(Home)

Chapter 5 Thought Questions

1. What evidence do we have for music and musicians in the medieval Islamic lands?  What role did Jewish musicians play in that?
   
2. Who were the paytanim and what were piyyutim?   What evidence exists today as witness to that?
   
3. How did the medieval Arabs feel about music?  Why did they feel that way?  Compare their opinions to those expressed by Jewish and Christian writers of the same period.

    

4. What do we know about medieval Jewish musical practice in Yemen?  in Egypt?  in Spain? Pick two of those places and explain how Jewish music was affected by its social-cultural environment.
   
5. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain, then Portugal, was a traumatic event in the lives of those Jewish communities.  What were the long-range effects on the music of the Sephardic Jews?