Book Reviews

The music history of Palestine, Israel, or Canaan (as it is known in the Bible), a region whose borders have been varying throughout history, is at the center of two recently published monographs devoted to two very different periods and subjects. In Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine: Archaeological, Written, and Comparative Sources, Joachim Braun goes far back to antiquity, presenting the instruments and musical culture of the diverse ethnicities and religions, who lived in the changing provinces and states of the Middle East. The context of Ruth Katz’s “The Lachmann Problem”: An Unsung Chapter in Comparative Musicology, on the other hand, is set in Palestine under the British Mandate (1920–1948). Albeit their differences in period, focus, and approach, both studies are fine examples of the region’s complexity in regard to history and culture. Even though their main focus is not on the interaction of the peoples in the Middle East, they give a sense of their (musical) relations, both in antiquity and in modernity, and thus contribute to a fresh view on the region’s complex past.