LEVI, LEO

LEVI, LEO (1912–1982), musicologist. Born in Casale Monferrato, Italy, Levi settled in Palestine in 1935. His special fields of research were in ethnomusicology and liturgical music, especially the traditions of the Italian and Mediterranean Jewish communities, and in the comparative study of Jewish and Christian musical traditions. His extensive recordings of the various liturgical music traditions of the Italian Jewish communities, made in collaboration with the Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare in Rome, are particularly important as the greater part were obtained from the last bearers of these traditions at a time when their communities had already ceased to exist.