly a century ago in field recording work in then Palestine. He recorded Jews and and non-Jewish residents of the area, taking meticulous notes both of speech, education and background of the informants, and transcribing into notation their songs from the wax cylinders her made there. From his field work and other research, he produced a ten-volume monumental study which became the basis of musicology of the various Jewish musics from throughout the world, both sacred and secular. Now, this marvelous resource of Jewish music is available online from the JNUL website. http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/books/html/bk_all.htm

Leo Smit Foundation

The Leo Smit Foundation has a website dedicated to Dutch composer Leo Smit, who was murdered in a concentration camp in the second world war because of this Jewish origins. The website has a biography, a discography, a list of works, and some information on events of music by Leo Smit held at the Uilenburger Synagogue in Amsterdam.
http://www.leosmitstichting.nl/eng/index.htm

Folk Music Index

The Folk Music Index online is a fabulous on-line resource for tracking down some of those elusive folk songs you may be seeking. Although it says it's an index to recordings, it does include at least some print anthologies, as well. This resource also has several links to other good sources. http://www.ibiblio.org/folkindex/index.htm

Jewish Music Available through Smithsonian Folkways

Smithsonian Folkways music available for download online... The complete catalog of Jewish recordings on the Folkways label, seems to be available through:
http://www.folkways.si.edu/search/SearchResults.aspx?BrowseBy=genre&Param=Judaica
The site allows you to listen to small excerpts of most tracks, and to order the material on cassette or cd. These samples will allow people to know what they may wish to purchase and get a taste for the sound of the music... also to see "what's in the catalog" in the way of Jewish music

Jack Gottlieb on LOC site

Jack Gottlieb wrote the book, "Funny, It Doesn?t Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood.? At http://www.loc.gov/locvideo/gottlieb/, you can see and hear a talk he gave on September 20 at the Library of Congress. He plays and sings examples of American music, Hebrew prayer melodies, and music from the Jewish theater, to illustrate his thesis that they are not coincidentally similar.

I Hear America Singing

The Music Division of the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the launch of a new Web site, I Hear America Singing (IHAS), a portal to the Library's music and performing-arts collections available at http://www.loc.gov/ihas/ The Library of Congress has holdings of many famous American Jewish composers and performers, including Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, which will eventually be included in this collection IHAS.... (For more information about current online exhibits.... see the JMWC biographies at http://www.jmwc.org/jmwc_biography.html#b) for more on IHAS see entries ...

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I Hear America Singing integrates the collections, commissions and live concerts of the Library of Congress, allowing users to discover the Library's music and performing-arts collections through a single gateway on the Web. The site brings together thousands of materials digitized from the Library's vast collections of sheet music, sound recordings, moving images, manuscripts, photographs, and oral histories, along with essays by Library staff and other leading researchers in the performing arts. It showcases the world-renowned tradition of live performing arts at the Library by featuring cybercasts of new concerts and offering a wide selection of historic concerts from the archives, including premieres of important works of contemporary classical music. It makes education a vital component by cybercasting performing arts-related symposia and panels held at the Library and making them available to users. I Hear America Singing will also become a "virtual community" for scholars, musicians, and music aficionados. Researchers will be able to comment online on the materials presented and share their own conclusions and insights about them. Content appealing to the K-12 community of teachers and students will be added in future releases. The debut release of I Hear America Singing offers the following special features: *Selections from jazz legend Gerry Mulligan's collection at the Library of Congress, including his previously unreleased oral autobiography, original scores and manuscripts, and recordings *"Life in Nineteenth-Century Ohio," a capsule example of how music reflects social history based on the lively musical life of Cincinnati a century and a half ago *"Patriotic Melodies," which features the stories behind of some of America's most important national songs *Walt Whitman's poem "I Hear America Singing," with an interpretation by the Library's poetry specialist and a reading of the poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins *A collection of historical sheet music published from 1800 to 1922 Forthcoming additions to I Hear America Singing will include concerts performed at the Library of Congress, including specially commissioned pieces and cybercasts; Civil War sheet music; and African-American popular music from the early twentieth century. Please submit any questions you may have about this Web site to the Library of Congress's Music Division at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-perform.html

International Archive of Jewish Music

Burton A. Zipser, Director. Located in Southfield, Michigan, the mission of the IAJM is to discover, collect, preserve, and disseminate information about music for adult choirs and instrumental groups of varying sizes.

The International Archive of Jewish Music primarily is concerned with choral works of Jewish music. The Archive is part of a recognized non-profit. As of the end of 2001, over 1100 choral compositions are included in the choral section of the Archive. The Archive has also created a database of composers of Jewish music. There are over 1626 names in that database, with approximately 60% being cantors. Music has been acquired through contributions from composers, as well as discounted purchases from publishers' lists. Three collections have been obtained in either microfilm or xerox-flow versions and these are being catalogued. Because the Archive also has a performance "arm", it will be possible to present concerts of the music, and to work in cooperative efforts with publishers and composers to create recorded versions of the music which can be a further benefit to the composer or his/her estate.
All inquiries should be directed to: Burton A. Zipser
The International Archive of Jewish Music
c/o Oakland Performing Arts, Inc.
17333 W. Ten Mile Rd. Suite B
Southfield, MI 48075-2950
E-mail: zipmusic@bignet.net
Phone: 248-552-0025
Fax: 248-552-0027