Synopses & Reviews
The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture examines the powerful but often overlooked presence of the organ in synagogue music and the musical life of German-speaking Jewish communities. Tina Frühauf expertly chronicles the history of the organ in Jewish culture from the earliest references in the Talmud through the 19th century, when it had established a firm and lasting presence in Jewish sacred and secular spaces in central Europe. Frühauf demonstrates how the introduction of the organ into German synagogues was part of the significant changes which took place in Judaism after the Enlightenment, and posits the organ as a symbol of the division of the Jewish community into Orthodox and Reform congregations. Newly composed organ music for Jewish liturgy after this division became part of a cross-cultural music tradition in 19th and 20th century Germany, when a specific style of organ music developed which combined elements of Western and Jewish cultures. Concluding with a discussion of the organ in Jewish communities in Israel and the USA, the book presents in-depth case studies which illustrate how the organ has been utilized in the musical life of specific Jewish communities in the 20th century.
Based on extensive research in the archives of organ builders and Jewish musicians, The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture offers comprehensive and detailed descriptions of specific organs as well as fascinating portraits of Jewish organists and composers. With an extensive companion website featuring full color illustrations and over 200 organ dispositions, this book will be eagerly read by performers, students, and scholars of the organ, as well as students and scholars in historical musicology and Jewish music.
Review
"This groundbreaking and engaged study is really two books in one: the story of modern Jewry's growing interest in the organ, combined with a fresh look at music in German Jewish culture. It's solid and satisfying on both counts."--Mark Slobin, Professor of Music, Wesleyan University, and author, Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World
"Not often for either the general or specialized reader does such a book appear, drawing for the first time a rich, authoritative and unrivalled picture of a musical culture distinct from yet close to the western mainstream. As Dr. Frühauf shows, why the organ appeared in the western Diaspora's synagogues is much clearer than why it appeared in Christian churches, and it forms the basis here for a wonderfully broad account of a society and its religious practices, music and composers. Focusing on the dominant German context -- with all that this involved, from the fruitful nineteenth century to the horrible 1930s -- itself contributes to many another topic of deep interest today."--Peter Williams, author of The Organ in Western Culture 750-1250
"With the elegance of both scholar and performer, and the insight garnered through years of archival study and hours at the organ console, Tina Frühauf opens new chapters in the history of Jewish music in modern Central Europe. This book makes a major contribution to studies of Jews and modernity, but no less challenges the reader to rethink the very nature of Jewish musical tradition before modernity. As cultural history, Frühauf's book deftly poses questions about Jewish identity and musical identity alike, where they meet and where they depart. Upon encountering the marvelous case studies in this book, readers may never again experience Jewish music in the same way."--Philip V. Bohlman, Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities and of Music, University of Chicago, and author, Jewish Music and Modernity
"The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture memorializes a forgotten part of human history and offers the reader a scholarly treatise on an unfamiliar aspect of the organ and its music."--The American Organist
"The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture is essential reading for students, performers and scholars of the organ and Jewish music. Certainly this sine qua non text sets the bar high for further research in this long-neglected field."--The Tracker
"An original and authoritative account of the history of the organ and its repertoire in German Jewish culture...The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture adopts a richly multi-faceted approach to its subject, combining thorough archival research with musical analysis, reception history, and sociological and ethnographic explorations into Jewish organ culture, and thus significantly contributes to our understanding of the ways German Jewish identities developed and transformed throughout the Diaspora before and after the mass emigration and exile of the early twentieth century."--Notes
"A highly informative book, rich in content and observations." --Musica Judaica
"Tina Fruhauf has been careful to cover this extensive and complex field in a methodical way." --The Diapason
"The parabola of the organ in Jewish history is closely followed in this book, but it is
not its only feature: the practical musician will find in it a thorough description of many
organ pieces, and suggestions for research into a new and sometimes totally unknown
repertoire. The composer and the musicologist will benefit from a number of hints
leading to the analysis and perhaps also the utilization of Jewish traditional liturgical
melodies; the scholar will enjoy a large mass of information about the composers,
the halakhic questions, the main features of hazanut and of cantillation. All this is due
to the deep knowledge that Tina Fruhauf has of Jewish liturgy and tradition." --Journal of Modern Jewish Studies
"Fruhauf provides not only illuminating footnotes, but an excellent bibliography and most important, a fine list of published sources for organ music." --Sacred Music
Review
"This groundbreaking and engaged study is really two books in one: the story of modern Jewry's growing interest in the organ, combined with a fresh look at music in German Jewish culture. It's solid and satisfying on both counts."--Mark Slobin, Professor of Music, Wesleyan University, and author, Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World
"Not often for either the general or specialized reader does such a book appear, drawing for the first time a rich, authoritative and unrivalled picture of a musical culture distinct from yet close to the western mainstream. As Dr. Fruhauf shows, why the organ appeared in the western Diaspora's synagogues is much clearer than why it appeared in Christian churches, and it forms the basis here for a wonderfully broad account of a society and its religious practices, music and composers. Focusing on the dominant German context -- with all that this involved, from the fruitful nineteenth century to the horrible 1930s -- itself contributes to many another topic of deep interest today."--Peter Williams, author of The Organ in Western Culture 750-1250
"With the elegance of both scholar and performer, and the insight garnered through years of archival study and hours at the organ console, Tina Fruhauf opens new chapters in the history of Jewish music in modern Central Europe. This book makes a major contribution to studies of Jews and modernity, but no less challenges the reader to rethink the very nature of Jewish musical tradition before modernity. As cultural history, Fruhauf's book deftly poses questions about Jewish identity and musical identity alike, where they meet and where they depart. Upon encountering the marvelous case studies in this book, readers may never again experience Jewish music in the same way."--Philip V. Bohlman, Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of the Humanities and of Music, University of Chicago, and author, Jewish Music and Modernity
About the Author
Tina Frühauf is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and Editor at Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale in New York. In addition to her works as a scholar, she is an organist and church musician. Her German and English publications include articles in the
Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy and
Orgel International, numerous book chapters and encyclopaedia contributions on the German-Jewish music culture, organs and organ music, the piano and the violin.
Table of Contents
1. The Organ, Jewish Music, and Identity
2. Jewish "Curiosities": The Organ in Judaism Before 1800
The Jewish Literature of Early Modernity
Pictorial Sources of Different Cultural and Religious Provenance
Meshorerim as the Forerunners of Organ Accompaniment
The Synagogues of Prague and Venice
3. The Organ as a Jewish Religious Response to Modernity
From Liturgical Reforms to a New Musical Identity
The Synagogue Organ in the Context of Organ Building Traditions
Intermezzo: Sharing the Console--The Synagogue Organist
The Synagogue Organist in the Framework of Christian Traditions
Organists at the New Synagogue in Berlin
The Impact of the Organist Question
4. Organ Music in Jewish Communities
From Lewandowski to Schalit: The Stylistic Development of Jewish Organ Music
Departure and Destruction: Organ Music in the "Spiritual Ghetto"
5. The Aftermath of Emigration
Limitations in the "Land of Opportunity"
The Organ in Israeli Culture--A Bridge between East and West
6. Between Assimilation and Dissimilation: The Jewish Community in the Course of Modernity
Notes
Bibliography
Index--Names
Index--Places