Top musicologists and other scholars from Snunit, Avi Chai Foundation, and Hebrew University, among others, have a new website with an English version up and running: An Invitation to Piyut. Accroding to the site: “There are two archives at the core of the website. The central archive is a collection of piyutim and melodies. Here you can find piyutim divided into various categories and run a general search on all of the piyutim. Each piyut has two central “pages.” The first offers an in-depth look at the piyut, presenting different perspectives of background, commentary, and explanation. The second is a list of melodies, including a range of melodies and performances of the piyut. The second archive contains texts and melodies not classically defined as piyutim – such as selections from Psalms or traditional Jewish prayers. This category of the archive is necessary because there is a close functional relationship between these types of texts and melodies and the world of piyut, both aesthetically and in terms of practical traditional uses.”
You can explore, hear and read about this amazing collection of Jewish traditional music at:
http://www.piyut.org.il/english/