Belsize Square Synagogue is proud of its musical heritage, but its musical scores have not always been easy to sing from. But Henry Kuttner, who has been involved in the Synagogue and its music for 70 years, found a high tech solution: Sibelius® music-editing software.

The musical scores used by the Synagogue choirs from the Community’s beginning in 1939 were based on the original music saved by Oberkantor Magnus Davidsohn from the burning ‘Fasanenstrasse Synagoge’, Berlin, on Kristallnacht 9/10 November 1938.

Over the years these scores for organ and choir were, at great expense, reprinted and rebound once or twice but eventually they became tattered, often photocopied, difficult to read and therefore not much fun to sing from!

The problems were eventually compounded by two more factors: the change-over from Ashkenasi to Sephardi pronunciation, introduced during the Ministry of Rabbi J J Kokotek, and the publishing of a complete new set of prayer books after Rabbi Rodney J Mariner took over.

Altering the text (by hand) under every stave of music for each voice in hundreds of pages of music was a mammoth task undertaken by Henry Kuttner and the late Peter Heimann. The work took many years, but it left the music still more difficult to read! The introduction of the new prayer books brought a whole swathe of difficulties – insertion of new prayers and music, plus changing of the order of many prayers (and therefore music) made the scores absolutely impossible to follow, since page numbers were now in a ridiculous state (for instance we had pages numbered 128F14 and the like). The only way through such a minefield was to issue for every Service a detailed schedule to each chorister, giving the order in which page numbers were to be sung.

At this point in time – the year was 1998 – Henry Kuttner had a flash of inspiration – literally one life-changing moment. He realised in that instant that he must undertake to republish the entire musical repertoire of the Synagogue, with a new flexible numbering system and new transliterated Sephardi Hebrew for every single musical score. The scores would also include cues for every single prayer in the prayer book so that all choristers, organists and conductors could follow the Services without difficulty.

His inspiration was fuelled by four factors:

a) he was retired.

b) a new music-editing software called Sibelius® had just come onto the market in the UK. It apparently surpassed in quality all previous music software for computer.

c) The realisation that with his nearly 70 years of involvement with the Synagogue choir and its music, as boy soprano, tenor, bass and occasional alto plus several years as choirmaster, he was well placed to undertake this project.

d) he had just been left legacies by two aunts with which to finance the project.

Immediately he found a young professional musician who was also computer-literate – Tom Rouncefield – who had been singing tenor with the choir for some years and was therefore familiar with our music - to undertake the start of the project under Henry’s editorship. They communicated by e-mail and attachments, since Tom soon moved to Cornwall, and they began with the score for the short S’lichot Service, followed by the Erev Shabbat Service and gradually over the years which followed the musical repertoire of the Synagogue was so republished. In recent years, Tom had to give up the work, and it was continued by our multi-talented Cantor, Norman Cohen Falah.

The scores which are saved on computer and can of course be edited, added to and reprinted in pristine condition at any time, are a pleasure to look at and to sing from, according to the choristers, particularly those who remember the state of the old scores!

As new music gets introduced to the choir the Sibelius® software (now in its 6^th version) is put to use again and again - so one might say that the project will never finish.

However, Henry has lived to see the fruition of his vision, and is a happy man.