The Collection of Abraham Zvi Idelsohn (1911-1913)

Idelsohn chose to record representative samples of those liturgical genres he was interested in. First and foremost, he recorded Biblical cantillation, a genre that he considered quintessential to any research of Jewish music. He recorded portions of the Haftara and the Biblical megillot. Besides Biblical readings, Idelsohn's recordings also include key sections of the daily and holiday liturgy (such as 'Amida, Qedushah (Sanctification), Birkat kohanim (Priestly Blessing) as well as Piyyutim, post-Talmudic poetical insertions to the main corpus of liturgical text used as embellishments. In addition to recording liturgical music of all genres, he also documented speech samples of diverse Hebrew accents.