A European music professor has drafted his research staff to help him delve into his lifetime passion — unearthing the lost music of prewar synagogues, discovering the buried scores of old-time chazzanim, and reinstating the glory of authentic Jewish cantorial music
But who lacks Jewish music in our times? And why has Andor Izsák whose research staff isn’t even Jewish dedicated his life to restoring the authentic cantorial music — chazzanus — of Europe before World War II?
The sheet music on his desk like the giant library that surrounds us contains music nearly lost forever in the Holocaust. If not for Professor Izsák’s dedication in collecting it and printing it it’s doubtful whether this music ever would have been published.
“People completely forget” says Professor Izsák an expert in cantorial music “that the historic role of the synagogue in Europe besides serving as a house of prayer to the Creator was also to host glorious and honored musical institutions.”
According to him every self-respecting synagogue even the smallest and most Orthodox had an honored choir and a cantor who was sometimes as Professor Izsák puts it “a superb musician who wrote the most brilliant compositions in Jewish music.
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