Friday March 5 2010
9:30 A.M. to noon.

We invite you to join us at our next Jewish Music Forum event, which will
be held on March 5, 2010, at Center for Jewish History. Prof. Mark Slobin of
Wesleyan University and Dr. Mark Kligman of Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion will present a lecture entitled “Sacred and Secular Music
Texts in Modern Times.” We wish to extend a special thank you to our
co-sponsors for this event, the Working Group on the Jewish Book at Center for
Jewish History. The entire 2009-2010 Jewish Music Forum is a project of the
American Society for Jewish Music, an affiliate of the the American Jewish
Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History.

“Sacred and Secular Music Texts in Modern Times”

With Professor Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University and Dr. Mark Kligman,
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Co-sponsored by the Working Group on the Jewish Book at Center for Jewish
History.

March 5, 2010
9:30 A.M. – Noon

All events are FREE and open to the public.

Manuscripts containing music in Jewish contexts are significantly rare,
prior to 1750 there are less than 25 notations. By 1750 and onwards notation
of Jewish liturgical music, and later
non-liturgical music, becomes a growing phenomenon. The Eduard Birnbaum
Collection of Jewish Liturgical manuscripts, in the Klau Library of Hebrew
UnionCollege–Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, is the largest
collection of contains 65% of all known manuscripts of Jewish music prior to
1850. Mark Kligman will discuss the various music styles found with in these
manuscripts and show a significant degree of secular influence in the 18th
century. With the developments of Haskalah synagogue music changed
significantly, through recorded example of the music in this collection Kligman
will discuss the important changes of synagogue music in the 19th century.

In “Yiddish Theater and Popular Music: Manuscript and Print Sources”
Professor Mark Slobin will summarize his work on early twentieth-century Yiddish
popular music, from both Europe and the US, based on manuscript sources
held at YIVO, and sheet music editions published in New York’s Lower East
Side during the immigrant era. The manuscripts serve as information about the
interaction of music and theater as well as performance practice in a
largely improvisatory music theater system. Slobin will examine how sheet music
folio bundles integrate iconography, song text, and music style. Finally,
issues of Americanization and commercialization of European genres, themes,
and styles will be explored.

And our next event of the 2009–2010 season:

March 26, 2010 – 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Center for Jewish History
“In a Land Large as an Apple Tree’: Wolpe’s Avant-Garde Music,
Pedagogy, and Pacifist Zionism in 1930’s Palestine”

Dr. Brigid Cohen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Respondent: Dr. Michael Beckerman, New York University