Ovadiah

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

I've found Ovadiah's dates as around the early 12th century, according to 
the catalog of a recent Cairo Genizah exhibition at Cambridge University.
(see http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/exhibition.html)

Judah.

----------
>From: "Judith R. Cohen" <judithc (at) YorkU(dot)CA>
>To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
>Subject: first annotated piece
>Date: Wed, Mar 22, 2000, 6:02 AM
>

> I'm losing track of who said what, but I think Robert said the first
> annotated piece of Jewish music is "from the 10th century, not the
> 15th". Actually, in between. There's very little that's decipherable
> with any reliability of any western-notated music in the 10th century,
> Jewish or otherwise. What we have is a 12th (I think, maybe 13th but not
> 15th anyway) century manuscript of a couple of piyyutim fragments, one
> of which has been recorded quite often, including by the Boston Camarata
> (with a mystifyingly medieval-church-y style accompaniment as I
> remember). These were transcribed (or who knows, maybe even composed) by
> a convert TO Judaism instead of the other way around, known as Ovadiah
> the Proselyte, and they are written in plainchant neumes - BACKWARDS, to
> accomodate the Hebrew script! The manuscript is problematic because of
> gaps, and the clef, and a etc. but Avenary at least published it. I use
> an overhead transparency of it soemtimes in lectures so people can see
> how the church neumes are used for the Hebrew writing. 

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