648 Notes, June 2019 Based on Their Musical

Home , Dorothea von Schlegel, Henriette Herz, Moses Mendelssohn, Rahel Varnhagen

05_907-146_BkRevs_pp637-687 4/22/19 7:32 AM Page 648

648 Notes, June 2019

based on their musical traditions. For baroque language and references with- example, he describes the music of out cluttering the text of the translation “heathens” thus: “For just as they had itself. no true knowledge of God in that they Kimberly Beck Hieb did not recognize the Trinity in God, West Texas A&M University they also could not recognize the har- monic triad, for they did not consider the third to be a consonance, even Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism, though harmony without the addition and the Bach Tradition in Enlighten - of the third is quite deficient and in- ment Berlin. Edited by Rebecca Cypess complete, yea, even lifeless” (p. 83). and Nancy Sinkoff. (Eastman Studies Finally, Werckmeister wishes to con- in Music.) Rochester, NY: University of firm the subordinate position of linear Rochester Press, 2018. [x, 292 p. ISBN staff notation in relation to its superior 9781580469210 (hardcover), $99.00.] counterpart, German organ tablature. Illustrations, music examples, appen- He spends several chapters denigrating dices, bibliography, index, online au- the linear staff system, pointing to the dio ﬁles. inconvenience of having to read all the different clefs and the confusing This well-written, insightful, interdis- process of adding sharps and flats to ciplinary, and excellent work is an ef- pitches, which to him suggests unneces- fort to explore the facets of Sara Levy’s sary chromatic semitones. The new and complex world and in so doing bring practical equal temperament tuning is that remarkable woman from the mar- central to Werckmeister’s argument gins of intellectual and cultural history. here. While he was not always a fan of It places Sara Levy (1761–1854) center equal temperament and admits as much stage and gives her the historical due in his treatise, he boldly announces his that she deserves by honoring this very change of heart, asserting the basic talented musician, committed Jew, quality of the tuning in the title for and “enlightened person” (p. 12). The chapter 11: “Proof of how everything book stems from an international con- can be played or sung through the ference at Rutgers University in 2014 twelve note-names.” In essence, he ar- that explored anew the roles of gender, gues that if there are truly only twelve music, aesthetics, modernity, and anti- note names to know, linear staff nota- Judaism in Levy’s accomplishments. tion introduces unnecessary confusion. The multidisciplinary conference in- Bartel’s English translation of Werck- volved scholars of intellectual-social- meister’s German is both coherent and cultural history, Jewish studies, musi- idiomatic and makes an important doc- cology, and philosophy to create a ument from the German baroque avail- “polyphonic perspective” (p. 8). able to a much wider audience. The The German Jewish women who power of this volume, however, rests hosted salons not only were patrons in the ancillary materials, which also but, as in the case of Levy, were also increase the accessibility of the intellectuals for whom music was a criti- eighteenth-century document. The cal vehicle for becoming modern Euro- lengthy preface introduces key con- peans. Levy helped form German musi- cepts necessary for understanding the cal history by promoting the revival of many subtleties in Werckmeister’s trea- baroque music, particularly the appreci- tise. Moreover, the detailed footnotes ation of Johann Sebastian Bach. Fanny, in Bartel’s overview of the treatise’s con- Sara’s younger sister, became a promi- tent explain Werckmeister’s nuanced nent Viennese salonnière who estab- 05_907-146_BkRevs_pp637-687 4/22/19 7:32 AM Page 649

Book Reviews 649

lished the Gesellschaft der Musik- Visited by poets, philosophers, musi- freunde and the music hall that be- cians, artists, scientists, and scholars, came the home of the Vienna Philhar - these salons hosted by Jewish women, monic Or chestra. She hosted Mozart at who championed religious tolerance, al- her home in 1781. Sara, who studied lowed what Immanuel Kant and Moses music with Wilhelm Friede mann Bach Mendelsohn called “the pursuit of and was a patron of his brother Carl Enlightenment.” Yet Nancy Sinkoff’s in- Philipp Emanuel, was a gifted key- troduction points to Ruth HaCohen’s boardist who performed at both her argument that the libel against the Jews home and the Sing-Akademie zu implicit in Western Christian music Berlin. Levy influenced the zeal of her never allowed this utopian ideal of grandnephew, Felix Mendelssohn, for equality, sympathy, mutuality, and a the Bach tradition, although unlike culture of redemption (Ruth HaCohen, Mendels sohn, Levy remained a com- The Music Libel Against the Jews [New mitted and devoted Jew. For example, Haven, CT: Yale University Press, Levy was a great philanthropist of many 2011]). Jewish causes who willed her consider- Sara Levy’s World shows that this secu- able fortune to the Jewish orphanage in lar Enlightenment (Aufklärung) worked Berlin. According to these essays, her in tandem with the Haskalah. While “deep engagement with music—even Sara Levy’s world emphasized Bildung with a tradition dominated by Christian (the German word for culture), motifs—did not threaten her Jewish - Haskalah placed emphasis on tarbut ness” (p. 5). This conclusion contradicts (the Hebrew word for culture). The the views of historians Heinrich Graetz Haskalah leaders known as maskilim (1817–1891) and Shimon Dubnov (1860– were dedicated to the modernization of 1941), who viewed the salonnières as the Talmudic heder (elementary and “traitors who severed their ties” with high school) and yeshivot (college-level the Jewish community. On the other Rabbinic studies) designed to produce hand, feminists and scholars of gender Talmidei Chachamim (Talmud scholars). studies see role models in these extra- This Haskalah trend was towards mod- ordinary independent women of high erate modernization while at the same culture who “challenged the patriarchal time emphasizing knowledge of the conventions of traditional Jewish life” Bible (Tanakh) and Hebrew grammar (p. 5). (dikduk), along with humanistic arts The context of the modern En- such as modern languages, geography, lightenment musical and literary salons rhetoric, literature, and so forth. The that met on jours fixes, hosted by Jewish goals of Haskalah reached their apex women, provided a place of culture in the Wissenschaft des Judentums (Bildung) in which music played an es- (Science of Judaism) movement cham- sential place, that promoted a society pioned by Leopold Zunz, Moritz Stein - of virtue (Tugendbund), self education, schneider, and others. As Jeremy Brown moral improvement, aesthetic refine- has shown in his book New Heavens and ment, and intellectual discourse. In ad- a New Earth: The Jewish Reception of dition to Levy, salonnière hosts included Copernican Thought (New York: Oxford Amalie Beer (mother of Giacomo University Press, 2013), even the knowl- Meyerbeer), Fanny Mendelssohn edge of the sciences in Hebrew trans - Hensel (sister of Felix Mendels sohn), lation by maskilim, post-Copernicus, Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833), was transmitted by Has kalah and Henriette Herz (1764–1847), and Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars. Dorothea von Schlegel (1764–1839). This belief in science and humanities 05_907-146_BkRevs_pp637-687 4/22/19 7:32 AM Page 650

650 Notes, June 2019

was shared by the high German cultural Chapter 5, “Lessing and the Limits of world of Sara Levy and the Haskalah Enlightenment,” consists of an extract movement, although Levy’s cultural from Martha B. Helfer’s full study The world embraced modernity, accultura- Word Unheard: Legacies of Anti-Semitism tion, and assimilation to a greater de- in German Literature and Culture (Evans- gree than the Haskalah movement. ton, IL: Northwestern University Press, The book is organized in three parts: 2011). In addition to Gotthold (1) “Portrait of a Jewish Female Artist: Ephraim Lessing’s well-known play Music, Identity, Image”; (2) “Music, Nathan der Weise (1779), Helfer exam- Aesthetics, and Philosophy: Jews and ines his treatise Die Erziehung des Christians in Sara Levy’s World”; and Menschengeschlechts [The Education of (3) “Studies in Sara Levy’s Collection.” the Human Race] (Berlin: C. F. Voss In chapter 1, Marjanne E. Goozé exam- und Sohn, 1780) and another play, Die ines the genesis, high point, and Juden (1754). demise of the female-hosted salon in In chapter 6, Elias Sacks looks at late eighteenth-century Prussia and its Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the role in allowing Jewish women to attain psalms and treatment of biblical music. an education in a German secular cul- Mendelssohn offered a critique of ture. Chapter 2, by Christoph Wolff, ex- Christianity by noting that the cantilla- amines the provenance of Sara Levy’s tion or trope in which the Hebrew text collection and the archive of the Sing- is sung is essential to the message and Akademie zu Berlin, which is now avail- content of the biblical Hebrew. In a let- able online through Bach Digital ter to Sophie Becker, Mendelssohn (https://www.bach-digital.de [accessed wrote that psalms “must be sung with 24 December 2018]), a project of the true edification by the most enlighte- Bach Archiv Leipzig. Natalie Naimark- ned people [sie von den aufgeklärtes- Goldberg’s chapter is particularly im- ten Menschen mit wahrer Erbauung portant for Jewish studies scholars, as gesungen werden müssen]” (p. 122). it shows that Levy was committed to Thus the nature of poetry, music, and Jewish causes and institutions, includ- harmony render a Jewish appreciation ing her support of Haskalah and Jewish of the sonority of biblical poetry. Sacks education. She demonstrates Levy’s argues that while many Christians may successful balance between the German possess deep knowledge of the written and Jewish worlds. One illustration of Torah (the Hebrew bible known as this balance was Sara’s wedding to Torah Shebichtav), Mendelssohn advo- Samuel Levy in 1783, for which was cated that Christians also aspire to learn commissioned not only a song by the oral Torah (Torah ShebaЈal Peh). Friedemann Bach but also two Hebrew Chapter 7 is Yael Sela’s essay poems, one by Josel Pick, in the tradi- “Longing for the Sublime: Jewish Self- tion of Italian wedding poems. Consciousness and the St. Mathew George Stauffer’s chapter, “Women’s Passion of Biedermeier Berlin.” The Voices in Bach’s Musical World: Shulchan Arukh, Talmudim, and other Christiane Mariane von Ziegler and rabbinic literature warn against the Faustina Bordoni,” shows that these learning of non-Jewish theologies rele- women played a crucial role in German gated by some observant Orthodox music history. Ziegler was a poet in Jews to “forbidden worship” (known as Leipzig who wrote texts for nine of avodat kochavim and avodah zarah). Sela Bach’s cantatas. Bordoni sang the shows that the issue of Jewish reception “Laudamus te” aria from the Mass in B of Lutheran theology and ideology Minor, BWV 232, at the first perfor- through the music of Bach led mem- mance in Dresden in 1733. bers of Sara Levy’s circle to be open to 05_907-146_BkRevs_pp637-687 4/22/19 7:32 AM Page 651

Book Reviews 651

further acculturation and effected their In chapter 9, “The Sociability of assimilation as traditional religious Salon Culture and Carl Philipp Jews. Emanuel Bach’s Quartets,” Steven This chapter might have been en- Zohn interprets musical compositions hanced by including context for aes- as conversations that express various thetic study of the sublime from various modes of communication, often on a texts: for example, the first century deeper level than can be achieved treatise Peri Hypsous [On the Sublime], through speech. (The book by Robert K. attributed to Longinus; Immanuel Wallace that compares Wolfgang Ama - Kant’s work Beobachtungen über das deus Mozart’s music to Jane Austen’s Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen [Ob- novels [Jane Austen and Mozart: Classical serva tions on the Feeling of the Equilibrium in Fiction and Music (Athens: Beautiful and the Sublime] (Königs- University of Georgia Press, 1983)] also berg: Kanter, 1764); Edmund Burke’s applies the analogy of human dialogue own essay on the subject, A Philosophical likened to musical instruments in Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the harmonious conversation with each Sublime and Beautiful (London: R. and other.) Barbara Hahn’s appendix, “The J. Dodsley, 1757); and even discussion Salonnière and the Diplomat: Letters of the American Sublime in poetry by from Sara Levy to Karl Gustav von Wallace Stevens and others. Brinckmann,” documents evidence of Chapter 8 by Rebecca Cypess is the their interfaith friendship. best essay in the collection by showing A great boon to the book is online that the genre of the duet reflects access to the recording In Sara Moses Mendelssohn’s concept of “Ein - Levy’s Salon (Acis Productions, 2017) heit in der Mannigfaltigkeit” (unity in by the Raritan Players (http://www multiplicity) (p. 182). The aesthetic .acisproductions.com/saralevyaudio form of the duet echoes the striving for [accessed 24 December 2018]), which symbiosis between Jewish and non- includes music for solo keyboard col- Jewish cultures to exist in harmony lected, commissioned, underwritten, while preserving their uniqueness. and perhaps played by Levy. This book For Mendelssohn, “Einheit in der is highly recommended and will be of Mannigfaltigkeit” denoted a relation- great interest to feminist, cultural, and ship of mutual respect among Jews and social historians; Jewish studies scholars non-Jews who were able to maintain and musicologists; and more generally their individual identities even as they to academics, musicians, and educated shared a common culture. The form of laymen. the duet, in which the instruments play in tandem, enacts an aesthetic ideal of a social and religious sphere in which Jews and non-Jews can mutually recog- David B. Levy nize and respect each other. Touro College

COMPOSERS AND THEIR WORKS Allusion as Narrative Premise in Brahms’s Instrumental Music. By Jacquelyn E. C. Sholes. (Musical Meaning and Interpretation.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018. [xvi, 256 p. ISBN 9780253033147 (hardcover), $85; ISBN 9780253033154 (paperback), $38; ISBN 9780253033161 (e-book), $36.99.] Music examples, bibliography, index.