Musical Training at Jewish Educational Institutions in Vilnius in the Nineteenth Century

The paper provides the first review of situation of musical training at several Jewish educational institutions in Vilnius in the 19th century. The review is based on archival material stored at the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, and the publications of the 2nd half of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century, dedicated to the situation of education in Vilnius. Musical training during the period of review was inseparable from the ideology and culture of Czarist Russia and from the traditions of the Orthodox Church. Certain cultural policy was clearly reflected in Jewish educational institutions – in state ones students were taught the works of Russian composers and Russian folk songs that were found suitable by the tsarist government; private ones were allowed to be established upon the condition, that studies are conducted in Russian. For example, even the psalms in the Great Synagogue of Vilnius were sung in Russian by students of Vilnius‘ Rabbinical School. The paper provides fragmentary, as per surviving data, review of specifics of musical education in several Jewish institutions – the Rabbinical School and Jewish Teachers’ Training Institute in Vilnius, study programs, personalities. One can conclude that music teaching was considered to be important in these institutions, because the professional musicians were invited to teach (Vasily Markovitch Natanson, Zdeněk Fibich, Vasily (Wolf) Ebann); in the Jewish Teachers’ Training Institute, orchestra of students was operating.