Musica Judaica, JewishEmancipation and MosesMendelssoh

by

Mehmet Okonsar



Discography by Mehmet Okonsar



J.S. Bach "Die Kunst der Fuge"
All CD's available at amazon.com and (partly) at cdbaby.com

Summary Of Musica Judaica - Jewish Music Introduction

Straight forward information about Jewish Music and songs, its main types.



J.S. Bach "Musikalische Opfer"



F. Liszt: "modern" works


J.S. Bach "Well-tempered Clavier"


Recital: "Live at Salt Lake City"


J.S. Bach The Goldberg Variations


Piano Solo Improvisations: "Shadowy Arcade"

All CD's can be auditioned entirely and freely at their respective pages. Click on the images.


Judaic tunes are without question the songs and also melodies that belong to the Hebraic people which in turn have progressed as time passes in the incredibly long duration of Israeli History.

In quite a few instances, Judaic melodies are certainly faith based, non secular tunes while in other times, they are actually of extra-religious style.

The rhythm-structure as well as music of Hebraic tunes change genuinely dependent about the roots associated with the Judaic music composer and also the period of time throughout that the musical creation was basically penned.

As Velvel Pasternak informs, "The importance of popular music throughout the life that belong to the Hebraic most people is definitely observed practically at the beginning of Genesis... [musicians are] mentioned among three fundamental jobs... Songs had been seen as one must have inside everyday living, as one enhancing as well as enriching complement of human existence."

The history of religious Hebraic popular music spans the evolution of cantorial, synagogal, as well as Salomon's Temple melodies through Biblical to Modern times.

The earliest synagogal songs had been dependent on the same system used throughout the Temple of Jerusalem. According to the Mishna, the regular Salomon's Temple orchestra consisted of twelve musical instruments, and also a particular choir of twelve male singers.

One particular variety of musical instruments had been branded to the ancient Israelites, though they are certainly not included throughout the regular orchestra that belong to the Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem: the "uggav".

Though researchers do not completely agree what precisely the "Uggav" was, a few are convinced that the widely known interpreter Unkelus who translated scriptures into Aramaic, as well as other biblical historians are correct explaining that this musical instrument had been the pan flute or panpipes.

Following the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem as well as the subsequent diaspora that belong to the Israeli people, popular music has been initially banned inside Babylon and even Persia.

This law had an exception on Sabbath (i.e. the Chabat), during that, Judaic people have been required to sing together with their family, later, virtually all restrictions have been relaxed. As it is definitely recorded in Psalm 137; "Our tormentors [the Babylonians] asked of us, sings us one associated with the tunes of Zion... How shall we sing the Lord's song...?."

Jewish music started to take shape with the liturgical poems: "piyyutim". The songs may have preserved one few key phrases within the reading of Scriptures that recalled melodies right from the Salomon's Temple itself (Ashkenazim Jews named this official tune the "trope") nonetheless, generally it echoes the tones and even rhythms, within each country in addition to inside each time period, within that Jews lived, not by merely borrowing the tunes more getting within the tonality on those local tunes had been designed.

Faith based Hebraic Tunes throughout the twentieth century changed profoundly. It seems they have widened covering the gamut starting from Shlomo Carlebach's "nigunim" to Debbie Friedman's Hebraic activist and feminist popular music genres.

Velvel Pasternak has got committed on paper the majority of the later part of the twentieth century, acting as a particular conservationist as well as classifying just what had been one extremely unwritten custom. In the 1970s, Abie Rottenburg, Avrohom Fried, Mordechai Ben David, as well as Israeli boys choirs such as London "Pirchei" of Yigal Calek gained fame.

Most of Hassidic Hebraic melodies are certainly performed by men due to non secular restrictions on men hearing women sing. In the 1980s, "Tofa'ah" was basically the 1st women's traditional music group as well as it has got paved the road with regard to Hassidic Hebraic feminine performers.

One particular large amount of popular music created by the Hassidic Jews is certainly aimed toward mentoring spiritual as well as ethical traditions and even principles. The vocals of these kinds of tunes are usually either throughout English or Hebrew, ordinarily working with important phrases straight from the Judaic prayerbook.

Many of present-day "Hazzanim" are members of the Cantors Assembly that teaches as well as publishes Israeli liturgy and melodies.

Sporadically Israeli music and songs jumps into general population attention. Certainly one of this is definitely the reggae musician Matisyahu.

Basic sorts of Judaic non secular tunes are "Piyyutim", "Zemiros", "Nigunim", "Pizmonim" in addition to "Baqashot". They are very succinctly covered here.

"Piyyut" is a Hebraic poem to be chanted, recited, sung on non secular, religious rituals.

Zemiros are typically Hebraic hymns, usually sung within the Hebrew or Aramaic languages, however, sometimes simultaneously within Yiddish or Ladino. A bit of that belong to the Shabbos zemiros that are specific to certain times associated with the day, such those sung with regard to the Friday evening meal, the Saturday noon meal, in addition to the third Sabbath meal just before sundown on Saturday afternoon.

"Nigun" refers to religious melodies that are sung by groups. It is without question one form of voice-instrumental popular music, frequently without any words or words.

"Pizmonim" are typically traditional Hebraic tunes as well as melodies along with the intentions of praising God as well as describing certain aspects of traditional non secular teachings. "Pizmonim" are chanted in non secular rituals and even festivities such as weddings, circumcisions, bar mitzvahs.

The "Baqashot" are usually a particular collection of supplications, tunes, as well as prayers that have been sung during centuries according to the Sephardi Aleppian Judaic community and even other congregations every and every Sabbath morning right from midnight till dawn. From the turn associated with the twentieth century, Baqashot had become one widespread spiritual practice inside several communities inside Jerusalem as a particular one communal form of prayer.





Usage rights:

You can use this article under the Creative Commons License CC-BY. This license lets you distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon my work, even commercially, as long as you credit me, by displaying the information on me given below verbatim for the original article.


Mehmet Okonsar is a pianist-composer-conductor and musicologist. Besides his international concert carrier he is a prolific writer. Founder of the first classical music-musicology dedicated blog-site: "inventor-musicae" as well as the first classical-music video portal: "classical videos".



Discography by Mehmet Okonsar



J.S. Bach "Die Kunst der Fuge"
All CD's available at amazon.com and (partly) at cdbaby.com

The Jewish Emancipation In The Eighteen And Nineteen Centuries Europe

Overview on the Jewish emancipation and its effects on the 18th and 19th century Europe.



J.S. Bach "Musikalische Opfer"



F. Liszt: "modern" works


J.S. Bach "Well-tempered Clavier"


Recital: "Live at Salt Lake City"


J.S. Bach The Goldberg Variations


Piano Solo Improvisations: "Shadowy Arcade"

All CD's can be auditioned entirely and freely at their respective pages. Click on the images.


Jewish Emancipation is the abolition of discriminatory laws and regulations applied specifically to Jews as well as the formal granting of citizenship.

Initial phases of Jewish emancipation actions happen to be simply in the area that belong to the general popular efforts to attain freedom and even privileges for the purpose of minorities and unprivileged.

The question of equal privileges for the purpose of Jews was basically tied together with mandates for the purpose of constitutions and even civil privileges. Jewish statesmen and also intellectuals for example: Lionel Nathan Rothschild,Isaac Berr, Gabriel Riesser, Johann Jacoby as well as Heinrich Heine labored instead of for the purpose of Jews in particular, using the general stream toward liberty and also political freedom.

Emancipation would be a massive goal of European Jews from the 1800s, and even brought in to established participation of Jews within the civil society. Consequently, many Jews who earlier were practically locked from the society, switched to Jewish political actions (with regard to example Zionism) or revolutionary actions (especially facing oppressive routines such as along with Russian Empire) or could emigrate to nations of better possibilities. An essential facet of Jewish emancipation was basically the unsafe effects of Jewish marriage by the civil law.

It wasn't just politics the fact that supported Jewish emancipation throughout the 1800s inside Germany. The Jewish community acquired many possibilities inside the economical liberalization and also at the same time the industrial revolution.

Then again a large area that belongs to the German technological and also economic boost has been a direct result Jewish activities. Although approximately 2 percent from the German population within the 1800s used to be Jewish, Jews were exceptionally overrepresented within their established financial sector and additionally inside science, culture, innovative industries as well as politics, commonly within the liberal parties.

It's possible to reason the fact that it was subsequently just made possible due to emancipation laws in addition to regulations. Still it's the opposite true: emancipation laws and also regulations were actually asked for the purpose of Jews, mainly because the Jewish community had been extremely influential within the modernization of the whole society.

Although Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786) had been amongst the first great champions of Jewish emancipation within the 1700s, he would be a staunchly religious Jew used as well as throughout belief. He maintained the fact that Judaism has been less a "divine need, than the standard shown existence."

Jewish participation inside "gentile" society started throughout the Chronological age of Enlightenment. "Haskalah", the Jewish trend supporting the adoption of enlightenment values, recommended an expansion of Jewish privileges within European society.

"Haskalah" fans recommended "being released from the ghetto" definitely, not merely physically but psychologically in addition to emotionally.

In 1791, France grew to become the very first country over the planet to emancipate its Jewish population. In 1796, Holland granted the Jews equal privileges along with "gentiles".

Napoleon simultaneously freed the Jews throughout fields he mastered. Nonetheless, it wasn't before revolutions from the mid-1800s that Jewish political actions would start to persuade government authorities throughout the United Kingdom, the Central as well as Eastern Europe countries to grant equal privileges to Jews.

From the 1800s, the critique of Jewish dogmas and also traditions appeared to be interconnected having a firm adhesion towards the older Jewish mode of just living. Reason has been put on values, the historic awareness to existence. Modern reform inside Judaism is bound to have separated to quite a few degree out of this conception.

Every state under French authority applied Napoleon's reforms. In Portugal, the government permitted Jews exactly the same privileges as other most people in addition to approved these requests open the synagogues for the very first time in over 300 years.

In Italy, in the Netherlands as well as inside the German states, the Jews could place their place as free men the very first time within the society associated with the distinctive nations.

Some essays inside Jewish Identity within Modern Art History demonstrate the fact that Jewish emancipation coincided temporally as well as within its effects using the aesthetic knowledge of art's humanizing potential.

This congruence resulted inside a perfect humanistic historiography of art which in turn coded throughout the nineteenth and also early twentieth centuries within the Germanic context.

Historians of art starting along with Johann J. Wincklemann, along with other most people inside the Viennese School of Art History for example Jacob Burckhardt, developed a art history created over the beliefs throughout individual taste the fact that are really in addition, natural within the idea of "Bildung", as referred to according to Beller yet others. Indeed, the careful cultivation that belong to the taste produces the connoisseur.





Usage rights:

You can use this article under the Creative Commons License CC-BY. This license lets you distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon my work, even commercially, as long as you credit me, by displaying the information on me given below verbatim for the original article.


Mehmet Okonsar is a pianist-composer-conductor and musicologist. Besides his international concert carrier he is a prolific writer. Founder of the first classical music-musicology dedicated blog-site: "inventor-musicae" as well as the first classical-music video portal: "classical videos".



Discography by Mehmet Okonsar



J.S. Bach "Die Kunst der Fuge"
All CD's available at amazon.com and (partly) at cdbaby.com

Moses Mendelssohn And The Enlightenment

The enlightenment era in Europe and Moses Mendelssohn's contributions in the emancipation of the Jews.



J.S. Bach "Musikalische Opfer"



F. Liszt: "modern" works


J.S. Bach "Well-tempered Clavier"


Recital: "Live at Salt Lake City"


J.S. Bach The Goldberg Variations


Piano Solo Improvisations: "Shadowy Arcade"

All CD's can be auditioned entirely and freely at their respective pages. Click on the images.


Three Moses have decisively formed Jewish history.

On a single end is Moses, the Egyptian; a lawgiver and political leader whose vision established the road for any monotheistic revolution thus determining the spiritual definitions of his people. About the opposite end is Moses Mendelssohn, whose philosophical queries within the 1700s set the building blocks for another liberation movement: the exit of Jews from the medieval ghetto and also the entrance into European civil society.

Neither of those Moses saw the achievements of their own legacies. Moses, the Egyptian was just permitted to glance at the Promised Land about the verge of dying. Moses Mendelssohn, at getting equality to Jews, saw his efforts also open up the doorway to losing identity; all six of his own children married Christian believers.

Moses Mendelssohn is a philosopher and Jewish theologian who authored on metaphysics, aesthetics, political theory and theology.

He was answer to the developments in thinking connected with the 1700s German Enlightenment. He campaigned for Jewish civil privileges and translated large parts of the Hebrew Bible into German.

Moses Mendelssohn was born in Dessau on September 6, 1729. Bella Rachel Sarah, his mother, would have been a descendant connected with Rabbi Moses Isserles from Krakow, author of the awesome Ashkenazi complement towards Rabbi Frederick Karo's "Shulchan Aruh." She seemed to be associated too with Moses Benjamin Wulff, among Dessau's most illustrious Jews, and her boy was probably named after both of these exclusive relatives.

In Dessau, the youthful Moses received a conventional Jewish education, studying under Rabbi David Frankel. He may have developed as being an eminent rabbi himself, however in 1743, at age 14, the gifted pupil followed his teacher to Berlin, where Frankel were being nominated Chief Rabbi.

Even though Moses Mendelssohn would be a highly educated scholar and teacher who spent whole nights on German translation of classical Hellenic and Roman philosophers as well as poets; he grew to become an extremely famous and influential philosopher of the "Haskalah." His book "Jerusalem oder uber religiose Macht und Judentum" could be regarded as among the primary works of Jewish Enlightenment.

The well known historian, liberal Rabbi, and also theologian Abraham Geiger recognized Spinoza as being "the actual, innovative, intellectual as well as religious leader of the time." Despite his hostility towards the Jewish religion, or possibly in certain sense due to this hostility, Spinoza found to be regarded as like a herald of the Jewish national revival.

For Moses Hess, the socialist and also proto-Zionist, Spinoza has been the actual prophet of modern Messianism, whose philosophy represented the actual "oneness from the creative spirit." Variants connected with Hess statements have been echoed by several 20th century Jewish figures varying from Buber to Ben-Gurion.

The emancipation of the Jews had been beginning in the immigration of Jews under Frederic the Great as well as possibly under his father's reign.

The philosopher Moses Mendelssohn was honoring Frederic for his liberalism when it comes to the 1700s. Nevertheless it lasted indeed until the reforms of 1812, once the Jews got finally the entire citizenship.

The "Chronological age of Enlightenment", or just the "Enlightenment" may be the era in Western philosophy, intellectual, scientific and cultural existence, centered upon the 1700s, in which the "reason" was considered the primary source for authenticity and authority. It is also called the "Chronological age of Reason." The enlightenment would be a movement of science and reason.

The Enlightenment had not been only one movement or perhaps thought process, since these concepts had been generally mutually contradictory or even divergent. The Enlightenment was less some ideas more about some values.

At its core it would be a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals, along with a strong belief in rationality and science.

Thus, there is still a substantial amount of similarity between competing philosophies of the era. Some historians, likewise, incorporate the late 17th century in the Enlightenment.

Modernity, by comparison, can be used to oversee the time following the Enlightenment, although it is generally emphasizing social conditions instead of specific philosophies.

The Enlightenment operated in many nations, but frequently having a specific local emphasis. For instance in France it grew to become connected with anti-government and anti-Church radicalism; inside Germany, it reached deep into the middle classes and expressed a spiritualistic and nationalistic tone without threatening government authorities or established places of worship.

Government reactions varied broadly. In France the government was hostile, and also the philosophers fought against its censorship. They were sometimes jailed or hounded into exile. The British government generally overlooked the Enlightenment leaders in England and Scotland, even though it did give Isaac Newton a knighthood along with a very lucrative government office responsible for the mint.

The Enlightenment raised critical ideas, like the centrality of freedom, democracy, and reason as primary values of society.

This view which claims the establishment of the contractual foundation of privileges would result in the market mechanism and capitalism, the scientific method, religious tolerance, and also the organization of states into self-regulating republics through democratic means.

Within this view, the inclination from the philosophers particularly to use rationality to solve every problem is the essential change.





Usage rights:

You can use this article under the Creative Commons License CC-BY. This license lets you distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon my work, even commercially, as long as you credit me, by displaying the information on me given below verbatim for the original article.


Mehmet Okonsar is a pianist-composer-conductor and musicologist. Besides his international concert carrier he is a prolific writer. Founder of the first classical music-musicology dedicated blog-site: "inventor-musicae" as well as the first classical-music video portal: "classical videos".


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