Born near Ansbach, Bavaria (now in Germany), Samuel Naumbourg was raised in a family connected to a long lineage of cantors. After receiving musical training in Munich, Naumbourg settled in Paris in 1843, establishing himself as an influential choirmaster among the city’s synagogue choirs. Over the course of his career, Naumbourg compiled and published synagogue music for a broad audience, drawing on both his southern German heritage and conventions of opera popular in France at the time to give his music wide appeal.
Aggudat Shirim (Collection of Songs) was one of several collections of synagogue music published by Samuel Naumbourg between 1847 and 1874. It included a scholarly article about Jewish music.
I certainly had an obscure childhood
but intensely my own,
a childhood which wanted to be dashing
but had the features of a caricature.
Yes, a caricature. For example:
that absurd love for Sophie,…
Indeed, in the countries where we reside, where the gentile women walk about bareheaded, but our mothers did not go out like that and were most careful on that score, concerned as they were about…