Cultural Institute Launch

Launched in October 2016, the Institute has three main aims, all of which chime very closely with the PtJA’s aims: to increase pioneering research collaborations with creative sector partners, to widen cultural engagement and participation, and to create more opportunities for – and build the skills of –students at Leeds.

To demonstrate these aims, Dr Muir will present an outline of the project to assembled colleagues, followed by a performance of two pieces of music emerging from his research and impact activities for the project.

Ani ma’amin [I believe] is a Jewish prayer text – a statement of Maimonides’ thirteen principles of the Jewish faith – often recited at the end of morning prayers. The melody is attributed to the Chassid Azriel David Fastag (1890–1942), who is believed to have composed it whilst in transport from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka camp in 1942, where he was murdered. It is now one of the most oft-used Holocaust Memorial Day melodies, and will be performed in a new choral arrangement by Dr Muir.

The second piece, Yisgadal [Magnified and sanctified], was composed by Baruch Gutmann (1863–1950), who was cantor at Prague’s Pinkas Synagogue in the years leading up to WWII. Gutmann’s family was torn apart during the Holocaust, and at least three of his seven children were murdered in the camps, most likely Auschwitz (two of them died before the war, as did his wife Eleonora). Gutmann’s life and career as a synagogue cantor and composer were therefore devastated by the Holocaust, even though he himself survived. This piece Yisgadal was recently rediscovered in the archives of the Prague Jewish Community. It was sung in Prague’s Jerusalem synagogue for the first time since WWII by the Clothworkers Consort of Leeds at PtJA’s festival ‘Out of the Shadows’ in September 2016. This will be only the fourth performance since the war.

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