Indiana University Press Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack

In Jewish Religious Music in Nineteenth-Century America: Restoring the Synagogue Soundtrack, Judah M. Cohen demonstrates that Jews constructed a robust religious musical conversation in the United States during the mid- to late-19th century. While previous studies of American Jewish music history have looked to Europe as a source of innovation during this time, Cohen’s careful analysis of primary archival sources tells a different story. Far from seeing a fallow musical landscape, Cohen finds that Central European Jews in the United States spearheaded a major revision of the sounds and traditions of synagogue music during this period of rapid liturgical change. Focusing on the influences of both individuals and texts, Cohen demonstrates how American Jewish musicians sought to balance artistry and group singing, rather than "progressing" from solo chant to choir and organ. Congregations shifted between musical genres and practices during this period in response to such factors as finances, personnel, and communal cohesiveness. Cohen concludes that the "soundtrack" of 19th-century Jewish American music heavily shapes how we look at Jewish American music and life in the first part of the 21st-century, arguing that how we see, and especially hear, history plays a key role in our understanding of the contemporary world around us. Supplemented with an interactive website that includes the primary source materials, recordings of the music discussed, and a map that highlights the movement of key individuals, Cohen’s research defines more clearly the sound of 19th-century American Jewry. Review Cohen's achievement here sets a high standard for historical musicology, engaging the archival record while contributing to the establishment of evidence-based criteria for identifying the Jewish in Jewish Religious Music--criteria that actively deconstruct inherited wisdom that has inhibited the scope of research agendas.--Jeremiah Lockwood "Musica Judaica" Occasionally an historical work provides the breadth and details of an era that forever changes our perceptions of that period. Judah Cohen's book accomplishes this feat for Jewish music in America in the nineteenth century.-- "AJL Reviews" The story Cohen tells by analyzing these musical works, their authors, underlying ideas, and envisaged practices is fascinating and thoroughly researched. . . . Cohen succeeds in his aim of chronicling this era in musical terms without requiring in-depth specialist music knowledge of the reader (p. 9). The author does not trail off in detailed musical analyses of individual compositions. Rather, he examines music publications as a whole, in designing a bigger picture of their genesis and history. He analyzes their scopes and paratexts, their authorship, their meaning for the performance and the liturgy, and their reception in Jewish communities. The generous use of illustrations, showing the original musical material rather than rewritten musical examples, gives an unaltered impression of the settings, layout, and presentation of the original works. A large number of quotations from primary sources, like the contemporary press and meeting minutes from community organizations, make this pioneering study a vivid reading. Unmuting the American Jewish nineteenth century, it is indeed an important contribution to American Jewish history and Jewish music studies.--Martha Stellmacher "H-Judaic" Review [This] account sheds considerable light on a dimly illuminated period of Jewish-American music, which now emerges in its full richness and complexity. Author: Mark Slobin, author of Chosen Voices: The Story of the American Cantorate From the Author Judah M. Cohen is the Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture and Associate Professor of Musicology at Indiana University Bloomington. He is author of The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor: Musical Authority, Cultural Investment and Through the Sands of Time: A History of the