Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project

— —

Assaf Shelleg (Assistant Professor of Musicology, Assistant Professor of Musicology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Theological Stains

Art Music and the Zionist Project

Assaf Shelleg (Assistant Professor of Musicology, Assistant Professor of Musicology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

$175.95

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Oxford University Press Inc
28 January 2021

Non-Western music: traditional & "classical"; Literary studies: general; Middle Eastern history

Theological Stains offers the first in-depth study of the development of art music in Israel from the mid-twentieth century to the turn of the twenty-first. In a bold and deeply researched account, author Assaf Shelleg explores the theological grammar of Zionism and its impact on the art music written by emigrant and native composers. He argues that Israeli art music, caught in the tension between a bibliocentric territorial nationalism on the one hand and the histories of deterritorialized Jewish diasporic cultures on the other, often features elements of both of these competing narratives. Even as composers critically engaged with the Zionist paradigm, they often reproduced its tropes and symbols, thereby creating aesthetic hybrids with 'theological stains.' Drawing on newly uncovered archives of composers' autobiographical writings and musical sketches, Shelleg closely examines the aesthetic strategies that different artists used to grapple with established nationalist representations. As he puts the history of Israeli art music in conversation with modern Hebrew literature, he weaves a rich tapestry of Israeli culture and the ways in which it engaged with key social and political developments throughout the second half of the twentieth century. In analyzing Israeli music and literature against the backdrop of conflicts over territory, nation, and ethnicity, Theological Stains provides a revelatory look at the complex relationship between art and politics in Israel.

By: Assaf Shelleg (Assistant Professor of Musicology Assistant Professor of Musicology Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 163mm, Width: 239mm, Spine: 41mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780197504642
ISBN 10: 0197504647
Pages: 480
Publication Date: 28 January 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgments Abbreviations List of Music Examples Introduction: Stains? Chapter 1: Non-Biblical Tonalities: Biblocentrism in Modern Hebrew Culture and Its Operatic Undoing Chapter 2: Horizontal Realizations: The Agency of Non-Western Jewish Musical Traditions in Art Music of the 1950s and '60s Chapter 3: Broken Hebrewist Vessels Chapter 4: Compositional Solutions (In the Double Sense of the Word) Notes Index

Assaf Shelleg is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His award-winning first book, Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History (OUP, 2014) examines the emergence of modern Jewish art music in Central and Western Europe in the early twentieth century and its translocation to Palestine/Israel from the 1930s through the 1970s. It was translated into German in 2017 with Mohr Siebeck.

Reviews for Theological Stains: Art Music and the Zionist Project

With commanding erudition and analytical grace, Assaf Shelleg traces the dialectical re-emergence of the stains of exile and their crystallization in new, vibrant configurations in Hebrew literature, poetry, and especially art music. * Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Emeritus of the University of Chicago * In this remarkable book, Assaf Shelleg examines the ways Israeli composers have negotiated the ever-changing ideologies of their state's identity. Drawing on a deep knowledge of historical contexts and repertories from the 1950s to the early 2000s, he addresses the irresolvable tensions - religious and secular, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi, Jewish and Arabic - that have troubled Israeli society since its founding; he demonstrates how these tensions inform compositional strategies even at a fundamental level. Theological Stains is a major contribution to studies of Israeli cultural history and a model for contextual music analysis. * Susan McClary, Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music, Case Western Reserve University. MacArthur Fellow, 1995 *