Louis Danto - Cantor Louis Danto Music Library

Cantor Louis Danto Music Library

Upon retirement, Danto announced his desire to dedicate his entire collection to Beth Emeth. His wish was approved at a general meeting in September 2004. The proposal included renovation of the Beth Emeth library as well as the construction of a stage and theatre seating 200, to permit performances of the great variety of Jewish music in his collection.

Authentic music from more than 100 years ago can be found in the collection. Some of the many examples of rare Jewish music include: Yiddish Culture from Kiev, published in 1921; Songs from Leipzig, published in 1920; an original edition of Avram Goldfaden's operetta King Ahasverus, published in 1899, and 500 Years of Yiddish Poetry, published in New York in 1917.

The categories include cantorial music, classified down to specific prayers, so if one wants many versions of, for example, L’Cha Dodi, one can easily find each version in one particular file. Similar files can be found for Yiddish folk songs, Yiddish pop songs, Yiddish operettas, Sephardic songs, serious compositions for cantor and choir, Chassidic music, and, among other categories, Jewish music written by such non-Jewish composers as Handel, Schubert, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Right now, some of the rare books can be seen in glass cases in the Beth Emeth Library. Most of them are still in organized files in a Beth Emeth storage room. But all of the collection can still be viewed by the general public upon supervised request. The music exists not only as sheet music but also as 78 and 33 rpm records, big reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, and CDs.

The collection has been praised by a number of experts, including Professor Edwin Seroussi, the Emmanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology and Director of Jewish Music Research Centre of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Dr Eliott Kahn, who has been the Music Archivist at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary for over 12 years.