This biography explores the life of Harris Furstenfeld, born in 1900 of Polish Jewish immigrant parents into the dire poverty of Londons East End. Fatherless six weeks after his birth, his childhood is one of hardship and deprivation, yet his love of music transcends the squalor of his surroundings. His mind is filled with the immovable ambition to become a concert singer, no matter what the obstacles. He decides to change his name to Mark Raphael, and to forge a career for himself. From soup kitchens and second hand clothes to direct charity, bullying,persistent worry about making ends meet, and living through two world wars, his struggles enable him to achieve his goal, and much more.

This biography explores the life of Harris Furstenfeld, born in 1900 of Polish Jewish immigrant parents into the dire poverty of London's East End. Fatherless six weeks after his birth, his childhood is one of hardship and deprivation, yet his love of music transcends the squalor of his surroundings. His mind is filled with the immovable ambition to become a concert singer, no matter what the obstacles. He decides to change his name to Mark Raphael, and to forge a career for himself. From soup kitchens and second hand clothes to direct charity, bullying, persistent worry about making ends meet, and living through two world wars, his struggles enable him to achieve his goal, and much more.

Paul Robeson's Voices is a meditation on Robeson's singing, a study of the artist's life in song. Music historian Grant Olwage examines Robeson's voice as it exists in two broad and intersecting domains: as sound object and sounding gesture, specifically how it was fashioned in the contexts of singing practices, in recital, concert, and recorded performance, and as subject of identification. Olwage asks: how does the voice encapsulate modes of subjectivity, of being? Combining deep archival research with musicological theory, this book is a study of voice as central to Robeson's sense of self and his politics. Paul Robeson's Voices charts the dialectal process of Robeson's vocal and self-discovery, documenting some of the ways Robeson's practice revised the traditions of concert singing in the first half of the twentieth century and how his voice manifested as resistance.

In New York and London during World War I, the performance of lieder—German art songs—was roundly prohibited, representing as they did the music and language of the enemy. But as German musicians returned to the transatlantic circuit in the 1920s, so too did the songs of Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss. Lieder were encountered in a variety of venues and media—at luxury hotels and on ocean liners, in vaudeville productions and at Carnegie Hall, and on gramophone recordings, radio broadcasts, and films. Laura Tunbridge explores the renewed vitality of this refugee musical form between the world wars, offering a fresh perspective on a period that was pervaded by anxieties of displacement. Through richly varied case studies, Singing in the Age of Anxiety traces how lieder were circulated, presented, and consumed in metropolitan contexts, shedding new light on how music facilitated unlikely crossings of nationalist and internationalist ideologies during the interwar period.

Music in the Hebrew Bible investigates musical citations in the Hebrew Bible and their relevance for our times. Most biblical musical references are addressed, either alone or as a grouping, and each is considered from a modern perspective. The book consists of one hundred brief essays divided into four parts. Part one offers general overviews of musical contexts, recurring musical-biblical themes and discussions of basic attitudes and tendencies of the biblical authors and their society. Part two presents essays uncovering what the Torah (Pentateuch) has to say about music, both literally and allegorically. The third part includes studies on music's place in Nevi'im (Prophets) and the perceived link between musical expression and human-divine contact. Part four is comprised of essays on musical subjects derived from the disparate texts of Ketuvim (Writings).