The significance of Meier Leon’s “Yigdal” melody as a link between Jewish and Christian hymnody in eighteenth-century London

This essay begins with a brief introductory exploration of some of the musical interinfluences between synagogue and church that have been manifested over the centuries. That is followed by a short biography and assessment of the Jewish singer and composer Meier Leon in the context of the musical life, and the Jewish life, of London in the second half of the eighteenth century. Commentaries are then offered on the meaning and significance of the Yigdal hymn in general and of the specific musical setting attributed to Leon. Observations regarding the circumstances of the transformation of this syn agogue melody into a church setting for the text of Thomas Olivers’s hymn The God of Abraham Praise lead to an analytical comparison of the two ver sions. The essay concludes with some thoughts about how this phenomenon may be seen as a precedent for the transfer of Jewish and Israeli melodies into

Written by

Alexander Knapp

Published in

Volume 45

2013

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Other articles within the volume

• Gerry Black’s Jewish CV
• An excerpt from Gerry Black, “The Right School in the Right Place: The History of the Stepney Jewish School, 1864—2013”
• The Wartime “Special Relationship”, 1941—45: Isaiah Berlin, Freya Stark and Mandate Palestine
• The significance of Meier Leon’s “Yigdal” melody as a link between Jewish and Christian hymnody in eighteenth-century London
• Robert of Leicester’s treatise on the Hebrew computus and the study of Jewish knowledge in medieval England
• “””The Messiah promised in the Sacred Scripture came a long time ago””: the Cambridge Platonists’ attitudes towards the readmission of the Jews, 1655—56″
• Glasgow’s “Department of Psycho-Semitics”, 1940—60: the Jewish thought of Joseph Schorstein and Karl Abenheimer
• The Jewish “Circumcision Scandal” in Edwardian Britain
• The Jews of early St John’s Wood*
• Preface
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• Health and medical care of the Jewish poor in the East End of London, 1880-1914
• The Zion Muleteers of Gallipoli, March 1915—May 1916