As emancipated Jews joined Italy's mainstream cultural, economic and political life, their centuries-old traditions became confined to the realm of the synagogue. There, Italian Jews could explore their modern identity without fully breaking away from the past. Liturgical music of this epoch, handed down in oral tradition and manuscript sources, presents a fascinating link between the age of the ghettos and modern times. Musica sacra, a new kind of"sacred music" composed for the synagogue, sonically represented the aspirations of the era. Inside the new "monumental" synagogues, composers wrote music inspired by opera, church liturgy, and Risorgimento marches, sung by choirs with organ accompaniment. This essay focuses on a now forgotten liturgical repertoire especially created to mark the 1848 Emancipation with annual synagogue celebrations that included a dedicated ritual, new poetry (in Hebrew and in Italian), and new music that is reminiscent ofltaly's own national anthem.

Donatella Calabi ed. "Venice, The Jews, and Europe," Venice, Marsilio 2016: 264-269.

Chapter 1 in: Lynette Bowring, Rebecca Cypess, and Liza Malamut eds. Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy, Indiana University Press, 2022: 23-36

The Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah, an intellectual and social movement that developed in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 19 th century, brought about some radical changes in various aspects of the lives of Jews. In the religious sphere these changes have been expressed by the use of local languages during liturgy, the active participation of worshippers in prayer, the limitation of restrictions on the partition dividing men and women in the synagogue and shorter worship services. From the beginning of these developments, worship in Reform synagogues was characterised by increased musical activity. In contrast to before, the members of the congregations participated in singing, instruments were introduced and mixed choirs started to perform. Moreover, women began to perform liturgical chants with instrumental accompaniment even on a podium. Professionally trained cantors could perform with the accompaniment of large choirs and organs. In the 19th century, the synagogue chants in northern Germany were based on Protestant choral, whilst in Austria they were based on Catholic songs. In this article the activities of the two leading representatives of the movement under consideration will be presented against the background of important events which took place during the history of synagogue music. The first is Salomon Sulzer, who reformed synagogue music during his time as a cantor in Vienna; the second is a student of Sulzer, Moritz Deutsch, who continued the work of his master in Breslau.

The development of the current liturgical music used in the Belgrade synagogue is (in the last decades) heavily influenced by foreign traditions (mostly levantine) that are brought to Belgrade by modern communication systems. Therefore it is nearly impossible to speak of a status quo that might be possibly obsolete by tomorrow – at least with respect to the melodies. The great changes within the liturgical music occurred 1 This paper is based on the dissertation Wie viel Wandel verträgt eine Tradition? Gesang und Gebet der Jüdischen Gemeinde Belgrad in den Herausforderungen der Gegenwart by Jasmina Huber which was approved by Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim on June 25, 2012. ̇

International conference on the Italian Jewish music repertoires

In this paper I explore a topic at the intersection of three heterogeneous traditions: Monastic and mendicant cultures, studia humanitatis, and art music. Religious communities in the Florence of the late fifteenth century had their own special rituals, which prominently featured music, and had made the interest in the classical antiquity so pervasive in the city a part of their members' education. Individual orders and houses, however, connected these elements in different ways, producing starkly contrasting outcomes, which in turn generated religious and political conflict. In my presentation I sketch a general map of different communities living in the city and focus on a few case studies—Carmelites, Dominicans, and Servants of Mary. In particular, I connect the introduction of classicizing elements in the education of the novices and in the communities' self-representation and the increase of art music as elements of different (and sometimes divergent) attempts at responding to the city's obsession with new forms of decorum in public rituals.