Michael Lukin
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jewish Music Research Center, Department Member
- Jewish Music, Ethnomusicology, Jewish Folklore, Slavic folklore, Eastern European Folk Music, Jewish Studies, and 14 moreJewish Cultural Studies, Polish folk culture, Ukrainian Folk Song, Folk European Ballads, Folklore (Literature), Yiddish Music, Yiddish Culture and Language, Klezmer Music, Folk songs, Jewish Folklore and Ethnography, Yiddish Folklore, Folk Medicine, Disciplinary History of Folkloristics, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, History of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Early Modern Jewish Historyedit
- https://en.scholion.huji.ac.il/people/michael-lukin Dr. Michael Lukin studies the traditional culture of Yiddish spea... morehttps://en.scholion.huji.ac.il/people/michael-lukin
Dr. Michael Lukin studies the traditional culture of Yiddish speakers in eastern Europe. His dissertation, written under the supervision of Prof. Edwin Seroussi and Prof. Galit Hasan-Rokem, discusses the poetics and music of the Yiddish folk song and traces the emergence of this folklore, its characteristic features and social functions. In 2019, as a Polonsky Visiting Fellow, Lukin participated in the Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies, “Between Sacred and Profane: Jewish Musical Cultures in Early Modern Europe”. In this framework he explored the so-called “mediaeval” ballad in eastern Yiddish, its resemblance to Klezmer music, and its remoteness from German balladic tradition. From 2016 to the present, he has taught courses on Jewish music, Hassidic musical thought, and Yiddish verbal folklore at Sapir Academic College and Bar Ilan University. His new project is dedicated to the aesthetics and semiotics of traditional eastern Ashkenazi music, with a special emphasis on the cantorial art, paraliturgical singing, Klezmer improvisation and Yiddish lyric folk song. The project aims to shed light on these repertoires’ affinities with the western European heritage, as well as with their Slavic surroundings and with Jewish music from the Ottoman realm.edit
Based on a survey of previous studies and the documentation of Beregovski’s trial, a twofold attempt has been made: (1) to deduce his ideas via a comparative analysis of his statements in both published and unpublished sources; and (2) to... more
Based on a survey of previous studies and the documentation of Beregovski’s trial, a twofold attempt has been made: (1) to deduce his ideas via a comparative analysis of his statements in both published and unpublished sources; and (2) to glean insights from non-verbal clues, such as the ways he organized materials in preparation for publication. The sincere desire to gain full partnership in the Soviet discourse often contradicted Beregovski’s research integrity and his understanding of the inner features of traditional Yiddish folk singing and the insights of nonSoviet scholars. As a result, while a considerable part of his writings contributed to the formation of the Soviet myth, the materials he published or prepared for publication undermined it by focusing on the traditional music of the Jewish petit bourgeois and emphasizing its beauty.
Research Interests:
Eastern European Jews, dwellers of shtetls (small market towns), created a distinctive repertoire of traditional folk songs in eastern Yiddish that flourished from early modern times until the Holocaust. During this prolonged period, its... more
Eastern European Jews, dwellers of shtetls (small market towns), created a distinctive repertoire of traditional folk songs in eastern Yiddish that flourished from early modern times until the Holocaust. During this prolonged period, its various genres developed interconnections, both poetic and musical. Marked by conservatism and internal inspirations, traditional songs shared a creative adaptation of old western European elements, adopted before the Ashkenazi immigration to central-eastern Europe (i.e., before the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries), to their Slavic surroundings. A comparative analysis of poetics, music, performance contexts, and cultural backgrounds of three representative repertoires—lullabies, lyric songs, and ballads—reveals their idiosyncratic aesthetics and semiotics, which, although they cannot be confirmed by living members of the eastern European communities, can be deduced using an interdisciplinary approach, combining fieldwork among descendants and the examination of archival materials from folkloristic and historical-ethnomusicological perspectives.
Research Interests: Yiddish, Historical Ethnomusicology, Eastern European and Russian Jewish History, Oral Traditions, Traditional Music, and 12 moreOral Tradition, Oral Traditions (Culture), Jewish Music, Early Modern Jewish History, Central and Eastern Europe, German-Jewish Studies, Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Yiddish Culture and Language, Jewish Folklore, Folk songs, Lullabies, and Folk European Ballads
The present study seeks to address the main obstacle in the research of the folk song in eastern Yiddish—the lack of documentation of texts, melodies, and contexts from before the end of the nineteenth century, and the almost complete... more
The present study seeks to address the main obstacle in the research of the folk song in eastern Yiddish—the lack of documentation of texts, melodies, and contexts from before the end of the nineteenth century, and the almost complete lack of reliable informants. Based on extant documentation as well as research in neighboring traditions, and conducting a dialogue with a monumental unpublished dissertation by the Soviet musicologist Sofia Magid on the folk ballad in Yiddish (1938), the article outlines three different styles in the eastern Ashkenazi balladic repertoire: the old Yiddish ballad, the German "medieval" ballad that had been absorbed into Yiddish-speaking society since the end of the eighteenth century, and the new sentimental urban ballad. The discussion focuses on the style of the songs from the first group and traces their historical development, poetics, music, social functions, performance by men/women, and interrelations with the printed songs in old Yiddish. The focus on the old ballad as a distinct phenomenon of the early modern East Ashkenazi culture is achieved through examining narrative motifs, rhythmic patterns, and melodic contours. This scrutiny reveals how the aesthetic foundations of the international ballad genre—such as impersonal contemplation of emotional responses to pivotal events in daily communal life, and openness to absorbing diverse poetic and musical elements—contributed to the formation of its premodern eastern Ashkenazi oicotype in the small towns, at the crossroads between the western European heritage, the Slavic environment, Jewish narrative and musical traditions, and the Ashkenazi way of life.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Traditional lullabies comprise the most widespread repertoire of Yiddish functional songs. The traditional corpus was most likely consolidated during the eighteenth century at the latest, and despite its dissemination throughout Eastern... more
Traditional lullabies comprise the most widespread repertoire of Yiddish functional songs. The traditional corpus was most likely consolidated during the eighteenth century at the latest, and despite its dissemination throughout Eastern Europe, it comprised only a handful of textual formulas and a dozen melodies. In some aspects traditional Yiddish lullabies resemble Eastern Slavic ones, and yet several prominent characteristics distinguish the Jewish repertoire from neighboring counterparts. These are the dominance of the music over the words, clear affinity to the Ashkenazi-German heritage, and a circumscribed set of functions. By virtue of its poetic and musical specificity, the traditional Yiddish lullaby became emblematic of East European Jewry in the eyes of maskilim already in the second half of the nineteenth century, concomitantly with the rise of modern Jewish national consciousness. In that period, songs of literary origin seeped into the folkloric repertoire.
While resonating with traditional patterns, these newer songs reflected contemporary fashions, in poetry as well as music. Thus, even folklorized lullabies of literary origin bore a recognizable ideological function and targeted enlightened Jews, in that their phraseology and imagery conveyed either socialist messages or the ideals of the proto-Zionist movement Ḥibbat Zion [Love of Zion]. Indeed, during the twentieth century, many of these new Yiddish lullabies were translated into Hebrew, becoming folk songs in turn. Traditional lullabies, however, remained different: their addressee was still the baby, and their words and tunes served the three traditional functions of the genre in Jewish society – soothing, safeguarding, and initiation.
While resonating with traditional patterns, these newer songs reflected contemporary fashions, in poetry as well as music. Thus, even folklorized lullabies of literary origin bore a recognizable ideological function and targeted enlightened Jews, in that their phraseology and imagery conveyed either socialist messages or the ideals of the proto-Zionist movement Ḥibbat Zion [Love of Zion]. Indeed, during the twentieth century, many of these new Yiddish lullabies were translated into Hebrew, becoming folk songs in turn. Traditional lullabies, however, remained different: their addressee was still the baby, and their words and tunes served the three traditional functions of the genre in Jewish society – soothing, safeguarding, and initiation.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
IVAN FRANKO NATIONAL
UNIVERSITY OF LVIV
Faculty of Culture and Arts
Department of Musicology
and Choral Art in
collaboration with
THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF
JERUSALEM, JEWISH MUSIC
RESEARCH CENTRE
UNIVERSITY OF LVIV
Faculty of Culture and Arts
Department of Musicology
and Choral Art in
collaboration with
THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF
JERUSALEM, JEWISH MUSIC
RESEARCH CENTRE
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
“Shtetl romance” and its cultural context The present study focuses on a specific musical-poetical form, recorded in Eastern Europe mainly in Yiddish folk songs. Two prominent ethnomusicologists from the first half of the twentieth... more
“Shtetl romance” and its cultural context
The present study focuses on a specific musical-poetical form, recorded in Eastern Europe mainly in Yiddish folk songs. Two prominent ethnomusicologists from the first half of the twentieth century, Sofia Magid and Moisei Beregovsky, pointed to the uniqueness of this form, which differs from the formal patterns of neighboring musical traditions. Both researchers drew attention to its main characteristics: a combination of four different musical phrases, traditional modality and special rhythmical asymmetry. The documentation of texts and tunes which has partially survived, and the occasional recordings of songs embedded in this form enable us to describe this cultural phenomenon and to outline a possible historical retrospective of its existence. The melodies of “four-phrasal form” songs show typological similarity to the Western-European folksong forms of the Renaissance period, whereas many parameters of their texts are close to those of the Eastern European “suburban romance” of the 18th - 19th centuries. The group of songs under discussion may be therefore designated by the term “shtetl romance”, in light of its general orientation towards the combination of archaism and the everyday.
Lacking sufficient information on the performance contexts and styles, and on the performers’ social backgrounds, the only possible research strategy seems to be the comparative method. This method has enabled us to determine a formal proximity of the tunes of Yiddish folk songs to those of the Ashkenazi piyutim, Sephardic ballads and to the tunes of the Western-European folksongs. By considering these proximities the emergence of the “shtetl romance” genre may be ascribed to the 16th – 17th centuries. A detailed analysis of the genre enables a better understanding of the cultural contexts of the shtetl folklore, which, like the Yiddish language itself, developed in Eastern Europe, partly preserving there the traditions of the Western-European heritage.
http://judaica-petropolitana.philosophy.spbu.ru/Admin/postPDF.aspx?isid=0&arid=8
The present study focuses on a specific musical-poetical form, recorded in Eastern Europe mainly in Yiddish folk songs. Two prominent ethnomusicologists from the first half of the twentieth century, Sofia Magid and Moisei Beregovsky, pointed to the uniqueness of this form, which differs from the formal patterns of neighboring musical traditions. Both researchers drew attention to its main characteristics: a combination of four different musical phrases, traditional modality and special rhythmical asymmetry. The documentation of texts and tunes which has partially survived, and the occasional recordings of songs embedded in this form enable us to describe this cultural phenomenon and to outline a possible historical retrospective of its existence. The melodies of “four-phrasal form” songs show typological similarity to the Western-European folksong forms of the Renaissance period, whereas many parameters of their texts are close to those of the Eastern European “suburban romance” of the 18th - 19th centuries. The group of songs under discussion may be therefore designated by the term “shtetl romance”, in light of its general orientation towards the combination of archaism and the everyday.
Lacking sufficient information on the performance contexts and styles, and on the performers’ social backgrounds, the only possible research strategy seems to be the comparative method. This method has enabled us to determine a formal proximity of the tunes of Yiddish folk songs to those of the Ashkenazi piyutim, Sephardic ballads and to the tunes of the Western-European folksongs. By considering these proximities the emergence of the “shtetl romance” genre may be ascribed to the 16th – 17th centuries. A detailed analysis of the genre enables a better understanding of the cultural contexts of the shtetl folklore, which, like the Yiddish language itself, developed in Eastern Europe, partly preserving there the traditions of the Western-European heritage.
http://judaica-petropolitana.philosophy.spbu.ru/Admin/postPDF.aspx?isid=0&arid=8
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
https://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/he/node/22603 *** Vemen vestu zingen, vemen? Leibu Levin Performs in Yiddish: Select Archival Recordings from Bukovina, USSR and Israel. 2015. Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel 25. Jewish Music... more
https://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/he/node/22603 ***
Vemen vestu zingen, vemen? Leibu Levin Performs in Yiddish: Select Archival Recordings from Bukovina, USSR and Israel. 2015. Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel 25. Jewish Music Research Centre, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem AMTI 0115. Mastered by Yuval Amit. Annotated by Michael Lukin. Produced by Edwin Seroussi. 204-page book with notes in English, Russian, and Hebrew. English and Hebrew translations by Tova Shani, Russian translations by Valery Dymshits and Michael Lukin. English translations of selected poems by Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman, Hebrew translations of selected poems by David Kriksunov, Russian translations of selected poems by Valery Dymshits, Alexandra Glebovskaia, and Igor Bulatovskii. B/w photographs, bibliography. CD, 20 tracks (70:18).
The Jewish Music Research Centre is proud to reprint here reviews of two recent JMRC discs found in the 2016 edition of the Yearbook for Traditional Music. Both discs were reviewed by Hankus Netsky.
Vemen vestu zingen, vemen? Leibu Levin Performs in Yiddish: Select Archival Recordings from Bukovina, USSR and Israel. 2015. Anthology of Music Traditions in Israel 25. Jewish Music Research Centre, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem AMTI 0115. Mastered by Yuval Amit. Annotated by Michael Lukin. Produced by Edwin Seroussi. 204-page book with notes in English, Russian, and Hebrew. English and Hebrew translations by Tova Shani, Russian translations by Valery Dymshits and Michael Lukin. English translations of selected poems by Itzik Nakhmen Gottesman, Hebrew translations of selected poems by David Kriksunov, Russian translations of selected poems by Valery Dymshits, Alexandra Glebovskaia, and Igor Bulatovskii. B/w photographs, bibliography. CD, 20 tracks (70:18).
The Jewish Music Research Centre is proud to reprint here reviews of two recent JMRC discs found in the 2016 edition of the Yearbook for Traditional Music. Both discs were reviewed by Hankus Netsky.
Research Interests:
This conference brings together the latest scholarship on the broad themes of transnationalism, intersectionality, and cross-border exchanges in Jewish history from the early modern period to the present.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Yiddish Literature, Historical Ethnomusicology, Jewish History, Jewish Music, Folkloristics, and 5 moreEthnography (Jewish Folklore, Oral Tradition and the Problem of Identity in Diaspora), Jewish Folklore and Ethnography, Yiddish Folklore, Folk Medicine, S. Ansky The Dybbuk, Folk songs, and The Dibbuk by S. Ansky
Programme Committee: Ulrich Morgenstern (Co-Chair) Thomas Nußbaumer (Co-Chair), Jana Ambrózová. Folk music, folklore, and the anthropology of music are discursive fields, deeply rooted in European thought from the Enlightenment period... more
Programme Committee: Ulrich Morgenstern (Co-Chair) Thomas Nußbaumer (Co-Chair), Jana Ambrózová.
Folk music, folklore, and the anthropology of music are discursive fields, deeply rooted in European thought from the Enlightenment period onwards. Up to the first decades of the 20th century, leading intellectuals of their countries-polymaths, philosophers, historians, writers, philologists, composers and musicologists-devoted themselves to, and were inspired by, continuous observations of the expressive practices of those who once were called the common people or the Volk. Their intellectual involvement with traditional music engendered powerful theories and research methods that could later be applied to the study not only of rural or illiterate communities but to a broad field of social settings. Due to language barriers as well as to widespread stereotypes of folk music and folklore discourses as genuinely and predominantly ideological, romanticist and nationalist agendas, the early intellectual history of folk music research, comparative musicology and ethnomusicology raises many unanswered questions. This concerns intellectuals' interest in European folk music as well as in non-European music. The focus of the symposium is the history of theory and method in the fields outlined above before they turned into an international paradigm under the label of ethnomusicology in the mid-20th century. 27 scholars from 14 countries and from different disciplines will discuss the following topics: • The history of ideas and the study of traditional expressive cultures • Research motivations, theories and methods from a comparative perspective • Scholarship and non-academic discourses: alliances and conflicts
Folk music, folklore, and the anthropology of music are discursive fields, deeply rooted in European thought from the Enlightenment period onwards. Up to the first decades of the 20th century, leading intellectuals of their countries-polymaths, philosophers, historians, writers, philologists, composers and musicologists-devoted themselves to, and were inspired by, continuous observations of the expressive practices of those who once were called the common people or the Volk. Their intellectual involvement with traditional music engendered powerful theories and research methods that could later be applied to the study not only of rural or illiterate communities but to a broad field of social settings. Due to language barriers as well as to widespread stereotypes of folk music and folklore discourses as genuinely and predominantly ideological, romanticist and nationalist agendas, the early intellectual history of folk music research, comparative musicology and ethnomusicology raises many unanswered questions. This concerns intellectuals' interest in European folk music as well as in non-European music. The focus of the symposium is the history of theory and method in the fields outlined above before they turned into an international paradigm under the label of ethnomusicology in the mid-20th century. 27 scholars from 14 countries and from different disciplines will discuss the following topics: • The history of ideas and the study of traditional expressive cultures • Research motivations, theories and methods from a comparative perspective • Scholarship and non-academic discourses: alliances and conflicts
Research Interests:
This Seminar will focus on Ashkenazic, Italian, Jewish and Western Sephardic musical expressions in Europe during the early modern period (excluding European Jewish communities under Ottoman rule). Special emphasis will be given to the... more
This Seminar will focus on Ashkenazic, Italian, Jewish and Western Sephardic musical expressions in Europe during the early modern period (excluding European Jewish communities under Ottoman rule). Special emphasis will be given to the connection of liturgical, semi- liturgical and secular spheres within both composition and performance practice – hence the title “Between Sacred and Profane”.
Project Leader: Diana Matut (Heidelberg/Halle-Wittenburg)
Project Leader: Diana Matut (Heidelberg/Halle-Wittenburg)
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
איך הפך הניגון הזה לשיר שאנחנו מכירים? "את ההתאמה ביצע מרדכי ריווסמן, שכתב את הטקסט ביידיש שממנו נעשה מאוחר יותר תרגום לעברית (את הגרסה העברית לשיר כתב אברהם אברונין). השידוך בין המילים החדשות לניגון החסידי נערך מתוך שאיפה חינוכית – לשם... more
איך הפך הניגון הזה לשיר שאנחנו מכירים?
"את ההתאמה ביצע מרדכי ריווסמן, שכתב את הטקסט ביידיש שממנו נעשה מאוחר יותר תרגום לעברית (את הגרסה העברית לשיר כתב אברהם אברונין). השידוך בין המילים החדשות לניגון החסידי נערך מתוך שאיפה חינוכית – לשם שילוב שיר חנוכה בספר שיצא לאור בסנט פטרבורג בשנת 1912. כותר הספר נראה כמעט משעמם כיום, ואילו אז נשמע מהפכני למדי – 'שירים למשפחה ולבית הספר'".
מה מהפכני כאן?
"החידוש שלו היה בקביעת הקנון המוזיקלי – מה ראוי לשיר סביב שולחן החג במשפחה יהודית נאורה. אגב, לצד השיר לחנוכה שהותאם לניגון החביב הזה, מופיעים שם גם טקסטים שמותאמים ללחנים של מוצרט ובטהובן".
סיפור דומה יש לניגון נוסף של חסידות חב"ד-לובביץ', שהפך לשיר "לכבוד החנוכה". "אינני יודע מי בדיוק ביצע את ההתאמה בין המילים של חיים נחמן ביאליק לניגון, אך סביר להניח שגם שידוך זה התרחש בקרב הנוער שהתחנך בבתי ספר ליטאיים או בלארוסיים, שהיו קרובים גאוגרפית לקהילות חסידי לובביץ'", אומר לוקין. "לדעתי אין זה מקרה שגם ריווסמן נולד בווילנה, והתגורר בסנט פטרבורג השוכנת בצפון האימפריה הרוסית. ייתכן שריבוי בתי ספר יהודיים וריכוז גבוה של יהודים משכילים באזורים אלה מסבירים אהדה לניגוני החסידים המקומיים"
https://www.ynet.co.il/judaism/article/h1x6lozto
"את ההתאמה ביצע מרדכי ריווסמן, שכתב את הטקסט ביידיש שממנו נעשה מאוחר יותר תרגום לעברית (את הגרסה העברית לשיר כתב אברהם אברונין). השידוך בין המילים החדשות לניגון החסידי נערך מתוך שאיפה חינוכית – לשם שילוב שיר חנוכה בספר שיצא לאור בסנט פטרבורג בשנת 1912. כותר הספר נראה כמעט משעמם כיום, ואילו אז נשמע מהפכני למדי – 'שירים למשפחה ולבית הספר'".
מה מהפכני כאן?
"החידוש שלו היה בקביעת הקנון המוזיקלי – מה ראוי לשיר סביב שולחן החג במשפחה יהודית נאורה. אגב, לצד השיר לחנוכה שהותאם לניגון החביב הזה, מופיעים שם גם טקסטים שמותאמים ללחנים של מוצרט ובטהובן".
סיפור דומה יש לניגון נוסף של חסידות חב"ד-לובביץ', שהפך לשיר "לכבוד החנוכה". "אינני יודע מי בדיוק ביצע את ההתאמה בין המילים של חיים נחמן ביאליק לניגון, אך סביר להניח שגם שידוך זה התרחש בקרב הנוער שהתחנך בבתי ספר ליטאיים או בלארוסיים, שהיו קרובים גאוגרפית לקהילות חסידי לובביץ'", אומר לוקין. "לדעתי אין זה מקרה שגם ריווסמן נולד בווילנה, והתגורר בסנט פטרבורג השוכנת בצפון האימפריה הרוסית. ייתכן שריבוי בתי ספר יהודיים וריכוז גבוה של יהודים משכילים באזורים אלה מסבירים אהדה לניגוני החסידים המקומיים"
https://www.ynet.co.il/judaism/article/h1x6lozto