In this class, we will examine the broad and unique practice of mode in historic Ashkenazic music, its origin, its relationship with non-Jewish music, and how we can come to understand mode in various musical experiences (in shul or on the concert stage). Specifically, we will look at music from across different facets of music from the Yiddish world (from the liturgy to Yiddish Theatre) and try to understand what a generalized practice could be. Ultimately, this class will attempt to communicate modal thinking through a pedagogical method inspired by the 18th century practice of schematic teaching known as Partimento. 

The ability to read music on some level will be beneficial to fully experiencing the class.

Leybl Duvid (Derek David) is a composer, conductor, and music educator based in Boston, MA. He is the music director of A Besere Velt - אַ בעסערע װעלט, one of few choruses in the world dedicated to the preservation and commissioning of Yiddish choral repertoire. With A Besere Velt, Leybl has collaborated with such artists as Daniel Kahn, Lorin Sklamberg, Polina Sheppard, Anthony Russel, Frank London, Hankus Netzky and Judy Bressler. Having initially spoken Yiddish as a child with his grandmother, he studied Yiddish with the Boston and New York Workers Circle and the Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) in their summer immersion program. Speaking frequently in academic and community settings, Leybl was recently a subject of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, and had the distinct honor of delivering a lecture in Yiddish on his life as a Yiddishst and composer at the Sorbonne Université in the spring of 2024. He has studied Jewish Music with Hankus Netzkey and Yiddish Folk singing with Ethel Raim, where his ethnographic research of field recordings has led him to sing performances of the Yiddish folksong repertoire. Leybl has been on Faculty at Yiddish New York and will be a Teaching Fellow at KlezKandada this coming summer.

A classical composer by training, his music –much of which incorporates Yiddish folksongs, Klezmer, and Jewish themes– has been featured in settings as disparate as the LA Philharmonic’s Noon to Midnight Festival and the Boston Festival for New Jewish Music. He has been commissioned by Juventas Ensemble, Verona Quartet, Del Sol String Quartet & clarinetist Nicholas Davies, violist Jesse Morrison, and SAKURA Cello Quintet. He is currently Lecturer in Music at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.