These are some copyright scores by cimbalom player Joseph Moskowitz which I got from the US Library of Congress back in 2023. In a way, these scores were how I first realized that the LOC had a much larger collection of handwritten klezmer copyright scores which they hadn’t posted online, as I mentioned in my first post last year. The exception among these pieces was Adjuder Chusid which the LOC did add to their digital collection a while ago. Ordering these was an early test for whether it could be done, how much it would cost and how long it would take. Unfortunately, no one knows what happened to Moskowitz’s personal music files, so his recorded output and these scores are pretty much all the documentation we have of his decades of performing and composing.
I would separate these into two main groups: a set of mostly Romanian-style pieces from 1921, which he never recorded, and another set of Romanian-style pieces from 1928, which he recorded with Alexander Olshanetsky’s orchestra. (The best way to stream those excellent recordings would probably be here on the Mayrent Collection.) And then there are a few pieces from other years which he didn’t record. Here are the scores; if you prefer PDF format you can access them here in my Google Drive.
Thanks to Christina Crowder, Yoni K., Dan K.-T., Pete Rushefsky, and Paul Gifford who helped me sort out and order these scores from the LOC a few years ago. And, if you end up recording or performing some of these unrecorded pieces, once again I’d love to know about it, feel free to reach out or post it in the comments here.
