{"id":749,"date":"2023-12-06T08:15:04","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T08:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jewishitalianmusic.org\/?p=749"},"modified":"2023-12-06T08:30:14","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T08:30:14","slug":"sounds-of-a-fragmented-memory-%e2%80%a8jewish-musical-repertoires-in-italy%e2%80%a8international-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jewishitalianmusic.org\/?p=749","title":{"rendered":"Sounds of a Fragmented Memory -\u2028Jewish Musical Repertoires in Italy\u2028International Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Sounds of a Fragmented Memory -\u2028Jewish Musical Repertoires in Italy\u2028International Conference<\/h1>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Venice\u202815-18 February 2024<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Leo Levi Center for the Study of Jewish Liturgical Heritage, Florence
University of Venice “Ca’ Foscari,” Venice
Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation, Venice<\/span>

<\/span>In collaboration with

NLI – National Library of Israel
Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion – Cincinnati & New York
Centro Primo Levi – New York
Jewish Music Research Center, Jerusalem<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The aim of this conference is to discuss some of the most important aspects and problems in the study of Italian Jewish music repertoires, from the processes of formation and development of the different rituals\/minhagim\u00a0through the role of music in shaping, preserving, and transmitting Jewish identities,\u00a0 to the various meanings and understandings in this context of \u201clearned music\u201d as opposed to popular or traditional material, of music \u201cmodernity\u201d and \u201cantiquity\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n


The conference marks the first three years of life of the Thesaurus of Italian Jewish Music, a project that is attempting to address the fragmentation of sources for Italian Jewish musical repertoires. While maintaining a musicological and ethnomusicological focus, the conference welcomes papers with a multidisciplinary approach.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Context<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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The continuous presence of Jews in the Italian peninsula throughout the centuries makes the musical traditions of the local Jewish communities an interesting case study: the complexity of the history of Jews in Italy is reflected as a natural consequence, in the complexity of the study of any aspect of their life and culture. Italian Jewish communities, past and present, are repositories of a musical patrimony both large and diverse: of such diversity that the notion itself of an Italian Jewish repertoire is problematic. First of all, the musical traditions of Italian Jews must be considered in a local, regional perspective. Then, such an approach must include the dynamics of the different\u00a0minhagim\u00a0that have or have been present in the peninsula, often coexisting side by side in the small space of the Jewish quarter (or ghetto) of a single town. In the past, many Italian cities have seen different synagogues existing in close proximity for centuries, following each a different\u00a0minhag; or, using the language of the time, the coexistence of different\u00a0nazioni\u00a0living side by side. In the course of time, most members of such\u00a0nazioni\u00a0would in any case be fully integrated, so that even though they might attend services in different synagogues (scuola tedesca, scuola italiana, scuola spagnola…), it is not possible to consider these as separated communities; and one must take into account their mutual interaction, as well as the ties between the Jews of similar rite in different geographical locations. The landscape has been further complicated in the second half of the twentieth century with the arrival on Italian soil of Jewish refugees from Arab countries, bringing with them different rituals, musical traditions, customs, so that today we must consider along the older rituals, at least the Tripoli and the Persian\u00a0minhagim, present in Rome and Milan among thriving communities.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Musical Repertoires of Italian Judaism: A Fragmented Memory\u2028Reasons for a Conference<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Italian Jewish musical repertoires are available today in an extremely fragmented form, reflecting also the inherent fragmentation of a memory that was present in a much more cohesive and consistent form only a century ago, and that has survived with difficulty the challenges of time, deurbanization of small centres, assimilation and secularization, and obviously the deep gash in the collective fabric caused by the Shoah. Such local repertoires survive today in very diverse formats and different levels of preservation \u2013 spanning communities that have completely disappeared and whose music is to be found only in a few transcriptions and selection of individual tunes recorded in the ’50s and ’60s, to communities where the liturgical tradition is still very much alive, vibrant, and transmitted to the younger generation; to many instances in between these two standards.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\u00a0Online Thesaurus of Italian Jewish Music (hereafter OTIJM)\u00a0was launched in 2021, with the main purpose of addressing this fragmentation and creating a resource available to scholars, cantors and informed audiences worldwide, bringing together in a single web access point a fully searchable database of sources including recordings, manuscript and printed music. This project was inspired by the work of the Jewish Music research Centre in Jerusalem, and ideally put itself in direct continuation of the lifelong achievements of ethnomusicologist Leo Levi (1912-1982); building on the foundations laid by Levi in his pioneering work of recording living memories of the repertoires, but also including archival materials from Italian Jewish Communities, private and public institutions worldwide including the National Library of Israel and Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (NY and Cincinnati), encompassing choral-instrumental repertoires produced in Italian communities between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, transcriptions and recordings created for local documentary purposes before, during, and after Levi’s campaign. Furthermore, it includes ritual traditions, such as the Tripoli and Persian\u00a0minhagim, which have found a stable place in Italy. The OTIJM is a multidisciplinary project touching the fields of ethnomusicology, classical musicology, Jewish liturgy, as well as the history of Jewish communities in the context of the surrounding society.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In March 2024, the OTIJM project will conclude its first research phase, presenting an initial mapping of the main sound sources of different musical-ritual repertoires, bringing together sources from Italy, Israel, the United States. The completion of this first phase will be an opportunity not only to analyze and subject the collected materials to scientific scrutiny, but also to identify best practices and research perspectives for materials that in many cases have received little or no attention from the academic world. The conference will also be an opportunity to support and inform in a multidisciplinary context the study of more recently settled traditions, such as the Tripoli and Persian traditions.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Part of the conference will be dedicated to the figures of Salomone Rossi, the author in 1623 of\u00a0Ha-shirim asher li-Shlomoh, and Benedetto Marcello, who published\u00a0Estro poetico-armonico\u00a0between 1724 and 1726. Beyond mere celebratory intentions, marking the four-hundredth and three-hundredth anniversaries, the aim is to place these two works in the context of Jewish production. In the first case, an act defining a conscious act of musical “modernity,” and in the second, a work of transcription, recovery, and reworking of traditional synagogue melodies, an (perhaps unwitting) act of ethnomusicological investigation.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sounds of a Fragmented Memory -\u2028Jewish Musical Repertoires in Italy\u2028International Conference Venice\u202815-18 February 2024 Leo Levi Center for the Study of Jewish Liturgical Heritage, FlorenceUniversity of Venice “Ca’ Foscari,” VeniceUgo and Olga Levi Foundation, Venice In collaboration with NLI – National Library of IsraelHebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion – Cincinnati & New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"full-width.php","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSounds of a Fragmented Memory -\u2028Jewish Musical Repertoires in Italy\u2028International Conference - Jewish Italian Music<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jewishitalianmusic.org\/?p=749\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sounds of a Fragmented Memory -\u2028Jewish Musical Repertoires in Italy\u2028International Conference - 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