Sephardic Songbook update

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Hi All,

Perhaps a misguided sense of propriety prevented me from stating the price
of the Sephardic Songbook on this list, so I'll do that now. If I am out of
line here, please chastise me (leather whip preferred).

The Sephardic Songbook, if procured from me directly, costs 25.00 (sent book
rate) or 27.00 sent first class. Checks can be made out to Joshua Horowitz.

For those of you who requested review copies: I fought tooth, nail and elbow
to get the Publisher to send out copies to many of you on this list.
Virtually NO copies are being sent out by the publisher except to those on
their list, which they do not disclose. Pretty silly isn't it?

So I ask for your sympathy and understanding in not being  able to send out
free copies, as I must pay close to full retail price for my own copies and
do not receive compensation for my own work on this project.

Also, please forgive any lost correspondence due to my recent move from
Europe to the US after 17 years. Chaos has been the order of the day since
summer.

To give a teaser of the book, I've selected a bit from the introduction...

Introduction
The transcriptions in this collection are based directly upon versions sung
by usually one, but sometimes more than one informant. The songs have been
gathered from the Ottoman Judeo-Spanish vocal tradition and were performed
without instrumental accompaniment. In spite of the obvious contradictions
and notational shortcomings which have become apparent to us in preparing
this book and which we discuss  below, we have tried to remain true to our
original intention: to present a songbook which conveys as closely as
possible the performance and style of 51  Sephardic songs with their
complete texts and a representative melody. For this reason, we have been
careful to leave out any suggestions which would obscure the original
impression of the song and thereby make it impossible for the reader to
separate our interpretation of it from that of our informants. ..

In some places we have had to do some reconstruction work on the songs,
especially where it was not possible to glean a complete version from the
first verse alone. At times our informants would stumble, forget a word or
two, skip parts that weren¹t known or modulate their voice unintentionally.
In such cases we have drawn the missing or unintelligible melody fragments
from one or more of the other verses and carefully spliced them into place.
Although we have tried to draft transcriptions notating as closely as
possible the original version(s) of the songs, to assert that there is such
a thing as an ³authentic² edition would be misleading for the following
reasons...

All best,
Josh Horowitz



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