David Nowakowsky, ‘V’shomru’ (The Children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath)
Dawid Nowakowsky (1848–1921) studied at the Berdychiv Conservatory, and later became Professor of Theory at the People’s Conservatory of Odessa. V’shomru is a fine example of Nowakowsky’s elaborate Cantorial style refined over his remarkable 50-year tenure as choirmaster at Odessa’s Brody Synagogue. The autograph manuscript score was rediscovered in Froim Spektor’s red manuscript folder, but a copy in Spektor’s hand also exists among the papers of Cantor Morris Katzin.
Nowakowsky died well before the Second World War, but his music manuscripts risked destruction where he had kept them in Odessa, first in the wake of the increasingly violent pogroms that followed the Bolshevik revolution, and later at the hands of the Axis powers. Most of the composer’s papers were smuggled out of the country by his daughter Rosa around 1924, but the discovery of a number of them among Katzin’s and Spektor’s papers suggests that at least a few more may still await rediscovery.
Nowakowsky, V'shomru edition