Re: Need Yiddish Vocabulary for Music

[Hope Ehn Dennis Ehn <ehn...>]

Thank you for looking up terms in Stuchkov's book, to which I do not have 
access. I wonder whether he has any entries for these terms:

  Viol (viola da gamba)
  Ensemble
  Renaissance
  Baroque.

The viol may be at least as much of a "Jewish instrument" as some others
often associated with Jewish musicians, such as the clarinet and the
violin. It seems to have been invented in Spain, and to have reached the
rest of Europe about 1492: the earliest document (a fingerboard chart)
dates from 1494. While I wouldn't bet my life on the obvious conclusion,
it's probably true that Jewish musicians took the viol from Spain to Italy
and elsewhere in 1492. Jews continued to play this instrument: Salamone
Rossi (d.c.1630) was a viol player. 

As for the recorder, many of the recorder players (as well as the viol
players) of Henry VIII have been shown to have been Jewish. 

Hope Ehn                    <ehn (at) world(dot)std(dot)com>

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