Chazzanut

Chazzanut is the art of the hazzan, the Jewish cantor who leads liturgical prayer in song. Rooted in the Ashkenazi synagogue, it joins fixed prayer modes (nusach) to improvisatory, highly ornamented recitative, wide-ranging coloratura and dramatic emotional delivery, performed solo or with choir. Its golden age of virtuoso cantors, among them *Gershon Sirota*, *Zavel Kwartin* and *Yossele Rosenblatt*, coincided with the birth of commercial recording, which preserved the art even as its European heartland was destroyed. The cantor is at once prayer leader, composer and vocal athlete, expected to move a congregation through the emotional arc of the liturgy.