Re: Cataloguing Jewish music

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

Dear Paul:

I'm glad the Jewish Music Institute has the services of an experienced 
librarian to help with their cataloging. They're lucky to have found you!

As an experienced cataloger, I don't need to explain to you that the uniform 
title (marc code: 240) is by far the most difficult concept to put into 
practice. I have pages and pages of notes and answered questions that I 
continually refer to when trying to come up with a correct U.T., and still I am 
unsure every time I need to make one up.

We are instructed to always check the Library of Congress authority file first, 
to see if a uniform title already exists. Another important resource is the 
Yale website: http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/types.htm  which has 
a comprehensive list of "types" of compositions.

Generally, with Jewish music, as you already know, there is little help. One 
will not find "freylakhs" or "sher" as a type of composition. So, one must make 
up one's own "distinctive" uniform title. The problem with this approach is 
that one is not supposed to modify a distinctive title, so you would have to 
omit important orchestration (and key?) information.

Again I am not that confident with the U.T. concept, but might recommend you 
invent your own uniform titles as "types" of  Jewish music compositions, and 
then modify them with instrumentation and key. e.g. Freylakhs, piano, clarinet, 
violin 

Also, as always, one must continually refer to chapter 25 in AACRII (25.21: 
"Use as the u.t. for a Jewish liturgical work its name as found in Encyclopedia 
Judaica..." ; 25.30B1: "... record the medium of performance specifically, but 
do not use more than three elements ...")--among countless other details.

Hope this helps.

Eliott Kahn



At 09:33 AM 3/6/01 +0000, you wrote:
>Dear library colleagues
>
>I am assisting in the setting up of the new library at the Jewish Music
>Institute in London. In my professional capacity I have had a lot of
>experience in cataloguing 'classical' music to AACR standards, but haven't
>really tackled many of the interesting problems associated with cataloguing
>Jewish music.
>
>I would be very interested to hear from any other librarians on the list
>with this sort of experience, to discuss how you have approached some of
>the inherent problems. Unless you feel that this discussion would be of
>general interest, it would perhaps be better to contact me off-list.
>
>Occupying my attention in particular at the moment is the formulation of
>uniform titles for conventional forms in printed music transcriptions. For
>example, a volume containing several works titled 'Freylekh' (or variants
>therof). If a distinctive title has at some stage been applied to a
>particular freylekh, then this could be used as a distinguishing soubriquet
>- but if there is none? I wouldn't feel comfortable in quoting the key as
>written (except in the descriptive part of the entry), since a) there is no
>guarantee that this is the original key and b) this is almost certainly a
>transcription of a piece of music with an aural, rather than a
>composed/notated history. Typically there is a numbered sequence of the
>form in many collections (eg the Russian shers in the Stacy Phillips
>Klezmer Collection) but this is merely a handy means of differentiation by
>the publisher. Is there any other approach save to surrender and use the UT
>'Freylekh', with as much about the provenance as possible in the
>descriptive part of the entry?
>
>I would be really interested - and grateful-  to hear how any of you have
>tackled these problems. Also, is your catalogue - or any other
>professionally produced catalogue of Jewish music - accessible on the
>Internet?
>
>Paul Holden
>Formerly Senior Librarian
>Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London
>
>

Dr. Eliott Kahn
Music Archivist
Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
3080 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
WK: (212) 678-8076
FAX (212) 678-8998
elkahn (at) jtsa(dot)edu

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