Kine un kloglid – The Yiddish Art of Lamentation in Early Modern Ashkenaz
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Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series
Admission: Free Registration is required. |
Diana Matut | Delivered in Yiddish.
In this lecture, Diana Matut will delve deep into the history of Yiddish song cultures. Yiddish or bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish laments, dirges or elegies in early modern Ashkenazi society were both individual and communal. Mourning through song offered ways of coping and establishing patterns of memory. Through it, history was being narrated and interpreted. In turn, lamenting about past or present experiences helped form the identities of Jewish communities and to keep memory alive. Laments were part of establishing wider societal norms of ethics and behavior, often with the ultimate objective of preparing the singer or reader for the end of their lives.
This lecture will also explore the more “entertaining” sides of the lament, namely in parodies and Purim-plays between 1500 and 1800.
About the Speaker
Dr. Diana Matut teaches Old Yiddish and Jewish Music at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Formerly a lecturer for Jewish Studies at Halle University, she is now director of the Old Synagogue — House of Jewish Culture in Essen. She was the Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellow in East European Jewish Arts, Music, and Theatre at YIVO (New York) and Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (three times). From 2019 to 2020, She was the convenor of the Oxford Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies and led a research group focusing on "Jewish Musical Cultures in Europe, 1500-1750." In 2021, she was awarded the Mare-Balticum-Fellowship of the University of Rostock. In 2019, Matut, together with American composer/arranger Josh Horowitz, led the Henech Kon project, which brought the only surviving pre-war Yiddish opera from Europe back on stage (omaworks.eu/triangle-orchestra).
Various musical projects are the result of her cooperation with Yiddish Summer Weimar, among them the Young Kadya Choir, a German-Israeli project which became the focus of a documentary; a CD with rediscovered Yiddish children’s songs called “Far dem nayem dor – For the new generation” and the “Glikl oratorye,” focusing on the life of early modern Jewish woman Glikl Hameln, which Matut wrote together with Alan Bern (www.glikl.eu).