Sara Levy's World - (Eastman Studies in Music) by Rebecca Cypess & Nancy Sinkoff (Hardcover)

About the Book

A rich interdisciplinary exploration of the world of Sara Levy, a Jewish salonnière and skilled performing musician in late eighteenth-century Berlin, and her impact on the Bach revival, German-Jewish life, and Enlightenment culture.

Book Synopsis

Sara Levy née Itzig (1761-1854), a salonnière, skilled performing musician, and active participant in enlightened Prussian Jewish society, played a powerful role in shaping the dynamic cultural world of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Berlin. A patron and collector of music, she studied harpsichord with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-84) and commissioned musical compositions from both Friedemann and his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88). Archival evidence demonstrates Levy's position as an essential link in the transmission of the music of their father, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), and as a catalyst for the "Bach revival" of the early nineteenth century, which was led by her great-nephew Felix Mendelssohn. Sara Levy's World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin represents the first scholarly exploration of the cultural, political, and aesthetic contexts that shaped Levy's world. Bringing together leading scholars from the fields of musicology, Jewish Studies, history, literary studies, gender studies, and philosophy, this volume presents cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research on the numerous mutually reinforcing aspects of Levy's life and work. Contributors: Rebecca Cypess, Marjanne E. Goozé, Barbara Hahn, Martha B. Helfer, Natalie Naimark-Goldberg, Elias Sacks, Yael Sela, Nancy Sinkoff, George B. Stauffer, Christoph Wolff, Steven Zohn Rebecca Cypess is Associate Professor of Music at Rutgers University. Nancy Sinkoff is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History and Director of the Center for European Studies at Rutgers University.

Review Quotes

Sara Levy's World is a model of cohesion. [It] enacts an extended answer to a "what if" question of musicology: What if music history were not the history of musical works in contexts (producing "composer and his world" volumes) but rather of worlds in which music played a substantive part? A consequence we find in this volume is a figure-ground reversal: rather than Levy contributing to Bach's legacy, Bach contributed to Levy's salon, to her and others' "selfhood as a woman, a musician, a Jew, and an enlightened person" (12). This multifaceted selfhood lies at the heart of the volume, which through its interdisciplinary unity in multiplicity brings Sara Levy's world to life.--Deirdre Loughridge "WOMEN AND MUSIC"

This well-written, insightful, interdisciplinary, and excellent work is an effort to explore the facets of Sara Levy's complex world and in so doing bring that remarkable woman from the margins of intellectual and cultural history. A great boon to the book is online access to the recording In Sara Levy's Salon, which includes music for solo keyboard collected, commissioned, underwritten, and perhaps played by Levy. This book is highly recommended and will be of great interest to feminist, cultural, and social historians; Jewish studies scholars and musicologists; and more generally to academics, musicians, and educated laymen.-- "NOTES, JOURNAL OF THE MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION"

Broadly interdisciplinary, the new publication comprises an introduction and nine essays that engagingly treat topics in musicology, gender studies, Jewish studies and philosophy, and provide a rich variety of perspectives that inform and cross fertilize each other. . . . Remind[s] us that there is still much history to be rediscovered and reclaimed. Well edited and handsomely produced, . . . highly recommended reading for the new light it shines on an unjustly neglected area of German music history, [with] broad significance for several fields.--R. Larry Todd "NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC REVIEW"

Enrich[es] our broader understanding of Levy's place in the cultural life of Berlin over the half-century in which she was active as a patron, performer and collector. There is much to admire in these essays, and it is to be hoped that they stimulate further collaborations between historians and musicologists in the area of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Jewish studies.-- "AD PARNASSUM"

Sara Itzig Levy (1761-1854)...made important contributions to her time as a performer, music collector, salon hostess, and patron . . . Scholars gathered from many fields illuminate her life and interests. The book communicates well. . . . Anyone interested in the topics this collection covers, including music and female musicians, poetry, Enlightenment aesthetics and philosophy, and ethnic identity and assimilation, will want to have this work.-- "AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE"

WINNER of the 2019 Book Prize from the Jewish Music and Jewish Studies Group of the American Musicological Society-- "."