Echoes from the Diaspora: Galant Schemata & Style in Sephardic Music of Enlightenment Amsterdam

Abstract

Scholarship on the eighteenth-century liturgical repertoire from Amsterdam’s Sephardic synagogue has mainly focused on its cultural contexts and the synthesis between late baroque and cantorial elements. This essay argues that the employment of the galant style—with archetypal gestures that its listeners would have perceived in music from wider European society—reflects the congregation’s successful cultural assimilation through music and establishment in Dutch society following exile. An analysis using Robert Gjerdingen’s galant schemata framework shows the repertoire’s interrelationship with Italianate music outside the synagogue walls. Furthermore, a reconstruction of an anonymous piece for solo voice, featuring a newly composed basso continuo part derived from possible schemata implied by the vocal line, shows how the piece might have been accompanied. New insights from this analysis turn the repertoire from an obscure novelty into a part of the diverse landscape of eighteenth-century music.