H.I.P.S.T.E.R. Online Lecture Series: Dr. Alon Schab
Reconstructing a Lost String Quartet: a Historically Informed Approach to Jewish Art and Sacred Music of the 19th and 20th Centuries

In my research into the ‘scene’ of string-quartet playing in Palestine-Israel under British rule (1923–1948), I encountered an enigmatic newspaper mention of a quartet by the (sadly forgotten) Ukrainian Soviet composer Grigory Kompaneyets (1881 Poltava–1959 Kyiv), who played an important role in the local scene in his short period in Israel around 1930. With only a historical recording in hand (catalogued under the wrong composer) and with no surviving score, I set out to transcribe the piece from scratch. During the process, I gained valuable insights into Jewish folk tunes (some of them of surprising provenance), historically informed performance practice and compositional technique.

About our guest:
Dr. Alon Schab is a musicologist, composer, and recorder player. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Henry Purcell at Trinity College Dublin. Since 2012 Alon has been a faculty member in the Department of Music at the University of Haifa. In 2016 he became a committee member of the Purcell Society, and he is currently the chairman of the Israeli Musicological Society. He is the author of The Sonatas of Henry Purcell: Rhetoric and Reversal (University of Rochester Press, 2018) and the recently released A Performer’s Guide to Transcribing, Editing and Arranging Early Music (Oxford University Press, 2022). His work in the field of Jewish music includes the rediscovery of the ‘Israeliten’ manuscript (Vienna, 1832) and the reconstruction of Grigory Kompaneyets’ first string quartet (1925).

About this event

Bringing some of today's most innovative and thought-provoking research to a global online audience, H.I.P.S.T.E.R. presents five outstanding artists to share their recent work. Using H.I.P.S.T.E.R.'s online platform to deliver five monthly 1-hour lectures between September and November 2022 and then in February & March 2023, viewers are invited to discover new musical findings and pathways, in and around the peripheries of Early Music, Historically Informed Performance, composition, World Music, photography, and more!

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Please note: All times are Irish Time, UTC+1 (Dublin/London/Lisbon)