Gestaltung, Identity, and Integration

Within the research project (2009–2012), “Gestaltning, identitet, integration,” Anders Hammarlund studied the Jewish cantorial tradition in Sweden.

The focus of the project was cantor and music researcher, Abraham Baer, who, from 1857-1894, worked at the synagogue in Gothenburg. Baer’s collection of Jewish liturgical music, Baal T’fillah oder Der practische Vorbeter (1877), was the nineteenth century’s most ambitious documentation of the oral tradition of Jewish cantorial music in Europe.

The project’s final report – in the form of the book, En bön för moderniteten – kultur och politik i Abraham Baers värld (2013) illustrates the interaction between nineteenth-century’s Jewish reform movement and Swedish liberalism, and discusses the still relevant questions surrounding music’s role in the processes of cultural integration. The project was conducted with funding from the Riksbankens jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences).

An English version of the book can be found as an on-line publication here, A Prayer for Modernity.