THE DEPARTMENT
OF MUSICOLOGY
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
NEWSLETTER 2019
A LETTER FROM THE CHAIR Dear Friends, In 2018, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem celebrated its hundredth anniversary. So much has been accomplished, yet we are on the brink of even more exciting developments. Policy-makers, high-tech innovators, physicians, scientists, judges master their respective disciplines, but to become leaders, they depend on additional training that comes only from the Humanities. Musicology encapsulates the core ideas of the Humanities perhaps most quintessentially. Music is universal, and like other arts is part of what defines us as human beings. It is through the Humanities that we learn about the things that essentially make us human: creativity, beauty, and empathy. Here at the Musicology Department, we collectively devoted special attention to the issue of “empathy” in our most recent departmental seminar, together with doctoral students and invited speakers. Through these and other perspectives, musicology students learn to think creatively and critically, to reason, and to ask questions.
Since last year, our students can do all this and more in far more comfortable conditions. The new student lounge has become a hub for social life. This is where you can find our students writing papers, listening to music, eating meals, and writing “confessions” on the blackboard. We also renovated and upgraded the music lab, with new hardware and software that make it possible to study music in relation to various technologies. Thus we are able to offer for the first time a course on sound editing, notational software and more. Finally, our practice rooms now all have new pianos that will serve our students as they write assignments and prepare for concerts. Musicology provides a bridge between the knowledge that drives twenty-first century success and the knowledge that secures a life of purpose and satisfaction. When we study the music of other times, cultures, and places, we 2
CHAIR'S LETTER
need to reconstruct the knowledge that its original composers, performers, or listeners had: how it was made, what kind of social structures supported it, what it meant. It is this critical analysis that supports better interpretations, an enhanced personal understanding of both music and its social context. I invite you to take a look at the accomplishments of our faculty members and students alike, and would welcome the opportunity to welcome you on campus. Warmest wishes,
Yossi Maurey, Chair
FACULTY NEWS
Roni Granot Listening to music is often associated with a
strong emotional experience. But how is this ongoing experience tied to the continuous stream of sound? And if it is driven by something in the music, should we expect to see the same emotional responses in different listeners? Together with Talma Hendler (Wohl Institute for Advanced Brain Imaging at Sourasky Medical Center), Roni examines three different aspects through which they hope to provide answers to these questions: (1) description of the unfolding musical structure; (2) listeners’ emotional responses obtained through their second by second rating of the degree the music feels pleasant and arousing; and (3) CAT scans of listeners’ continuous brain activity. Pulling this data together, Roni and Talma concluded that the music activated many brain networks related to attention, motor activity, auditory processing and more. When they examined how much the ongoing activity in these brain networks looks the same across listeners as the music unfolds, they noticed that only two networks were behaving similarly across listeners: the network related to processing of emotions, which was mostly reacting to the rhythm in the music, and a 3
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fronto-parietal network (associated with the mirror-neurons system), which reacted mainly to musical surprises. Interestingly, while the first network was relevant to all listeners, the second was limited to listeners with musical training. Together, these results suggest that there are at least two levels to the continuous common emotional responses to music: a basic core emotional response in the emotional brain associated with the temporal structure in music, and more complex processes related to various types of musical surprises which might require musical training. Still, what this data does not tell us at this point is what other factors (in the music or in our own history or emotional reactivity) modulate our personal rather than the shared emotional response to the music. And so it remains to examine other listeners and especially a wider musical repertoire before we can say we are on our way to understand something about the mysterious ways in which music works its magic on us.
Ruth Hacohen
In their most recent book published in Hebrew,
Composing Power, Singing Freedom (Van Leer Institute Press and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2017) authors Ruth HaCohen (Pinczower) and Yaron Ezrahi reveal the many dimensions of the connections, both overt and covert, between music and politics, as they have been manifested since early modernity in the West. The book focuses on exposing the emotional and aesthetic fabric of monarchic, nationalistic, totalitarian, liberal, and democratic regimes as embodied in their respective musical cultures. Kings and rulers, it turns out, knew how to harness music for the aestheticization and exaltation of power, but music has also had a role in spurring the solidarity and enthusiasm of revolutionaries. In the nation state, it has repressed the fear of death with the rhythms and songs of soldiers marching behind the flag to the battlefield, while also giving
לשיר חירות,להלחין כוח
קשרים גלויים וסמויים בין מוזיקה לפוליטיקה במערב
רות הכהן־פינצ'ובר היא פ בקתדרה על שם ארתור רוב במוזיקולוגיה באוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים ועד לא מנהלת תוכנית עמיתי מרט בובר במדעי הרוח והחברה לכתוב בנושאים של אופני המוזיקלית ותפקידיה בכינו בין ספ. דתי ורגשי,תרבותי sic Libel Against the Jews 1-שראה אור בהוצאת ייל ב
ירון אזרחי הוא פרופסור א למדע המדינה באוניברסיט ספרו האחרון.העברית Imagined Democracies: ecessary Political Fictions ראה אור בהוצאת קיימבריד פרסומיו עוסקים.2012-ב מדע,הגומלין בין פוליטיקה תיאוריה דמוקר,וטכנולוגיה מודרנית ולאחרונה גם בהש הדמיון הפוליטי הקולקטיב על עיצוב מוסדות והתנהגו .בדמוקרטיות בנות־זמננו
לשיר חירות רות הכהן־פינצ'ובר | ירון אזרחי,להלחין כוח
FACULTY NEWS
רות הכהן־פינצ'ובר | ירון אזרחי
לשיר חירות מבקשים המחברים – רות הכהן־פינצ'ובר וירון,בספרם להלחין כוח אזרחי – לחשוף את פניהם הרבות של הקשרים הגלויים והסמויים בין המוזיקה והפוליטיקה כפי שאלה התגלו והתגלגלו בתולדות השתיים במאות השנים האחרונות עיקר הדגש בספר הוא על חשיפת הרקמה הרגשית והאסתטית של משטרים.במערב ליברליים ודמוקרטיים כפי שהיא מתגלמת מבעד, טוטליטריים, לאומניים,מונרכיים ידעו לרתום את המוזיקה לאסתטיזציה, מתברר, מלכים ושליטים.לקשרים אלה אך המוזיקה מצאה את מקומה גם בעידוד הסולידריות וההתלהבות,ולרוממות הכוח בטקסי לוויות מלכותיים וממלכתיים קידשה המוזיקה את עלילות.של מהפכנים במדינה הלאומית היא ידעה לכסות על פחד.השליט המת ועוררה תקווה לעתיד זוהר אך בה,המוות במקצבים וזמרה של חיילים הצועדים מאחורי הדגל אל שדה הקרב .בעת נתנה ביטוי לתחושות מקבריות ולמרי אנטי־מלחמתי הצליחה המוזיקה לא אחת לגלם את, טוענים המחברים,ברוח הליברליזם העולה אך גם לטפח את אסתטיקת השיח, הבדידות והרפלקסיביות של היחיד,הפנימיות המוזיקה שימשה."הקאמרי הבין־אישי; ובדמוקרטיה ביקשה להשמיע את "קול העם זאת בצד ביטוי לזעקת,ומשמשת לפיתוי קונים וצרכנים בתרבות הקפיטליסטית במשטרים שונים היא הנפישה את קול האישה הנבגדת או.הנדכאים בשכונות העוני . אך גם את זו המבקשת לקרוא תיגר על כבלים חברתיים ותודעתיים,המדוכאת מהם המנגנונים ההדדיים של שתי אמנויות חמקמקות אלו – אמנות הצליל וא(ו)מנות השלטון – המאפשרים מגוון כה רחב של עיצובי הסובייקט הפוליטי ודמות הריבון וממשלתו? דרך דוגמאות היסטוריות רבות הספר מוביל את קוראיו לכמה תשובות הנובעות מתוך סגולותיהן הייחודיות של כל אחת מן התופעות,עקרוניות לשאלה זו .הנדונות כפי שהן עוצבו בהקשרים התרבותיים השונים
Assaf Shelleg Most discussions on art music in Israel tend אורי מורן:עיצוב עטיפה
to revert to the displaying of peripheral masks: it’s either “Jewish” or “Arab” or “Arab Jewish”; ש"ח92 מחיר מומלץ it’s oriental or exotic, and it almost always has to “represent” something—be it Jewish or הוצאת מכון ון ליר | הוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד Israeli, Hebrew or Mediterranean, etc. But all this means very little. At best, it allows both insiders and outsiders to draw a line between what seems to be fixed and stable, and what appears to be ambiguous and unmarked (and hence threatening). Studying the works of contemporary composers in Israel and outside of it, my current research assigns such identarian markers with different functions. Earmarks that previously alluded to some form of representation are now the source of distrust for many composers who aim neither at identity politics nor at ethnic markers. Instead, they draw on the multitude of voices emerging from diasporic Jewish and non-Jewish cultures, while prioritizing adjacencies over differences, and simultaneities over monolithic portrayals of a given national community. Contemporary music in Israel, for example, distances itself from territorialism having their musical and literary materials undergo violent abstractization to the point having them unmarked. Are we heading towards a new mode of globalism? Assaf’s new book Theological Stains: Art Music of an Attenuating Zionist Project is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
הוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד
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הוצאת מכון ון ליר
expression to macabre feelings and to antiwar rebellion. In the ascending atmosphere of liberalism, music has succeeded more than once in embodying the interiority, loneliness, and reflexivity of the individual; it has also fostered the aesthetics of interpersonal conversation featured in chamber music. What are the mutual mechanisms of these two elusive arts—the art of sound and the art or craft of politics—that allow for such a wide variety of portrayals of the political subject and of the image of sovereigns? The book leads its reader through the labyrinth of historical examples to several fundamental answers to this query that derive from the encounters of the unique qualities of each of the phenomena discussed as they were shaped in different historical and cultural contexts.
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FACULTY NEWS
FACULTY NEWS
Edwin Seroussi Throughout his career,
Edwin has been engaged in studying the Ladino folksongs of the Sephardic Jews around the Mediterranean, and in their global reception today. The fruits of his research will soon appear in a new book, Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Sephardic Songs in the Post-Tradition Era, which will be published in Spanish in the fall of 2019 by the High Council for Scientific Research Press in Madrid. Among other things, the book explains why - after the "folk" has succumbed to the forces of modernity such as urbanization, displacements, hybridization and more - "folksong" are still so widespread and relevant. It also describes the array of diverse geo-political interests of individuals and institutions (e.g. Hispanists, Sephardic elites, recording companies, folksong revivalists, and many more) that launched Ladino song into an afterlife. Fieldwork continues to be of major importance not only to Edwin’s own research, but also to that of his students. Among the most recent undergraduate projects he supervised was an ethnomusicological research expedition to Moshav Sthula, in northern Israel, near 5
FACULTY NEWS
the Lebanese border. The moshav was founded by Kurdish Jews from a small village in Eastern Iraq, Koy-Sanjak. They proudly preserved their cultural heritage in spite of the strong forces of Israelization imposed by the establishment through its agencies of enculturation. Students spent three days living with the families in the moshav and interviewing those men and women who are known in their community as “music bearers”. The results of this fascinating encounter were elaborated by the students in detailed reports. All the valuable field-notes (both text and music) will become part of the collection of the National Sound Archive at the National Library. Finally, Edwin was awarded the Israel Prize for 2018, the state’s highest cultural honor. He received the prestigious prize for his research in culture, arts and musicology. In its decision, the prize committee hailed Edwin’s contribution and achievements in the study of Jewish music in the region of Andalusia (Spain and North Africa) and the Ottoman Empire: “Prof. Seroussi is a pioneer in the research of popular music and Sephardi music (dubbed Mediterranean music),” the prize committee wrote. “The fruits of his research in the field of musical heritage and Sephardi liturgical poems have provided a framework for study and performance, and as such, Seroussi has contributed to imparting them to many [people].”
FACULTY NEWS
Yossi Maurey In addition to serving
as chair of the department, Yossi completed a three-year research period on the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris. Founded in 1248 by King Louis IX, it is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular Gothic edifices in France, a “must” on any visit to Paris. And yet, relatively little is known about the rituals and rich musical life that characterized it in the first centuries of its existence. In two monographs that will be published this year, Yossi examines the music and liturgy composed in honor of the SainteChapelle and the precious relics of the Passion that it housed. Many aspects of this new liturgy display a celebration of the French nation, and obliquely a legitimization of the rule of the French monarchy. Music played an important role in articulating ideas about the cult of kingship and the place of France among the nations. It was especially interesting to see how, through a carefully orchestrated campaign at the center of which were the music and liturgy composed for the SainteChapelle, King Louis IX promoted Paris as a Second Jerusalem, the expected place of the Second Coming, with the French proclaimed as the Chosen People.
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FACULTY NEWS
Naphtali Wagner After more than three decades of teaching and
service, Naphtali retired from the University last year. A specialist of structural analysis of Western tonal music, his scholarly interests include also the music of the Beatles and Israeli popular music, on which he has also published extensively. He directed numerous graduate and PhD students, many of which presented their work in a symposium held in his honor in May of 2018. It was a memorable and moving occasion to celebrate Naphtali’s career and contribution not only to the department, but to Israeli musicology in general. The event coincided with the publication of Naphtali’s most recent publication, a book entitled Lethal Music: Music in the Eyes of Literature (in Hebrew), a project that was in the making for nearly a decade. Lethal Music examines the dark, demonic, threatening and even lethal affect authors have associated with music. Naphtali discusses more than 300 short stories, novellas, and novels where music is not only represented, but constitutes forms, structures and textures of the texts.
STUDENT UPDATES
Merav Meron
G
“ ood job, Mommy! You finished your dissertation!.” This is how my son greeted me when I came home after submitting my dissertation. I wasn’t getting much sleep back then. The evening before my deadline, I realized that not only was I not going to get a good-night’s sleep – I wasn’t going to get any sleep at all. Insomniac neighbors who listened carefully could hear me playing the piano way past midnight, making sure that the music scores I appended to the dissertation were, in fact, accurate. So, what was it that kept me up? In the last couple of years, I have immersed myself in a repertoire that – up to now – wasn’t a focus of systematic research. My dissertation resolves around the work of some of the most prominent popular music composers in Israel during the 1970s – among them Yoni Rechter, Shlomo Gronich and Shem-Tov Levi. These composers were influenced by the English progressive rock (a.k.a. "Prog") of the late 1960s and early 1970s. And yet, the creative output of these composers is also regarded as quintessentially Israeli. In my research, I attempt to clarify the essence of both “Progressiveness” and “Israeliness” of the composers’ work on the one hand, and the unique way in which text and music relations are shaped in their songs, on the other. The rich and complex texts that Israeli “Prog” composers tend to use in their works are an integral part of the nature of Israeli prog songs. Many of them are by leading Israeli poets, who never intended their poems to be set to music. In my view, this encounter between two complex artistic entities leads to something of an “artistic third”, in which music and text are intertwined sometimes reflecting each other and sometimes conflicting, yet remaining in constant dialogue. 7
STUDENT UPDATE
Anat Rubinstein
It brings great joy to musicologists when the
music at the center of their study is performed live on stage. And it is even more exciting when the musical works are known to have been famous in the past and influenced the historical path of music evolution. My study focused on the life, music and thought of Pinkhas Minkowsky (18591924), a unique figure in the world of Jewish music at the turn of the twentieth century. He was the chief cantor at the Brody Synagogue in Odessa for three decades, and was known as a prolific composer, theoretician, researcher of Jewish music, philosopher, and publicist. Minkowsky belonged to the milieu of Jewish intellectuals in Odessa. As the Golden Age of Odessa ended with the Bolshevik revolution and World War I, the musical heritage of the Jews was also lost. Luckily, some records of the music survived as manuscripts and have been kept in archives for almost a century. Last year, a special concert took place in Jerusalem featuring the fruits of my research. Selected works by Minkowsky and other preeminent Jewish composers from early twentieth century Odessa were performed and recorded, some of them for the first time. Cantor Azi Schwartz of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, the Chamber Choir of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, and other established artists came together to bring this music back to life, with the support of the Jewish Music Research Centre and Da’at Hamakom Center. This once-lost music is now available to the public online: h t t p s : // w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m / watch?v=MGOfz8fTcps.
STUDENT UPDATES
learning purposes, such as the production of educational software, which does not exist today and is sorely needed.
Ram Reuven
As a musicologist and teacher, Ram Reuven
noted a decade or so ago the lack of a comprehensive and up-to-date Hebrew textbook on basic theory (a required course for all music students in conservatories and high-school music majors). I picked up the gauntlet and wrote a book that has become standard for thousands of teachers and pupils all over the country. The book’s success spurred me to tackle species counterpoint, which is also required subject for music students. This system of formal rules provides composers with precise tools for governing the relations among the individual voices in a polyphonic texture. In recent years, this discipline has found itself facing a serious crisis all over the world. All the great composers mastered species counterpoint and most of them taught it to their students. And so in my doctoral dissertation (“A Comparative Study of Pedagogical Approaches for Teaching the Traditional Theory of Species Counterpoint”) I set myself the task of investigating how the method can be enhanced to make it appropriate for the twenty-first century. The topic requires an interdisciplinary approach, combining history, music theory, and cognitive psychology. And so by the completion of my thesis I hope to be able to determine whether it is possible to streamline and improve the current system, or whether the current paradigm requires replacement by a new one. On the technological front, a new and more efficient formulation of the rules of counterpoint will influence the computerization of counterpoint theory for
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STUDENT UPDATE
Michal Goldstein
M
ichal Goldstein works in collaboration with Tomer Barak, a neuroscience Ph.D. candidate, on building a neural network that will model musical coding and processing. In a pilot stage, the neural network was tested on non-musical IQ test-like puzzles that require the human solver to predict the next unit based on a given series of items. The results were promising and they now attempt to challenge this network to perform similar tasks on musical excerpts. Michal has been recently accepted to the PhD program at NYU.
STUDENT UPDATES
Adam Yodfat
Adam Yodfat is writing his doctoral thesis is
in the field of popular music in Israel. Much like other fields of national music, Israeli pop music is characterized by a healthy tension between global and local elements. It is based on the Lingua Franca of global Pop-Rock styles, but these are sometimes manifested in ways which are uniquely local. First and foremost is, of course, the use of the Hebrew language. But can one really speak of an “Israeli” musical style? Contemporary popular music in Israel can be broadly subdivided into two main stylistic categories: Israeli Pop-Rock and Musiqa Mizraḥit. My research analyzes 1000 songs from each category, as well as hybrid instances, hailing from the past fifty years. Eventually I hope to trace historical processes of cultural evolution in Israeli society, as manifested in its popular music. Last summer I gave a paper on Israeli pop music at the 12th Symposium of the ICTM Study Group Mediterranean Music Studies, held in Essaouira, Morocco. There, I discussed how Israeli pop music has always been subject to global influences and demonstrated my hypothesis by discussing three canonical Israeli pop songs (by Shlomo Artzi, Yehuda Poliker, and Haim Moshe), each coming from a different socio-ethnic background and musical genres.
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STUDENT UPDATE
Uri Jacob
In his PhD dissertation, Uri Jacob examines
the repertoire of medieval Crusade songs, disseminated across different languages (Latin, Old French, Occitan), forms, musical idioms, and functions. These include straightforward recruiting songs, Courtly Love songs focused on the distance between the crusader and his lady, and religious songs which were probably included in ritual contexts associated with the Crusades. Uri’s research focuses only on those song that have come down to us with at least one melodic version. He examines the role of music, which was inherent in the contemporaneous performance of medieval lyrics, in articulating textual ideas and processes. His thesis revolves around the relationship between lyrics and music through tracing the politically and ideologically charged theme of crusading, and in the same time examines medieval song as a historical source which could further contribute to our understanding of crusader thought.
STUDENT UPDATES
Naji Essmaeel
Naji
Essmaeel’s research investigates two structural-theoretical aspects of the melodicmodal system of Arabic music: the taxonomic classification of the scales into 'families' and the transition between these scales (modulations) in the light of two modes of cognitive processing, namely similarity versus rule-based processing. Naji’s research consists of analyzing songs and working with music students, both Arabs and Westerners, from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
Nabil Shair
Nabil Shair is writing his disseratation on
the vocal improvisation of modern secular Arabic art music, based on the recordings by famous twentieth century Arab singers from Egypt. Seeking to reveal the deep patterns that govern vocal improvisation, Shair also conducts interviews with professional Arab singers so as to understand their technique for improvising and perception of musical forms. 10
STUDENT UPDATE
Adi Burtman
In her PhD dissertation Adi Burtman studies
opera through the prism of history and sociology of emotions. Focusing on the changing phenomenology of jealousy, shame, honor, envy, and loyalty in nineteenth-century Italian opera, Adi examines a number of operas by Rossini, Verdi, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini, where jealousy plays a central role by means of style, musical form, emotional expressions, and the representation of characters’ emotional states. Her study of Italian emotional culture is inseparable from concomitant societal developments in Italian society, namely the secularization and nationalization across the nineteenth-century.
STUDENT UPDATES
Uri Agnon
T
hroughout his undergraduate studies in both composition and in philosophy, Uri Agnon wondered if and how these two majors could be linked. Can philosophical research affect music? Could philosophy have anything to learn from music? In his graduate thesis (“On Foundations of Truth; The Cogito and the Musical Character), Uri attempted to look for possible connections in a musically important moment in the history, the turn of the seventeenth century.
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STUDENT UPDATE
Two influential changes in that era are the recreation of theoretical rules and practices later to be named tonality, and the birth of the opera. Both are relevant today and for me as a composer. So having read musical scores, librettos and various musicological texts, I found that the new theoretical system is built on a dualistic approach to music, divided between harmony and melody. The dualistic approach draws on Cartesian epistemology, whereby Descartes’ philosophy and Monteverdi’s music co-interpret each other and together portray a nuanced cultural moment that has resonance until the present. On another front, Uri’s recent opera Custodian for “an a-cappella choir that acts”, had its premiere in Jerusalem on October 23, 2018. The opera juxtaposes the biblical story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21) with the legal history of the Jewish National Fund and its premiere took place outdoors, in front of Jewish National Fund headquarters in Jerusalem.
The Jewish Music Research Centre The Jewish Music Research Centre (JMRC) is the only academic institution in the world fully dedicated to the documentation, research and publication of scholarly materials about Jewish music. Founded in 1964, the JMRC is a research branch of the Department of Musicology, devoted to collecting and studying all documents pertaining to the musical traditions and the musical life of Jewish communities, past and present. In December 2018 the JMRC, headed by Edwin Seroussi, launched one of the major undertakings in its history, the publication of the liturgy of Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jewish community whose vast majority is located now in Israel. Based on precious recordings made in Jerusalem of the spiritual leaders of this community by a French-Israeli team of ethnomusicologists and anthropologists in the late 1980s, this production expands on all that was previously known about this liturgical tradition. At the unforgettable launching event attended by members of the families of those late spiritual leaders that were recorded, the importance of this research project for the future education of a new generation of Ethiopian-Jewish leaders was acknowledged by the members of the community. The pertinence of music research carried out among Jewish communities not only for scholarly circles, but for the members of the communities themselves, and for educators, was immediately tangible.
The Department of Musicology Faculty of the Humanities The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501 Tel. +972.2.5883936 en.musicology.huji.ac.il www.facebook.com/HUJI.Musicology/