A partial bibliography of Joseph Yasser's writings and lectures, with emphasis on subjects related to Jewish music. Each bibliographical item includes publication information, summary of content, and a list of the literature that was written about the item.
Singing the prayer magen avot, the abbreviated repetition of Sabbath-eve amidah, is an old tradition which "goes back to the third century." Jewish communities in different parts of the world share the same mode for the prayer, though each community has its own variant. This mode, which, to Idelsohn, is the deepest expression of the Jewish soul, is based on an "original melodic line of Jewish folk song" and is also the foundation of various synagogue melodies (e.g. Leoni's yigdal).
A somewhat controversial article in which Idelsohn tries to show traces of Jewish music in French folk music. Jews settled in France in the fourth century; "they were scattered throughout the country and lived mingled with the native people" until the fourteenth century when they were expelled twice, first in 1306 and for the second time in 1394.
The corpus of Judeo-Spanish ballads presents a unique case study of stability and change in oral tradition. On the one hand it is a living testimony to the jews' preservation of the Spanish Romance tradition after their expulsion from Spain in 1942; on the other, by absorbing since then so many new stylistic features, it has evolved into a genuine repertoire quite distinct from that of the late Medieval Spanish Romancero, its ancestral counterpart.
