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Tina Frühauf, The organ in Jewish culture during the long Renaissance, Early Music, Volume 49, Issue 4, November 2021, Pages 553–564, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caab069
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Abstract
Between the 1400s and about 1700, the organ firmly manifested itself in Jewish culture by becoming a subject in the writings of Jewish authors who experienced or envisioned the instrument in specific contexts; it became an object in iconography and materialized in synagogues. These occurrences all link to distinct places in Europe—northern Italy, the Rhine region of Germany and Bohemia. The differing meanings and interpretations of the organ—perceived as an instrument tied to the church, explored through the lens of music theory, and as imagined Jewish antiquity and the otherworld—suggest that the Jewish fascination with the instrument goes hand in hand with a certain kind of imagination, sometimes to the extent of fantasy, often with an oblique glance at non-Jewish practices. During its watershed moments in the long Renaissance, the organ in Jewish culture ultimately reveals notable convergences of European culture and religious and non-religious customs unique to Judaism, documenting the intersection of the different life worlds of early modern Europe.
