Idelsohn, Abraham Zevi

▪ Russian composer

born July 14, 1882, Felixberg, Latvia, Russian Empire

died Aug. 14, 1938, Johannesburg

      Jewish cantor, composer, founder of the modern study of the history of Jewish music, and one of the first important ethnomusicologists.

      Trained as a cantor from childhood, Idelsohn later studied music in Berlin and Leipzig. Before emigrating to Jerusalem in 1905, he was a cantor in Leipzig and Regensberg, Ger., and in Johannesburg. In Jerusalem he served as a cantor and in 1910 founded the Institute for Jewish Music. The previous year, funded by the Vienna Academy of Sciences, he had begun collecting from oral tradition the music of various European, Asian, and North African Jewish groups. The result was Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies, 10 vol. (1914–32). This work and the more than 1,000 recordings made by Idelsohn provided a basis for the first comparative study of Jewish biblical cantillation (intoned recitation) and demonstrated an underlying unity in the religious chants even among geographically widely separated groups. His studies, especially those of the chants of the Yemenite Jews, also led to his further research demonstrating the close relationship of Jewish and early Christian chants. He also did important early studies of the nature of the maqāmāt, the melodic frameworks used in Islāmic music.

      Idelsohn also composed the first Hebrew opera, Yiftaḥ (1922; “Jephthah”), which incorporates traditional melodies; an unfinished opera, Eliyahu (“Elijah”); and the song “Hava nagila” (“Come, Let's Rejoice”), a setting of his own text to a melody that he adapted from a Ḥasidic (a pietistic Jewish movement) melody. His books include Jewish Music in Its Historical Development (1929); Jewish Liturgy (1932); and Sefer ha-shirim, 2 vol. (1913–22; “Book of Songs”), the first Hebrew songbook published in Palestine.

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