A Brief Look on Jewish Music

by

Robert Raede

Jewish music , as the name says, it is the music of Jews that got its existence thousands of years ago. Initially ancient Jews purposely used the music for religious services, but later on the music became common on all important occasions, both religious and secular. The sound and rhythm of this music depends on the origins of the Jewish composers. Jewish music is diverse in nature which includes historical, liturgical and non-liturgical kinds of music. Religious music being Jewish music s earlier segment was very much popular at the first and second Solomon s temple. These religious music activities began to break up during the middle ages, since the Hebrews started to focus on landmark music. It afterwards took place to be an art and popular music of Israel. The history of religious Jewish music was highly focused on the cantorial, synagogue, and the Temple music from Biblical to Modern times.

The early periods of Jewish music comprised of several brilliant musicians. The first ever remarkable performer who caught the attention of Jews was Salamone Rossi (1570-1630). He was the foremost musician in ancient times to compose a collection of choral motets in Hebrew for the synagogue. Followed by him the other well known musician who came up with splendid notes was Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). Fromental Halevy, Jacques Offenbach, Joel Engel, Ernst Bloch, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, are some of the other outstanding composers who happened be the pillar stones in promoting Jewish music. These musicians never played the music, rather they lived on music. Most of these ancient musicians were highly concerned in conveying patriotic and religious music. Hence Jewish music once played a major role in building people s religious and patriotic feel, which later led Hebrew rulers to ban the music in countries like Babylon and Persia. Some of the most noticed modern Israeli composers are Chaya Czernowin, Betty Olivera, Tsippi Fleisher, Mark Kopytman, and Yitzhak Yedid.

Jewish music was both instrumental and vocal. In ancient days, singing was marked by responsorial, antiphonal and refrain forms. Both singing and dancing were accompanied by music instruments; thereby either of the two could take place simultaneously. Clarinets are considered to be the leading melodic instruments in Jewish music. Using melodic, modal and rhythmical materials a very typical sound in folk and other non-religious music can be gathered, and hence these instruments are commonly used in Jewish music. Other instruments in Jewish music include trumpet (hasosra), and ram s or goat s horn (shofar).

There are also very important noticeable works by non-Jew composers in the Jewish music. Several popular musicians from various countries are getting impressed by Jewish music and therefore looking forward to excel in this kind of music.

The author of this article has expertise in

Jewish music

. The articles on

Jewish

reveals the author s knowledge on the same. The author has written many articles on

Soul

as well.

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