Jewish music
Jascha Nemtsov is an internationally renowned expert on Jewish music and has been Professor for the History of Jewish Music at the Liszt University of Music in Weimar since 2013. His research projects, publications and public events cover all areas of Jewish music.
Recently Nemtsov’s textbook “Jewish Music: Introduction” was published in German. The textbook is written in a clear, comprehensible style and is aimed at university students as well as anyone interested in music and culture. The history of Jewish music appears here in its entire spectrum, its cultural and historical context and its close connection with other cultures and religions.
As in many other musical cultures, there are several major areas of Jewish music that are closely intertwined:
- Synagogue music – traditional religious music, some of which has been handed down orally to this day, with numerous regional variations
- Jewish folk music – orally transmitted vocal and instrumental secular music, also with numerous regional forms and features
- Jewish art music – highly professional, complex genres such as opera, sonata or string quartet, which are rooted in (European) high culture and at the same time contain elements of Jewish musical tradition
- Jewish popular music – songs, initially mainly in Yiddish, later in Hebrew, which originated at the end of the 19th century in Europe and North America and since the 1930s have also been created in Palestine and Israel. They have been disseminated both through publication and orally.
