Internationale Studiedag
Donderdag 22 oktober – vrijdag 23 oktober 2009
Studiedag in het Engels, i.s.m. AMUZ, in het kader van
het Joods CultuurFestival, een initiatief van de Provincie Antwerpen
The geographical dispersion of the Jewish people
throughout the centuries made its culture a true treasure trove of influences
from the entire world. This diasporic existence resulted in various localized
cultural modes and customs, the Ashkenazi (from the Rhine to Russia), the
Sephardic (Jewish-Arabic culture around the Mediterranean Sea) and specific
circles within, for example, India and Yemen. This variety is also found in
music. In this colloquium experts will highlight the various traditions in
Jewish music. We will return to the source of Jewish religious music and then
explore the old Sephardic and Ashkenazi musical tradition. By means of several
concrete examples, the lectures will explore the mutual influences between the
Jewish and the classical European musical tradition.
THURSDAY 22 OCTOBER 2009
@ University of Antwerp, Rodestraat 14 (auditorium R.013), 2000 Antwerpen
19:00 Keynote Lecture Joshua Jacobson (Northeastern University)
JEWISH MUSIC: WHAT IS THAT?
The definition of “Jewish Music” is to a great extent dependent on the nature of Jewish identification. Is “Jewish” a religion? A culture? A race? A nation? Prof. Jacobson will investigate what “Jewish Music” has meant to composers and critics, Jew and non-Jew, friend and foe.
Joshua R. Jacobson holds a Bachelors degree in Music from Harvard College, a Masters in Choral Conducting from the New England Conservatory, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Jacobson is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Northeastern University, where he served nine years as Music Department Chairman and six years as the Bernard Stotsky Professor of Jewish Cultural Studies. He is Visiting Professor of Jewish Music at Hebrew College. He is also the founder and director of the Zamir Chorale of Boston, a world-renowned ensemble, specializing in Hebrew music. He has conducted workshops on choral music for various groups, including the American Choral Directors Association, and has guest conducted a number of ensembles, including the Boston Pops Orchestra, the Bulgarian National Symphony and Chorus, the New England Conservatory Orchestra and the Boston Lyric Opera Company. He has also written articles on various aspects of choral music, and compositions and arrangements that have been published and performed throughout the world. In 1989 he spent four weeks in Yugoslavia as a Distinguished Professor under the auspices of the Fulbright program. In 1994 he was awarded the Benjamin Shevach Award for Distinguished Achievement in Jewish Educational Leadership from Hebrew College. Prof. Jacobson is past President of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Choral Directors Association. He is the conductor and host of the PBS film, Zamir: Jewish Voices Return to Poland. His book, Chanting the Hebrew Bible: The Art of Cantillation, published by the Jewish Publication Society in 2002, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. In 2004 the Cantors assembly presented Prof. Jacobson with its prestigious “Kavod Award.”
THURSDAY 22 OCTOBER 2009
@ AMUZ, Kammenstraat 81, 2000 Antwerpen
20:00 Introduction to the concert by Ensemble Lucidarium
21:00 Concert Lucidarium Ensemble
AIN NEUE LID: WHEN YIDDISH WAS YOUNG
Last year the Lucidarium ensemble impressed the AMUZ audience with
their repeatedly awarded concert programme La istoria de Purim. This
season these excellent musicians are back with a new production that
will carry you back to the cradle of the so-called ‘Yiddishkeit’. On
the programme are poetic and musical traditions from the 16th-century
Ashkenazi Jews who lived in German-speaking areas of Europe. Piquant
humour, biting satire and contemplative moments: even in those days
these elements were an essential part of the Yiddish culture. In the
most lively and moving way, Lucidarium again knows how to revive a
forgotten repertoire for a 21st-century audience.
Lucidarium specializes in medieval and early Renaissance music. Depending on the requirements of each project, the ensemble employs a varied formation, uniting from four to twelve of Europe’s finest early music specialists. Each programme is the fruit of a long period of research and preparation in various fields, resulting in a different sonority for each programme: a mixture of voices and instruments which permits a recreation of the medieval soundscape, in all its vitality, with the freedom in execution which comes from a solid knowledge of musical style and historical background. From its beginnings, this combination of meticulous preparation and creativity, which has opened up new perspectives in historical performance practice, has won the group both popular and critical acclaim while participating in the most important international early music festivals.
Gloria Moretti - voice
Viva Biancaluna Biffi - voice & viola d’arco
Enrico Fink - voice & narrator
Marco Ferrari - recorder, dulcian, bagpipe & double flute
Massimiliano Dragoni - hammer dulcimer & percussion
Elisabetta Benfenati - renaissance guitar
Avery Gosfield - recorder, pipe, tabor & artistic direction
Francis Biggi - viola da mano, lute, cetra & artistic direction
Concert tickets: cat.1: € 15 / € 12 - cat.2: € 12 / € 10
+32 (0)3 229 18 80 (Monday - Friday: 10:00-13:00 & 14:00-17:00)
Book concert tickets online
FRIDAY 23 OCTOBER 2009
@ AMUZ, Kammenstraat 81, 2000 Antwerpen
09:30 Doors
10:00 Welcome - Vivian Liska (Institute of Jewish Studies / University of Antwerp)
10:05 Lecture "Defending Salomone Rossi: The Transformation and Justification of Jewish Music in Renaissance Italy" - Joshua Jacobson (Northeastern University)
Four hundred years ago a new practice was introduced into several synagogues in northern Italy: artistic choral singing. While this innovation was welcomed by some congregants, others were bitterly opposed. In 1622 the liberal rabbi Leon Modena wrote an eloquent defense of polyphony, which was included as the preface to a stunning publication: thirty-three Hebrew motets composed for the synagogue by Salamone Rossi Hebreo. This publication was the first of its kind ever to appear in print, and would remain unique for two hundred years.
Joshua R. Jacobson, one of the foremost authorities on Jewish choral music, is Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Northeastern University and Acting Director of Hebrew College’s School of Jewish Music. He is also founder and director of the Zamir Chorale of Boston. His many musical arrangements, editions and compositions are frequently performed by choirs around the world. He is the conductor and host of the PBS film, Zamir: Jewish Voices Return to Poland. His book, Chanting the Hebrew Bible: The Art of Cantillation, was published by the Jewish Publication Society in 2002.
11:05 Break
11:15 Lecture"Jewish Music and Musicians in the Renaissance" - Daniel Jütte (Universität Heidelberg)
Jewish musicians achieved an astonishing success in Italian Renaissance music. As early as the beginning of the 15th century, Jews can be found as music instructors and dancing masters or instrumentalists. These musicians did not make Jewish (sacred) music. Rather they offered profane music for a mainly gentile public. Reconstructing their musical practice shows that it enabled intense contact between non-Jews and Jews. The talk also deals with the impact that the emergence of the Ghetto had on Jewish performers and, ultimately, on Jewish music itself.
Daniel Jütte, M.A., studied history and musicology at the universities of Zuerich and Heidelberg. In 2007/2008 he was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He is currently working on his Ph.D. thesis at Heidelberg University. His main areas of interest include German and Italian Jewry from the early modern to the modern period. He has published extensively on topics such as Jews and music, but also on Jewish history of science in the early modern period. Daniel Jütte is a regular contributor to major German-language newspapers, such as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
12:15 Break
12:30 Recital by Benjamin Müller
13:00 Lunch Break
14:00 Lecture "Ayn Lid Banign: Renaissance Jews and the Sung Poetry Tradition" - Avery Gosfield & Francis Biggi (Ensemble Lucidarium), with musical illustrations by Enrico Fink (Ensemble Lucidarium)
Even if the Jews’ participation in the musical and cultural life of
Renaissance Europe has been well documented, very few actual
compositions by Jewish composers, or music specifically destined for
the Jewish community (apart from Shlomo Rossi’s albeit impressive
output, the dances tunes found in Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro’s dance
manuals and a few other exceptions) have come down to us. However, next
to these rare musical sources, there exists a repertoire proving that
the Jews enjoyed a rich and varied musical life: dozens of song
collections written in Hebrew characters have survived. However,
although there is abundant evidence that this poetry was performed
vocally - references to a melodic model, indications in the text
itself, or a metric structure that is typically sung - these sources
are devoid of any musical notation. They contain a wide-range of
pieces, including Hebrew character transliterations of the greatest
German-language hits of the era, translations of Italian epic poetry
into Jewish German, Purim plays written in Giudeo-Italian, a
breathtaking Hebrew translation of a Serafino Acquilano strambotto, and
devotional (and satirical) songs reflecting the Jewish experience.
While in many cases, a clear melodic model has survived, others call
for educated guesswork, often working between historical sources and
the oral tradition. Of undeniable cultural and historic and aesthetic
importance, their performance presents a series of challenges, not
always unsurmontable, to the 21st century performer.
Avery Gosfield was born in Philadelphia. After receiving her diploma from Oberlin Conservatory, she moved to Amsterdam, where she studied the recorder with Walter van Hauwe at the Sweelinck Conservatory. Her interest in medieval music brought her to Basel, where she specialized in the history and performance practice of fipple flutes, in particular the double flute and the pipe and tabor. She has performed in most of the important European early music festivals, and has given numerous stages throughout Europe, Israel and South America, notably at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Centre de Musique Médiévale de Paris.
Francis Biggi was born in Carrara. Co-founder of Alia Musica and Ars Italica, two of the most influential Italian medieval groups of the 19801s, he is considered a protagonist in the development of the Italian interpretative school. He has played with several early music ensembles, such as: the Boston Camerata, The Ferrara Ensemble, Micrologus, Daedalus, and Hesperion XX; and is the first person to have received a diploma in medieval lute at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Francis Biggi has published various articles concerning the medieval lute and Italian music of the 14th and 15th centuries.
15:00 Closing Remarks - Bart Demuyt (AMUZ)
15:05 Closing Drink
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www.joodscultuurfestival.be
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