(1823–1904), cantor and composer. Barukh Schorr was born in Lemberg. As a boy he reportedly traveled to Odessa with the famed cantor Betsal’el Shulsinger (Tsalel Odesser; d. ca. 1873) to become part of his choir, eventually joining the choir of Cantor Yeruḥam Blindman (Yeruḥam ha-Katon). Upon his return to Lemberg for his bar mitzvah, Schorr was sufficiently skilled to be able to lead services in the central synagogue. He then joined the synagogue choir in Jassy (Iaşi), Romania, where he met his wife.
Schorr’s first cantorial position was in Bessarabia, and by 1848 he was a cantor in Kamenets Podol’skii. In 1851 he returned to Jassy as chief cantor. After assuming a similar position at the Rombach Temple in Budapest, Schorr was in 1859 appointed main cantor at the synagogue in Lemberg, the city of his birth.
AUDIO
"V’hakohanim" (Veha-Kohanim). Words: Traditional. Music: Barukh Schorr. Performed by the Cantor’s Association of America, directed by Leon M. Kramer. Columbia E5155 mx. 59501-2, New York, 1916. (YIVO)
Schorr’s career reveals much about conflicts between a cantor’s artistic and religious vocations—and about the importance of a particular cantor to a community’s sense of identity. Schorr’s operetta Samson was performed in 1890 at Lemberg’s Jewish theater. When he was reportedly brought on stage by the prima donna to accept the audience’s applause, he incurred the wrath of synagogue authorities, who threatened to suspend him for a month. In response, Schorr left for the United States and took a position in a synagogue on the Lower East Side in New York, where he remained for five years. The Lemberg synagogue, however, was sufficiently bereft without their cantor to send a delegation to visit with him and secure his return. He thereafter remained in Lemberg until his death, which reportedly occurred while he was leading the service on the final day of Passover, singing Mipene ḥata’enu (Because of Our Sins).
Schorr’s compositions, like those of his contemporaries, reflect a concern with preserving the traditional motifs and emotional intensity of the East European cantorial style while integrating modern musical procedures. His influence in the United States was felt primarily through the publication of his High Holiday liturgy Neginot Barukh Shor le-yamim nora’im (New York, 1906), edited by his son Israel (one of six sons, all of whom became cantors). The collection was reprinted in 1928 and 1958.
Artur Holde, Jews in Music: From the Age of Enlightenment to the Mid-Twentieth Century, ed. Irene Heskes (New York, 1974); Abraham Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music in Its Historical Development (1929; rpt., New York, 1992); Sholom Kalib, The Musical Tradition of the Eastern European Synagogue (Syracuse, N.Y., 2002).