[no subject]

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

>I hope Judah Cohen is enjoying this, too!

You better believe I am!

For what it's worth, CAJE still had a few copies of the "American Nusach"
album in its office supply room when I interned there in 1993.  I
personally can remember listening to the album all the way back from the
College Park, MD conference, until it finally self-destucted after its
umpteenth playing.  If I'm not mistaken, Craig Taubman was also on that
tape.  (Was Debbie on there too?  She had to be. . .).

I might as well throw in a shekel or two regarding Carol's note, as well.
I completely agree with Carol's reluctance to accept motif migration from
secular music into Jewish music.  The concept works from a problematic
assumption: that it is possible to separate "Jewish" music from
"non-Jewish" or "secular" music (that's how it's possible to tell a given
motive's descent).  I think this comes from an earlier assumption that
Jewish music had a quantifiable "essence" which reflected the specialness
of the Jewish people.  A. Z. Idelsohn worked with this assumption in his
writings, and Eric Werner took the idea to new (distressing) heights in his
"Sacred Bridge" books and "A Voice Still Heard" (in the latter, he even
details a system for separating the Jewish elements of given melodies from
"corrupting" outside influences).  Werner's influence, however, continues
(he was a big Jewish music person at HUC, and with reason--he was extremely
well-read, even if his logic was a little screwy), and I have a feeling
this influence made it into Levine's book (I read the chapter Carol refers
to last year; but I was a little rushed at the time, and so didn't have the
same chance to evaluate his analysis).

That's it for me for tonight.

Judah.

Judah Cohen
Music Department
Harvard University
jcohen (at) fas(dot)harvard(dot)edu
(617) 628-4783

"...I do not feel that my research suffered unduly from the fact that I
enjoyed it." -- Daniel Miller, "Modernity--an Ethnographic Approach" (p. 6)