Seligman Swartzman Gillis Sandman Joffe Yachad Lederman Fleishman

Abraham Zvi Idelsohn began his study of Jewish music in Libau where he trained as a chazan (cantor). He continued his education at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin and at the Leipzig Academy. Idelsohn served as a cantor at the Adat Yeshurun Synagogue in Leipzig, in Regensburg and Johannesburg, South Africa before finally settling in Jerusalem in 1906. In Jerusalem, he began working as a cantor and music teacher at Yellins's Hebrew Teacher's college. Idelsohn embarked on a project to record their unique musical and linguistic traditionsof the Jewish community living in Palestine. In 1914, Idelsohn published the first volume of his seminal ten-volume, 'Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies', which commenced with a comprehensive study of the Yemenite community in Palestine. Subsequent volumes of his collection surveyed the musical traditions of many Jewish communities in Palestine and throughout the Diaspora. During World War I, Idelsohn served in the Turkish Army as a bandmaster in Gaza. In 1922, he published the Hebrew song book, "Sefer Hashirim," which includes the first publication of his arrangement of the song Hava Nagila. In 1924, Idelsohn was contracted to catalogue the Eduard Birnbaum collection of Jewish Music at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati (http://huc.edu/) and was appointed professor of Jewish music and liturgy at HUC until 1934. Idelsohn wrote extensively on the historical development of Jewish liturgical and cantorial music. He also publishe two more seminal works, Jewish Music in its Historical Development (1929) and Jewish Liturgy (1932). Idelsohn's enormous literary output, as well as his field recordings (which number over 1,000) laid the foundation for the modern study of Jewish musicology. See: http://www.idelsohnsociety.com/ http://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/heb/thesaurus.asp?cat=32&in=32&id=53&act=view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Zevi_Idelsohn