Philip V. Bohlman

Philip Bohlman 2012

Philip Vilas Bohlman (born August 8, 1952 ) is an American ethnomusicologist at the University of Chicago and a specialist in studies in Jewish musical culture and lore.

Life

In addition to his home university, the University of Chicago, since 1987 (where he is also active at the “Center for Jewish Studies”), Philip Bohlman has taught at various universities, including as an honorary professor at the University of Music, Theater and Medien Hannover , at the University of California, Berkeley , at the universities in Freiburg i. Br., Vienna, Innsbruck and Kassel ( Kunsthochschule Kassel ) and at Yale University in New Haven. He wrote his doctoral thesis in 1984 at the University of Illinois . Bohlman's field research in India and Germany, with a focus on Muslim population groups, but above all with a focus on Jewish music, both traditional song tradition and modern music, has been funded several times by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation . As an artist, he is the director of “The New Budapest Orpheum Society” at the University of Chicago, supported by his wife, the pianist and music teacher Christine Wilkie Bohlman. Phil Bohlman has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2011 and a corresponding member of the British Academy since 2007 . He has received various awards, including a. the American Academy in Berlin 2003; from 2005 to 2007 he was president of the international “Society for Ethnomusicology”. Bohlman received in October 2019 an honorary doctorate ( honorary doctorate ) from the “Romanian National University of Music” ( National Music University Bucharest ); Since 2019 he has been co-editor of the magazine “Acta Musicologica” of the International Musicological Society (Bärenreiter, Kassel).

Publications (selection)

• The Land Where Two Streams Flow: Music in the German-Jewish Community of Israel . University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, IL 1989, ISBN 0-252-01596-7 .
• Central European Folk Music: An Annotated Bibliography of Sources in German (= Garland Library of Music Ethnology 3). Garland, New York NY and London, 1996, ISBN 0-8153-0304-1 .
• published together with Otto Holzapfel : The Folk Songs of Ashkenaz (= Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music '. 6). AR Editions, Middleton, WI 2001, ISBN 978-0-89579-474-1 (Yiddish songs of the Ashkenazim , texts and melodies, commented)
• published together with Otto Holzapfel: Land without Nightingales: Music in the Making of German-America (= Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies). University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2002, ISBN 0-924119-04-7 .
• Jewish Folk Music: A Central European Intellectual History . Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2005, ISBN 3-205-77119-2 .
• Song Loves the Masses: Herder on Music and Nationalism . University of California Press, Oakland, CA. 2017, ISBN 978-0-520-23494-9 .
• How do we sing His song on the stranger's soil! Ashkenazi Jewish music between tradition and modernity . Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2019, ISBN 978-3-643-13574-2 (summary of earlier publications from 1989 to 2013, revised and supplemented by new research; extensive list of sources on the musical tradition of the Ashkenazim).

The volume offers a summary of numerous earlier publications and articles from 1989 to 2013 (see the list on p. 361 f.). These have been revised and supplemented by new research; it is an in-depth description and an extensive list of sources for the musical tradition of the Ashkenazim . Bohlman [B.] repeatedly goes into the folk ballad of the "beautiful Jewess" ( it was a beautiful Jewess, a beautiful woman who had a daughter, she was ready to die. [...]) by taking up earlier research and revised, cf. P. 12 ff., P. 63 - 65, P. 154 f., P. 230. On the one hand, this song was sung from a Jewish perspective, on the other hand, the background is clearly anti-Semitic. From the point of view of German-language tradition, drowning in the lake, as well as the practically identical dialogue with the mother, is a loan to or a parallel to the folk ballad of the “royal children”. But when the unchanged text is sung in Jewish tradition, associations with running water etc. are awakened, those of the German-language “Königskinder” folk ballad ( There were two royal children who loved each other ...) fundamentally alien and in the “beautiful Jewess ”may not be intended either, but may be essential to Jewish tradition. This is an important aspect of interpreting the entire tradition. The "Beautiful Jewess" documents the most important and culturally diverse border between Jewish and Christianity. - B. describes very impressively the fact how the documentation of Jewish music ( Jewish music ) and the Jewish musical tradition itself developed and changed after the 19th century, even reaching a climax in the 1930s in a completely modernized form, before this colorful and diverse, culturally extremely lively and developing universe is murdered by the Nazis. For example, in front of J. Jacobsen and E. Jospe, eds .: Hawa naschira! To let us sing . Leipzig 1935, B. illustrates that this is the last anthology of Jewish folk songs on the eve of the Shoah ( Holocaust ), which is at the same time a comprehensive achievement in itself (p. 16 f.). - B. emphasizes again and again that Jewish musical life must not be separated from its theological perspective, and that it represents an “ontological” unit (p. 39), the analysis of which must be difficult from a non-Jewish perspective. We are all the more grateful for these comprehensive instructions, which cover all aspects of the complex - far beyond folk song and folk ballad: also z. B. synagogal music, "Jewish folk music" after approx. 1880 (p. 79 and a.), Jewish youth movement (p. 45), Jewish popular music that takes the modern role of women into account (p. 73 and a.) , Compositions in the ghetto (p. 323 ff.) And in the concentration camp (p. 41 and a.), The modern post-war development of Klesmer music ( Klezmer ), the “revival of Klesmer music” (p. 99 f., P. 277 ff. Etc.) and so on. But folk song aspects play an essential role throughout, e.g. B. the field research by Ginsburg and Marek and their collection, St. Petersburg 1901 (p. 82 and a.); it documents, but unintentionally 'museumizes' it as well (p. 86). - B. adopts the metaphor of the religious philosopher Franz Rosenzweig from 1926 for his book title : the “Zweistromland”, but Bohlman's 'two rivers' are also a comprehensive basis for understanding and a consistent structuring principle with the following questions, among others: German - Jewish, Jewish - German, 'urbanized' 'Viennese Jews and Galician Ostjuden ( Ostjuden and Westjuden ) (p. 232 and other) - for example the couplet song There is a' small 'place near Vienna ... Weidlingau or the various arrangements of the composition "To Großwardein ( Oradea ) ...", p. 21 f., P. 49 f., P. 202, p. 219 fu ö.), Past - present, traditional religious ties and liberal Reformed Judaism, finding Jewish music and inventing (in the sense of Ernst Klusen : Volkslied. Fund and Invention , Cologne 1969, or by Eric Hobsbawm , who speaks of 'History Foundation '; 1983 ( Invented Tradition )) and so on. For the last question, B. refers to Emil Breslauer's book title Can original synagogue and folk melodies among the Jews be historically verifiable? from 1898 (pp. 111-114). This question was taken up again by Israel Adler in 1991. Idelsohn ( Abraham Zvi Idelsohn ) also said (1932) that “melodies swept away by the storms of the times” have been preserved “in a corner in the German synagogue” (see p. 116 with the following melody examples). Ultimately, the work of the two Jewish reform cantors Louis Lewandowski in Berlin and Salomon Sulzer in Vienna (p. 120, p. 264 fu ö.) Is also a sign of 'two currents', both of which are now largely alien to us. 'Jewish life' in Germany after 1945 is a timid new beginning to which its own roots are often just as foreign. Philip Bohlman can help the memory in an excellent way. For example, a whole chapter is devoted to the Austrian Burgenland (also due to our own field research) (pp. 139-160), especially the 'Seven Communities' ( Siebengemeinden (Burgenland) ) Deutschkreutz, Eisenstadt, Frauenkirchen, Kittsee, Kobersdorf (still with a synagogue Kobersdorf ), Lackenbach and Mattersburg (p. 143 and above). “Music in the Resistance” is also thematized on the basis of a seemingly harmless children's song from 1934 (p. 161 ff.). One form of resistance and an astonishing success story in these years is the work z. B. the Schocken Verlag in Berlin in the 1930s (p. 167, p. 190 and a.). The same applies to the Jüdischer Kulturbund ( Kulturbund Deutscher Juden ), 1933-1938 (p. 170 ff.), And this perspective changes over to Jerusalem with the attempt to create a “world center for Jewish music” in 1936 (p. 181 and other) .). - A detailed list of sources (p. 367 ff.) Concludes the volume.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor for Jewish History in the Department of Music"
2. ↑ with, among other things, the Ludwig Rosenberger Library for Judaica (The Ludwig Rosenberger Collection of Judaica) there is also an important collection available in the University Library of Chicago
3. ^ Franz Rosenzweig Visiting Professorship 2014
4. ↑ cf. also Otto Holzapfel : Lied index: The older German-language popular song tradition ( online version on the Folk Music Archive homepage of the Upper Bavaria district ; in PDF format; ongoing updates)
5. ↑ in the tradition of Jewish cabaret around 1900 and in the 1920s and 1930s; an initiative to perform music and political songs and thus to revive Hebrew, Jewish and German-language sources; several CDs (including “Jewish Cabaret in Exile”, 2009 with Cedille Records); Performances in synagogues in Chicago, in clubs in Berlin and Vienna and at many Jewish associations
6. ↑ Conference contributions on field research and observations among German-Americans ( German-Americans )
7. ↑ annotated collection of z. Sources, some of which are difficult to access, from, among others, Felix Rosenberg, Leo Herzberg-Fränkel , SM Ginsburg - PS Marek, Aron Friedmann and Heinrich Berl
8. ↑ including the translation of important Herder texts into English
9. ↑ Bohlman deliberately writes Klesmer with s.