IMSLP Forums

If there is such a thing as a Jewish Music genre tag it would be appropriate for this work.

I think the already-in-use Hebrew language tag is probably the closest it's going to come to that. The problem with creating new tags is that they need to be specifically defined, and I seriously doubt that a precise, widely applicable, useful definition of 'Jewish music' is going to be reached anytime soon. Does that mean works written by Jewish composers (nationality is already handled and we don't count Jewish as an ethnicity), works written for Jewish ceremonies (should be accounted for by tags for specific types of these works - for example, the Christian equivalent would include motets, masses, cantatas, and so forth), works written with text from Jewish sacred texts (language and librettist are already handled), something else, or some nuance of all of the above? I recall we had a similar issue a while ago when someone wanted us to create a tag for 'Christmas music': at first blush it seemed simple, but when Davydov teased it out a bit it became clear that the term is hopelessly vague and malleable for it to be used by any cataloguing system.

Thanks for the explanation. I thought of the idea because this work has caught the attention of some organizations dedicated to Jewish music, by which they mean music by Jewish composers or on Jewish themes. Eg see the Milken Archive of Jewish Music: The American Experience, at www.milkenarchive.org/