During the Spring semester 2025, Dániel Péter Biró will be a Visiting Research Scholar at the Barry S. Brook Center.

Dr. Biró will undertake ethnomusicological fieldwork, recording members of Portuguese, Syrian, and Yemenite Jewish communities. In particular, he will record members of Congregation Shearith Israel and compare their Portuguese Torah cantillation melodies with those of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Community and those of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montréal. Using techniques of computational ethnomusicology, He will compare the scales and melodic contours of these melodies, revealing their similarities and differences to better illuminate trajectories of melodic transmission and historical context within Torah Trope traditions. This computational analysis will be done in conjunction with Peter van Kranenburg at Utrecht University. For several years, they have collaborated on research of Jewish and Islamic recitation practices as well as Christian plainchant, looking into how aspects of oral transmission, notation and melodic stability functions in these chant traditions. In addition, he hopes to learn more about the use of maqam in Syrian and Yemenite Jewish communities in New York and how this relates to the use of maqam in Syrian and Yemenite Qur’an recitation. This research will inform his compositional work during his time as a visiting scholar at the Brook Center. During this time, he plans to write a series of compositions based on texts of Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and these will incorporate melodic elements from Portuguese Jewish communities in New York, Amsterdam and Montréal. In addition, he will write music for the film Elsewhere of Melis Birder, which deals with the history of the Dönme of Turkey, a religious group which integrates ritual elements from Judaism and Islam into their religious and musical practice.