Passport to Jewish Music

Its History, Traditions and Culture

Irene Heskes – Greenwood Press 1994, 353 p.

The 27 chapters of this book by the musicologist Irene Heskes describe the various historic periods of Jewish music, since the Biblical times until modern period, the various concerned geographical areas, and feature portraits of several famous Jewish composers, especially some born or who lived in USA (Bernstein, Gershwin, Milhaud…).

This book is the result of several decades of work and study of the author on  this subject.

Irene Heskes is a musicologist who specialized in the study of Jewish music. She wrote many articles for musicologic magazines and other in America, Europe and Israël. She also contributed to the ’Encyclopedia Judaica, and the books Musical Theater in America (Greenwood, 1984), and Handbook of Holocaust Literature (Greenwood, 1993). Among her books, let’s mention : Studies in Jewish Music (1971), Jews in Music (1974), Ernest Bloch: Creative Spirit (1976), The Resource Book of Jewish Music (Greenwood, 1985), The Music of Abraham Goldfaden (1990), The Golden Age of Cantors (1991), and Yiddish-American Popular Songs1895 to 1950 (1992).

Purchase the book

Share:

You may also like

Histoires de voix hébraïques

Following his first book, Voix hébraïques - Voyage dans la musique juive d'Occident, published in 2020, Hector Sabo offers in…

The songbooks of Jewish youth movements

The European Institute of Jewish Music has collected a number of songbooks from Jewish youth movements (EEIF, Histadrut, Youth and…

The Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) collection

In December 2023, the Library of the Alliance Israélite Universelle donated a number of musical documents (records, scores, books, archives,…

Piano Music by Jewish Composers

This collection of scores, compiled by Bella and Semjon Kalinowsky, includes little-known works by Louis Lewandowski, Joseph Sulzer, Salomon Jadassohn…