BAUER, JACOB

BAUER, JACOB (Jehiel ben Gershom; 1852–1926), ḥazzan of the Turkish-Israelite Temple in Vienna and adaptor of its liturgical music. Bauer was born in Szenice, Hungary, and went as a youth to Vienna. During his school days in that city, he was a soprano singer with the ḥazzan Pesaḥ Feinsinger. After regular training of his adult voice, Bauer was employed as ḥazzan at Ottakring, a suburb of Vienna, Szigetvar (Hungary, 1875), and Graz (1878). In 1880, the governors of the Vienna Sephardi congregation decided to adapt the musical part of their service "to the needs of modern times." They commissioned Bauer and the choir-director Isidor Loewit to arrange their melodies and to organize a temple choir. At first this modernized service was, more or less, in the common Ashkenazi style. In the course of time, Bauer and Loewit worked on arrangements of the original Turco-Sephardi melodies which were published as Schir-Hakawod in 1889. Bauer founded and edited the Oesterreichisch-Ungarische Kantoren-Zeitung from 1881 to 1898 and was co-founder and temporarily chairman of the Oesterreichisch-Ungarischer Kantoren-Verband from 1883. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Friedmann, Lebensbilder; E. Zaludkowski, Kultur-Treger fun der Yidisher Liturgye… (1930), 196. (Hanoch Avenary)