ABSTRACT
In the realm of music, the name of Immanuel is particularly connected with a well-known distich included in his sixth mahberet whose subject is a polemical debate regarding the merits and excellence of Spanish Provencal and Italian Hebrew poetry. A pretentious and “fool” Provencal poet claiming the supremacy of Provencal poetry is being challenged by Immanuel who accepts to commit himself to a huge quiz porting on various areas of knowledge. As for the idea that all human achievements, including music, are rooted in Biblical texts that come to the fore in Immanuel’s approach and in that of the subsequent generations, it can be found in earlier period. Art music culminated by then and what happened afterwards is a process of decline and degradation. The debasement of magnificent art and its corruption by the Christians is due, according to the statement made by Immanuel in the third sentence, to the misuse of music in taverns and in singing lust songs.
