Ancient & Modern: Notating Minhag Anglia
Presenter: Dr. Danielle Padley

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The British custom of Jewish worship (known as "minhag Anglia") has been interpreted in multiple different ways. Said to have developed with the Chief Rabbis Nathan Marcus Adler and Herman Adler during the mid-to-late nineteenth century, this "minhag Anglia" was only formalized in the 1890s with a standardized siddur, and a hymnal, known as the "Blue Book." But do these two documents help us understand minhag Anglia as a living practice?

This talk will attempt to answer this question from a musical perspective, exploring notated Anglo-Jewish music from the period to assess how repertoire, styles, and preferences changed between some of the earliest publications of Jewish liturgical music in Britain and the famous "Blue Book," which continues to influence Anglo-Jewish musical practice and notions of minhag Anglia. In particular, it will look at how these publications interpreted the so-called 'ancient melodies', preserving Jewish heritage but with a modern, 'British' twist.

Danielle recently completed her doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Dr Benjamin Walton. Her academic research focuses on nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish music-making in Britain, incorporating studies of sacred and secular music and interactions between the Jewish community and Victorian society. Her PhD revolved around a case-study, Charles Garland Verrinder, an Anglican organist who worked at the West London Synagogue of British Jews for 45 years. Her work has been published in Nineteenth-Century Music Review and Ad Parnassum Studies, and has featured on BBC Radio 3. She is currently undertaking research for a monograph exploring the diverse music-making opportunities available for nineteenth-century British Jews. Danielle is Musical Director of Kol Echad Hebrew Choir in Cambridge, and has sung with Edgware and District (now Edgware and Hendon) Reform Synagogue Choir for over twenty years.

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