Sylvan Kalib

American music theorist and composer Sylvan Sholom Kalib was born to Ukrainian parents in Dallas, Texas on 24 July 1929. His first musical training, from his father, included the traditions of the Eastern European synagogue, and he became a child chazzan (precentor or cantor). He studied Western art music at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he became the protégé of Oswald Jonas, an Austrian musicologist and music theorist who had studied with Heinrich Schenker, which resulted in Kalib's musical outlook being shaped by Schenkerian theory.

Throughout the 1950s, Kalib worked for what is now the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, instructing nusach (the text of the prayer service) and chazzanut (cantorial art). He notated (from dictation) the entire creative output of cantor Todros Greenberg, working at this until Greenberg's death in 1976. Kalib became recognised nationally for his skill at transcribing Ashkenazic chant, and in 1953 became conductor of the choral ensemble of the Cantors' Association of Chicago.

In the 1960s he studied at Northwestern University, introducing Shenkerian analysis to the faculty and translating Schenker's Yearbooks into English for the first time, which was used at various American universities until the 1990s.

From 1969 until 1999 he was 'professor of music theory and literature' at Eastern Michigan University, where he also taught Schenkerian theory, harmony and counterpoint. During this period he also composed various Jewish choral works, including The Days of Awe and The Day of Rest.

Later he returned to his studies of the traditional art music of the synagogue, producing the multiple-volume Musical Tradition of The Eastern European Synagogue, published by Syracuse University Press between 2002 and 2023.

Sylvan Kalib died on 15 January 2025, aged ninety-five.

 

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