Sunday, April 11
10:30 PDT | 1:30 EDT | 6:30 GMT | 7:30 CET | 8:30 MST
Suggested Donation: $1-5 student/concession
$10 standard | $18 patron
all welcome.

Join Judit Niran Frigyesi and Christina Crowder in conversation about Judit’s new book Writing on Water: The Sound of Jewish Prayer.

Writing on Water grasps the phenomenon of sound in prayer, that is, a meaning in sounds and soundscapes, and a musical essence in the act of praying.

The impetus for the book arose from the author’s fieldwork among traditional Jews during the era of communism in Budapest and Prague. In that period the Jewish religion and Jewishness in general were suppressed and rituals became semi-secret and turned inward. The book is a witness to these communities and their rituals, but it goes beyond documentation. The uniqueness of the sounds of the rituals compelled the author to try to comprehend how melodies and soundscapes became the sustaining/protective environment, as well as the vehicle, for the expression of a world-orientation—in a situation where open discourse was inconceivable.                

The book is based on extensive interviews, musical recordings, photographs and scholarly analyses. It is unique in its choice of communities, its wealth of original documents, and its novel interpretation of sound. Writing on Water is creative non-fiction. The presentation is evocative and poetic, but at the same time it transmits knowledge. The book can aid research and serve in courses in philosophy, religion, music, ethnomusicology, anthropology, aesthetics, Jewish studies, folklore, oral history, and performance studies. It is also a work of art and literature.   

Judit Frigyesi Niran is a teacher, poet, musicologist and ethnomusicologist. Her main ethnomusicological work deals with the prayer chant of the Eastern European Jews known as davenen, and she is the only scholar to have carried out fieldwork in Communist East-Europe after WWII. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, she recently completed a documentary novel treating this topic, Writing on Water –The Sounds of Jewish Prayer (CEU Press 2018). As a writer and photographer she has published short stories and poems, created photo exhibitions and multimedia projects. Her theatrical montage “Fleeting Resonances”, which combines poetry, film, audio, and live performance, has been staged in Germany, Hungary, and Israel. Judit is also a specialist in music of the twentieth century, publishing on Béla Bartók (Béla Bartók and turn-of-the-century Budapest) and Felix Mendelssohn. 

Frigyesi, Judit and Peter Laki, “Free-Form Recitative and Strophic Structure in the Hallel Psalms,” Orbis Musicae, vol. VII. (1979-80), 43-80

“Modulation as an Integral Part of the Modal System in Jewish Music,” Musica Judaica, vol. V, no. 1. (1982-83), 53-71

“Orality as Religious Ideal –The Music of East-European Jewish Prayer,” Yuval 7 – Studies in Honor of Israel Adler(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 113-153.

“Preliminary thoughts toward the study of music without clear beat: the example of ‘flowing rhythm’ in Jewish nusah,” Asian Music, vol. XXIV, no. 2. (Spring-Summer 1993), 59-88.

 “The personal style of the East-European prayer leader” [In Hebrew: סגנון אישי של בעל תפילה מזרח-אירופי], Garment and Core: Jews and their Musical Experiences, eds. E. Avitsur, M. Ritzarev, E. Seroussi (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2012), 203-216.

“The Practice of Music as an Expression of Religious Philosophy among the East-Ashkenazi Jews,” Shofar, vol. 18, no. 4. (Summer 2000), 3-24.  

“The ‘ugliness’ of Jewish prayer – voice quality as the expression of identity,” Musicology (An International Journal of the Institute of Musicology of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2007/7), 99-118.