Jewish music and liturgies

The cantillation (te'amim, or trop in Yiddish) is a system of signs that governs the chanted reading of the Bible, transmitted since the Middle Ages according to distinct regional traditions.

The nusach designates the melodic modes proper to each service and to each moment of the year: a musical grammar of prayer, learned through usage far more than through the written note.

The piyyutim, liturgical poems composed from late Antiquity (Yannaï, Eléazar Kallir) to the Sephardic golden age (Ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi), gave rise to countless melodies.

In the Maghreb and the East, the tradition of baqashot — nights of nocturnal singing — remains alive and continues to be passed down.

Each region forged its own style. Ashkenazi hazzanout and its great cantors; Sephardic song and its coplas in Judeo-Spanish; the Mizrahi traditions, nourished by Arab and Ottoman maqamat.

These are so many ways of inhabiting the same text — and the zone where Memory (the transmitted voice) and History (the study of sources) meet best.

Outside the synagogue, popular music accompanied festivals and weddings: the klezmer of Eastern Europe, songs in Yiddish and Ladino.

Partly destroyed by the Shoah, it has experienced a worldwide revival since the 1970s, and today engages in dialogue with jazz, pop, and Israeli music.

Fragile heritage, for it is first and foremost oral, Jewish music is preserved through recording, transcription, and practice.

To gather it is to keep a memory that cannot be read: it is heard.