A talk in an event celebrating Atara Isaacson's book Maya Shavit and HaEfroni Choir, Bar-Ilan, November 2025 (originally in Hebrew)

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On p. 246, at the very end of the book, Atara quotes Yehezkel Braun, who said :

“My Efroni is a choir, and it is more akin to a river. And as the ancient sage Heraclitus already noted: the river you immerse yourself in today is the same river and yet not the same river you immersed yourself in yesterday. So too with the Eferoni Choir: it changes from year to year. Graduates leave, younger girls arrive and take the place of those who left. But something unique to this choir remains constant: the special sound, the vitality, the freshness, the love of music.”

End of quote. And here Braun adds to those qualities—which indeed exist in other choirs as well (albeit in different proportions)—the personal imprint of Maya.

According to Braun, Maya’s personal imprint served as a counterweight to the rapid turnover of girls in a youth choir. Rapid turnover among teenage singers is, of course, a given—but it is a very poor starting point for maintaining a stable performing ensemble.

Atara’s new book expands Braun’s poetic formulation—this notion of Maya’s “personal imprint”—into a structured program, a method of work. Maya’s working method is what granted the Efroni Choir its identity. And at least to some degree, preserving parts of these working processes preserves something of that identity. In her analysis of Maya’s working method, Atara provides us with a profoundly valuable contribution, formulating (on p. 236), among other things, thirteen categories for establishing and operating a successful choir [these will be marked in square brackets below]. If I had been allotted more than ten minutes tonight, I would gladly detail at least ten moments in the book where the description of Maya’s method made a particularly strong impression on me.

But now the difficult and unpleasant question arises: with Maya’s passing, does that “something unique to this choir” truly “remain as it was”?

As tonight’s academic speaker, I have the privilege of examining difficult questions using scholarly or scientific tools, and also the privilege of moving from the particular to the general: not to speak about Maya and the Efroni Choir specifically, but rather to approach, as a researcher, the broader question—how does a performing ensemble preserve its identity over a long period of time, including leadership changes such as the replacement of a conductor? As noted, I do not intend to answer this question with regard to the Efroni Choir in particular, but to offer material for reflection on the general question. And I certainly intend to draw on the categories that Atara formulates in the book—because, as we shall see, when we scale up to decades or even centuries, some categories turn out to be highly relevant, while others much less so. And since I am a historian, I will end with the category that is, to me, the most intriguing: the category of documentation.

The question of the identity of performing ensembles is itself a specific case of a larger question: the identity of groups and institutions—cafés, schools, banks, newspapers, military units. If I walk into Café Diglas in Vienna, is there—beyond the physical building—any trace of the establishment’s original character from its founding in 1875?
At my neighborhood café in Herzliya, which has changed ownership and staff three times over the last decade—has anything of its original character remained?
And what about the identity of a school? Of a university department? Of a military unit? If I am admitted to Harvard or Yale or Cambridge—does the university impart something of its character to me, or do I contribute something of mine to the university, or both, or neither? There is no doubt that the Israeli Air Force, for example, possesses a long-standing culture of debriefing—a culture that has endured for decades. Is the Mustang squadron at Tel Nof in 1956 the same as the F-35 squadron at Nevatim today? Both are Squadron 116. All these examples share a delicate interplay between reputation and patterns of practice—between the institution’s name and its essence.

And yet, one might think that in musical ensembles—arguably much more of a “Luftgeschäft” than a café or a bank—continuity is paradoxically more tangible.
Not only does the name remain, but a core repertoire remains, recordings exist as points of reference and comparison, there are costumes, there is choreography transmitted from generation to generation...

I would like to begin this discussion by illuminating ensemble identity from a historical perspective. I am deliberately (if inelegantly) bypassing the foundational question of individual performer identity—which is itself a vast topic.

The historiography of performers’ identities is not as old as one might think.
There is a work by Alonso Mudarra, which I somehow always find relevant to my lectures, and it is again relevant here: a piece published in 1546 that attempts to imitate the improvisational style of a contemporary harpist named Ludovico. This composition is significant not only because it suggests that a performer existed whose playing style was distinctive enough to imitate, but also because it implies that this distinctiveness lay in his improvised practice—that is, in his performance style in the broad Renaissance sense, which was not merely “play what is written on the page,” but also encompassed creative decisions about what to play.

From that point onward, the rise of the virtuoso was essentially a one-way process, and in almost every musical culture one finds performers famed for their interpretative abilities. I could easily provide a list of such musicians from Purcell’s time—my own period of specialization—but to simplify matters, let us take the case of virtuoso violinists:
Nicola Matteis, Corelli, Vivaldi, Geminiani, Tartini, Viotti, Nardini, Paganini, Joseph Joachim…

But I wish to speak about the history of identity in large performing bodies.

Throughout music history there have been ensembles granted exceptional reputations, endowed with a distinct identity or character.
The Concerto delle donne of the Duke of Este—an ensemble that operated between 1580 and 1598 in Ferrara—consisting of professional female singers who performed madrigals in a new style, and whose renown spread across Italy so widely that rival ensembles were founded in imitation by other dukes and princes. We know the singers’ names—Laura Peverara, Livia d’Arco, Anna Guarini.
You may say: “That’s no great revelation; because we know their names, the ensemble’s identity collapses into the brilliance of three individuals.”
But consider the girls of the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, where Vivaldi taught: these girls achieved legendary status, and out of modesty were never seen by their audiences. At best we know their first names. A certain “Anna-Maria,” for example, played the viola d’amore—but we have no idea what her surname was; she exists only as part of the myth of the “girls of the Ospedale.”

Mendelssohn, in his letters from his 1829 journey to Rome, describes the distinct character of two vocal ensembles, both ecclesiastical—the Papal Choir, and the choir of nuns at Trinità dei Monti. We know of individual members of the Papal Choir because Mendelssohn met and socialized with them; but the audiences at the Sistine Chapel did not know their names. The singers of Trinità dei Monti were likewise unseen behind a screen, but they left a profound impression on Mendelssohn, inspiring his motets Op. 39.

Among all these ensembles, the Papal Choir is perhaps the most relevant test case for our purposes, because it has operated continuously for centuries. So too the great English cathedral choirs—Westminster, Canterbury, Salisbury, York—and the Oxford and Cambridge college choirs. These are ensembles that have existed for hundreds of years.

I will skip (again inelegantly, but gladly) instrumental ensembles, because the history of changing instruments only complicates matters. A cathedral choirboy today is physiologically similar to one 300 years ago; and yet changes in nutrition, water and air quality, dental care, age of puberty onset, and the pronunciation of English produce a markedly different vocal sound. Multiply that by 30–40 voices, and one must ask: does the Winchester Cathedral Choir of 1700 sound like the Winchester Cathedral Choir of today?

The grounding of a choir in a fixed ecclesiastical institution dramatically reinforces continuity: the boys of New College Oxford participate in the same chapel services each week—Evensong, Sunday mass—and I assume that, aside from the nights of the Blitz, this routine has been maintained for centuries. Moreover, if you search for the wartime short film A Message from Canterbury, you will see that the cathedral—and its choir—were chosen to symbolize British resilience during World War II.

If we compare the Efroni Choir’s 45 years of activity with the English collegiate choirs, we find three categories—out of Atara’s thirteen—that clearly overlap:
[2] A fixed schedule and fixed location for rehearsals. In ecclesiastical choirs this continuity is far stronger than in a modern girls’ choir.
[3] Administrative and technical support. (I am likely the first historian ever to draw an equivalence between the Vatican and the Emek Hefer Regional Council, but be that as it may…) Cathedral choirs receive such support simply because they fulfill a necessary liturgical function; they are not, as art is sometimes perceived today, a “nice-to-have.”
[6] Social cohesion. Of course the social dynamics differ between a present-day Israeli girls’ choir and an eighteenth-century English male choir—but the principle is remarkably similar.

Of the ten remaining categories, I would venture that six are largely irrelevant to a centuries-old church choir.
A church choir does not require [1] inspiration from external sources. No one expects the conductor to reinvent the wheel. Nor is [5] “belief in ability and collaborative learning” essential; these choirs function as a well-oiled machine following long-established processes, and learning is not necessarily collaborative but often enforced—historically through strict discipline. Moreover, as long as a boy belonged to the choir, he enjoyed adequate living conditions; once his voice changed, however, he was at risk. Hence [4] “non-judgmental auditioning” is worlds away from ecclesiastical reality. Church authorities traveled great distances to recruit naturally gifted voices—and we will not even open the Pandora’s box of bribery, kidnapping when families refused to send their sons, or in certain cases, castration. That is for another lecture.
Likewise [7] guiding working principles, [8] diverse repertoire, and [9] optimal conditions for creative work are all luxuries irrelevant to church choirs; no one expects them to maintain a varied repertoire. Indeed, the weekly performance schedule actively discourages novelty and tends to reduce the need to learn new repertoire or styles—creative work, almost by definition, requires more time. (Read some of the processes Atara describes in the book!)

Four categories remain that are shared to some degree, though in ways that highlight the differences.

I begin with [13] inter-generational work. Mentorship—of the sort Atara mentions—has always played a substantial role in church choirs. Cathedral and collegiate choirs are frequently organized in hierarchical tiers: newcomers or probationers, full choristers, and senior choristers—an arrangement that made even more sense when voice change typically occurred at 15 or 16, as in the Renaissance and Baroque. Senior choristers serve as role models for younger ones, musically, behaviorally, and liturgically. At King’s College, Cambridge, sixteenth-century statutes already refer to “boyes under tuition of elder choristers.”
At St. Paul’s Cathedral there are designated Head and Deputy Head Choristers.
At Westminster Abbey, senior boys lead sectional rehearsals.
In places where the choir is attached to its own school (usually of exceptional quality), mentorship continues beyond choir hours, as older boys serve as prefects or dormitory supervisors. This is one of the key forces behind the transmission of unwritten stylistic continuity. And needless to say, musically outstanding boys—through this structure—receive their earliest opportunities to cultivate [11] their personal future careers. Of course “career” today means military bands, conservatories, scholarships abroad; but in church choirs, the most promising boys reached the crisis of voice change already equipped with experience in playing, composing, and musical leadership. After their voices settled, they could become adult Gentlemen of the choir—launching decades-long singing careers.

As for [10] success in performance—here too the ecosystem matters. Oxford and Cambridge, for example, are structured around inter-collegiate competition, guest appearances at one another’s chapels, Christmas services drawing crowds from afar, and in recent decades competition for BBC live broadcasts, prestigious recording contracts, and collaborations with renowned orchestras. And here the cycle completes itself: the ensemble’s long history becomes a commercial asset in its own right. There is no doubt that performing Handel or Purcell with a choir that already existed when the work was written carries considerable prestige.

To conclude, I would like to speak about item [12] - Documentation. At first glance, one might ask: how can the general relevance of documentation—and of recordings in particular—be discussed when the subject at hand involves choirs that are 400, 500, or even 600 years old?

And here I would like to return to the Sistine Chapel Choir, and to what is perhaps the most famous story about the most famous choir. The story, as it is usually told in “The Gospel According to Amadeus,” recounts how one day in April 1770, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited Rome with his father, Leopold. Since their visit happened to fall during Holy Week, Mozart went to hear Allegri’s Miserere as performed by the Sistine Chapel Choir—the only ensemble permitted to perform the work, and from which removing any written copy of the music was strictly forbidden. Mozart, being something of a fox and possessing extraordinarily sharp ears, heard the piece, returned to the inn where he was staying, and wrote out the composition from memory. Even though this act violated a papal decree, word of the feat reached the Holy See, and the pope—so impressed with his abilities—conferred upon him an honorary title.

This story is charming, and it is certainly based on real events, but it suffers from several inaccuracies that stem from a lack of historical sensitivity. Not only is the piece—with its repetition and formulaic harmony—something that one could plausibly transcribe by ear even without being Mozart, but the overwhelming emphasis on Mozart tends to obscure the central point. Mendelssohn, in his 1829 letters that I mentioned earlier, hits the point exactly on the mark. The real story is that the written notes of the Miserere were extremely skeletal. Visitors flocked to Rome during Holy Week in part to hear the papal choir perform the work—and why? Because the way the choir sang it, with all the embellishments, ornaments, and improvisations that constituted the performance practice of this highly professional ensemble, these were what animated the bare musical skeleton of Allegri’s Miserere.

Mendelssohn, whose ears were no less sharp than Mozart’s, himself wrote to his teacher Friedrich Zelter the ornaments he heard the singers perform, alongside what he believed must have been the underlying written version. In other words: the essence of the work lay in the choir’s performance. It could not be performed outside the Vatican simply because outside the Vatican there did not exist the choir for whom Allegri’s Miserere belonged to the living repertoire.

And here I close the circle: category [12] in Atara’s study—Documentation—is not only about documentation, but also about the absence of documentation. The arrangement of Naomi Shemer’s Shirat Ha-asavim, precisely because it is unwritten, precisely because its documentation is ostensibly the most fragmentary, is what grants the choir its identity.

The musicologist Richard Taruskin, in his important book Text and Act, distinguishes between music as a fixed text and music as a dynamic action. The un-notated arrangement of Shirat Ha-asavim is one of the inheritances that passes within the choir from one conductor to the next. If one conductor shapes the ritardando this way and another shapes the heterophony that way—there is nothing to it! Just as Allegri’s Miserere was almost certainly performed in 1770 differently from how it was performed when it was written in the 1630s—140 years earlier—and differently still from how it was performed 60 years later, when Mendelssohn heard it. Yet the piece was performed by the same choir, and the identity of the work remained entirely intact. Had documentation existed—had we possessed recordings from 1630 and 1770 and 1829—they would only have obscured that identity, creating the illusion—or perhaps the sound-illusion—of different choirs. But the essence, ladies and gentlemen, remains.

And so perhaps we must preserve the spirit of Heraclitus’ statement while reversing its meaning. Heraclitus said: The river into which you step today is the same river and not the same river into which you stepped yesterday.

The Efroni Choir shows us that the river into which you step today may not be the same river you stepped into yesterday—but it is the same river.