Published: Aug. 27, 2015
Yonatan Malin

The Program in Jewish Studies is excited to welcome ProfessorÌýYonatan Malin, Associate Professor of Music Theory, to the Program.Ìý

Yonatan Malin is Associate Professor in the College of Music. His research explores musical structure and meaning in a wide variety of genres including German Lieder, Klezmer, and Jewish liturgical music. His bookÌýÌýwas published in 2010 by Oxford University Press. He has published articles inÌýMusic AnalysisÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýMusic Theory Spectrum, and a chapter in the edited volumeÌýExpressive Intersections in BrahmsÌý(2012). Professor Malin received a PhD from the University of Chicago, and he has presented papers at national meetings of the Society for Music Theory and the Society for Ethnomusicology, at the First International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music, and at the conference Magnified and Sanctified: The Music of Jewish Prayer. In the fall of 2013, he presented "" in the CU-Â鶹ӰԺ Symposium "Embodied Judaism: The Sound of Ecstasy," honoring Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.ÌýBefore joining the faculty at CU Â鶹ӰԺ, Malin was Associate Professor at Wesleyan University.

Professor Malin isÌýdrawn to Jewish Studies because of Jewish music. He says "I am interested in exploring the music from analytical and interpretive perspectives. The interpretation of linguistic texts is an essential part of Jewish culture and Jewish studies, but the interpretation of musical texts and recordings has not been developed in the same way. I have worked on the relationship between music and poetic texts in classical repertoires (i.e., nineteenth-century art songs), and now I am exploring similar issues in Jewish music. In terms of teaching, I like to expand students' conceptions of what Jewish music is and can be, and what it means to knowÌýmusic from the inside."Ìý

Over the summer of 2015, Professor MalinÌýpresented a paper titled "Music-Text Relations in Eastern Ashkenazic Cantillation: A New Analysis" at the conferenceÌý.ÌýThe conference took place in June at the University of Leeds, and it was presented jointly by the University of Leeds School of Music and the academic wing of the European Cantors Association. Malin shows how the motives of Jewish biblical chant create effects of musical parallelism and markedness—which may or may not correlate with analogous features in the text. The paper focuses on the first five verses of Genesis and a passage from Isaiah, chapter 40. Malin draws on his own experience, notated sources, and original recordings with lay and professional readers.
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