The Musical Notebook

A famous Yiddish playwrite, Sholem Anski, famous for his play the Dibbyk, produced a work of lasting value. That work wasn't his play, but rather an ethographic expedition collecting the folk culture of Vilne, the Jerusalem of Lithuwania. This expedition produced as an outcome a book, out of print for years and totally unaccesible to the general public. The Musicalishe Pinkas - The Musical Notebook. The intention is not a regular notebook but rather the registry of that each Jewish community maintained throught Europe. The Registry is where births and deaths and other vital statistic of that community were registered. So to the Musical Notebook, is where the songs of an ancient community, the Jerusalem of Lithuania were registered for posterity. The expediton was started in 1919 and the Musicalishe Pinkas was published two years later. Burnstein presents the song of all the various inhabitants of Vilna of the day, both Chassidim and not. What is amazing is to find these same songs still sung today, albeit by different chassidim then listed in the Pinkas.

The goal of this site is to serialize the republication of this book, and thereby make it available to a wider audience.

I hope to include all aspects of the ground breaking publication, as time goes on.

What will be available on this site?

We will reproduce this book with english translations of the yiddish original whereever possible. We will also give the original yiddish as well. The notation is produced using Lilypond, producing high quality output. Additionaly a midi file will be available to get the gist of how each song sounds. (obviously without words.