This is my personal list of sites with mp3 and other recordings of nusach and Jewish liturgy. I collected these links because I am deeply interested in the music of Jewish liturgy, and I want to learn every melody there is for everything. I am not likely to ever reach this impossible goal, but this list is my attempt at it, at least!
These resources are arranged by an algorithm that considers how extensive a resource the resource is in each area. This consideration is subjective, but if you are looking for a particular High Holiday tune, you are more likely to find it toward the top of the High Holiday page than the bottom. Resources in gray boxes contain significant non-Ashkenazi nusach, in some cases alongside Ashkenazi nusach and in other cases to its exclusion.
Keep posted, since I add new resources to this list from time to time. I am also working on a larger project, NusachDB, to collect the melodies themselves. If you know of any useful sites not on this list, or notice a miscategorization, please let me know at webmaster@offtonic.com. Notable missing (or not well-covered) recordings include the Saturday night portions of Maariv, Kiddush Levanah, the Hoshanot of Sukkot, the Hakafot and Chatan Torah passages of Simchat Torah, the Al Hanisim paragraph in the Amidah and Birkat Hamazon of Chanukah, Purim, and Yom Haatzmaut (in the Conservative tradition, anyway), the Haggadah chanting of the Magid and others, and, of course, any less famous melodies for well-covered services like Kabbalat Shabbat and Hallel. If you know of any sites with these, please send them along, or hey, record them yourself if you'd like!
Click "Catalogued recordings" to see which recordings or sheet music in a particular site have been added to NusachDB. For the foreseeable future, these do not represent the totality of recordings for most sites, but the lists will get more complete with time.
Please enjoy this list and may it increase your learning.
Great site with mp3's of nearly everything. This should always be the first stop. His nusach can be unique, at times, and he has great melodies that are hard to find elsewhere.
This is really, really cool. It's a very complete resource for London Sephardic nusach. This main site focuses on congregational melodies, but it links to Shaar Hashamayim for the chanting and the London Sephardi Choir Archive for choral recordings. Here, I consider them all together.
Note: the songs in the congregational melodies site; the blessings under Toldot Adam
This is a big collection of very musical Dutch Jewish nusach, including sheet music in many cases. It covers many services, including weekday, Shabbat, chag, and High Holidays, with multiple versions at times. This is a very extensive resource. The nusach is in large part compatible with the common Eastern European nusach, and a large number of lectures are provided on the subject as well. The sheet music uses Dutch transliteration, however, so it will look funny to English speakers!
This is a project by Faraj Samra to preserve and present Sephardic chazanut (the title probably gave that away, didn't it?). It's actively growing and receiving regular updates, so this information may soon be out of date. It contains Torah, haftarah, and Tehilim readings, and a very large chunk of the siddur (including melodies sometimes).
A rabbi and his family have put up three wonderful albums of Shabbat table songs, Sheva Brachot table songs, and year-round songs.
In Italian. Huge archive of Italian recordings, including Italian laining, Italian nusach, and classes. There's a lot more there than I've been able to properly categorize, especially without an Italian siddur, so the notes below are (and will probably always be) incomplete.
Note: includes many renditions; one is inside I canti di Scola Tempio
Great site with lots of Chasidic recordings of melodies! Has a section for Sephardic and Chasidic melodies, too. Click on the download links to listen in your browser if the player doesn't work.
Note: Sheva Brachot under Brachos; a few things under Other
A bunch of really good instructional recordings for various services, including Shabbat minchah and the wedding Birkat Hamazon, as well as trope for Torah, haftarah, High Holidays, and Purim, Slichot, Shabbat maariv, shacharit, and P'sukei D'zimrah, the Kol Nidrei paragraph, Rosh Chodesh musaf, and festival kiddush. It's easy to miss the link at the bottom that says "Older Entries" -- there you'll find two versions of Hallel, more P'sukei D'zimrah, and weekday minchah.
Note: includes chupah blessings and Birkat Hamazon for wedding meal with directions
WARNING: AUTOPLAY! A band that performs weddings and other events. They have a huge collection of music to listen to, though, including, obviously, a lot of wedding and dance music.
A messianic congregation's collection of recorded liturgy. It's a pretty good collection! It actually includes Al Hanisim for Purim in the Birkat Hamazon, as well as stuff for Shabbat, weddings, Pesach, and much more.
In Hebrew. This is an institute for the preservation of the traditions of Libyan Jews, and there are TONS of recordings WITH text! Oh, and they're all neatly organized from the side menu.
It's a blog, but the music links on top have a pretty nice variety of nusach and melodies. Very much in progress at the moment. The high holiday recordings are in very large files, though, so it's a bit hard to find what you want in them, but they're very good.
An Egyptian synagogue in New York. There are many recordings and videos here. Many. There are several years' worth of Seder Tawhid, an Egyptian Jewish celebration on Rosh Chodesh Nisan. Three years of Slichot plus selections from a fourth. Several High Holiday tunes. Several kinot. Havdalah in a whole bunch of different maqamat. Torah and haftarah trope according to the Egyptian minhag. All of Esther. Under R' Yosef Hamaoui Media there are even more recordings, including all of Psalms and a wedding service.
Many recordings by a cantor, including Friday night, Shabbat musaf, Sheva Brachot, and some high holiday, and there is actual sourcing for many of the melodies!
A huge and fairly comprehensive collection of German-tradition nusach recordings by a Marcel Lang. There's nusach for everything, and sometimes even several different versions. This site is superlatively good for Friday night recordings and has several unique tracks like the Purim Kiddush!
Note: includes two versions of the Sheva Brachot
In Hebrew. It's a site where users can upload their own recordings of piyutim and make their own piyut-centered pages. There's a ton of stuff on here, in various traditions (emphasis on Moroccan and Yemenite, but there's Ashkenazi as well), with a LOT of non-piyut recordings as well; it's affiliated with Invitation to Piyut, so you know it's good. However, unlike its relative, browsing for anything is an absolute nightmare, since within each occasion, they're ordered by *date*. However, there's much more than just piyutim -- there's laining and tefilah as well, but you have to dig. There's a Google-powered search engine too, which helps.
A whole bunch of Sephardic recordings. If it's similar to the Liturgical Music of Shaar Hashamayim website, it's because it's made by the same person! The content is different, though, and there's a lot more detail in some of the pages, including texts of prayers and piyutim. Jewish Table Singing is a sister site and features many of the same recordings.
Note: includes Sheva Brachot under Other Occasions
Dutch Sephardic nusach, in old recordings, for large parts of weekdays, Shabbat, holidays, etc. You can also listen to an enormous treasure trove of old nusach tapes (instructions mostly in Dutch) as well as find sheet music for a variety of pieces of liturgy.
A Conservative synagogue with pretty good nusach stuff for Shabbat, including a very nice Hallel and Anim Zemirot. Some of the more generally named files, like Kabbalat Shabbat – Maariv and Birkot Hashachar, are actually complete services.
Note: Sheva Brachot
In French. A Tunisian synagogue in Paris, with quite a few recordings! I'm not sure why, but under Hazanoute, there are several recordings of the Kaddish and even more of the Kedushah, and they include Shabbat evening and morning. There are also a number of miscellaneous recordings, including piyutim, Sheva Brachot, havdalah, Shabbat morning, Brit Milah tunes, etc. Under Haguimes (Fêtes), aside from Torah and haftarah readings, there's Esther, the Haggadah in several recordings (including in Judeo-Arabic), Ruth, Eichah, and Slichot. Under Autres passages, there's Shir Hashirim, more Haggadah recordings, and a few other things like haftarah blessings and the Shema.
A cantor's recordings of wedding and Shabbat music with embellished nusach. Very nice!
Simchat Torah songs! Many of them! The Sheva Brachot are here, too.
Several wedding tunes, including three melodies for Asher Bara and three for Od Yishama.
A cantor's website with some excellent instructional recordings as well as plenty of concert and record tracks of chazanut and other music.
Note: includes Sheva Brachot
In French. They sell CD's, but they also have videos and recordings, neatly categorized, including recordings and videos mostly from the Syrian and Tunisian traditions, often with the text as well. Recordings and videos range from traditional to accompanied and produced.
A synagogue with recordings for a quite complete Shabbat morning service, several tunes for High Holidays including a complete Birkot Hashachar and P'sukei D'zimrah, and Sheva Brachot.
In Hebrew. A band that performs Jewish music, with extensive samples on the page.
A Modern Orthodox synagogue in Cape Town, in South Africa, with some wonderful recordings of their cantor and choir. They are hosted on their SoundCloud and include Shabbat, wedding, and High Holiday tunes.
In Hebrew (the English version has the same stuff, but not everything has been translated). Absolutely wonderful collection of piyutim (and regular blessings and psalms too, if you look hard enough) from all over the world. It's no longer updated, with the new site being Atar Hapiyut V'hat'filah. The old content uses Flash, so it might be, well, very difficult to get to it right now.
In Hebrew. This is the remake of Invitation to Piyut and Shituf Piyut. It's more difficult to navigate but has more stuff, and it includes most of the old stuff as well (but not all, for legal reasons).
In Hebrew (the English version is the legacy site, Invitation to Piyut, which is no longer maintained). Absolutely wonderful collection of piyutim (and regular blessings and psalms too, if you look hard enough) from all over the world, run by the National Library of Israel. It's massive, constantly updated, and it takes submissions if you want to send in your own recordings that they don't yet have. It's the successor site to Invitation to Piyut and Shitufiyut, containing (most of) the recordings from both.
A big collection of songs, focusing on zemirot and piyutim, with words, translation, and often multiple recordings (though some have none). It's not organized by occasion, so I could be off in my categorizations, but this should be a primary resource for zemirot. There are some Indian (Bene Israel) tunes, but they're all cut off after exactly one minute. Be careful, too, because a few of the recordings are sung without particular attention to pitch!
Note: includes M'hera, Mi Adir, Od Yishama, Sos Tasis
An educational egalitarian institution that focuses on community building, and this used to include audio resources for leading services. There were recordings for weekdays, Shabbat, high holidays (including a great Ki Hineh Kachomer), etc., and they're still available under Archive. Now... it's an ambitious experience: a categorized collection of submitted recordings for the various parts of the various services. It's growing quickly and is already an extremely helpful resource. You can even search for melodies by tempo, time signature, or mode!
Note: under Prayer Service Resources -> Lifecycle
A site dedicated to the memory of Ronny Horvitz and his melodies from Frankfurt. Contains taamim for Torah and haftarah, some Esther,
A cantor's website with a nice full section of recordings. Most of them are under Ritual Resources, especially under Services, but a few are under Music instead, including motif samples from High Holidays and scanned wedding music. Under Ritual Resources -> Torah -> Special, you can also find the Megilot, including Kohelet.
Note: also some songs under Music, including sheet music
Interesting melodies from an Iraqi tradition, for a variety of texts including Kol Nidrei, Shabbat piyutim, etc.
A wealth of Spanish and Portuguese melodies (and some chazanut), including parts of Hallel, S'lichot, festival liturgy, Shabbat, and a whole bunch of stuff, along with a bit of info on each melody.
A lot of nice Chasidic niggunim, many very march-like, but it's in Real Audio format, which makes it exceedingly awkward to listen to. Many of the files don't work, either.
In French. A Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Paris. It takes a very long time to load, unfortunately -- the files are large -- but they're there. There's Friday night, Saturday morning, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Shabbat Chatan, and the haftarah for Simchat Torah. They're accompanied by organ and feature a children's chorus.
Several cantorial recordings by cantors from Maine. Includes some classical chazanut from the 40's and 60's as well as more modern cantorial recordings.
Recordings of Selmar Cerini, who was Oberkantor at the Neue Synagogue in Breslau, Germany from 1894 until his death in 1923. As can be expected from 100-year-old recordings, these are very scratchy, but they're absolutely wonderful to listen to. There are several from High Holidays, kaddish from Geshem and Tal, Mi Adir from the wedding service, and a few other tunes.
A surprisingly large collection of audio classes, including model complete seders, songs (including actually teaching the songs) and blessings, stuff like that. It's basically an open directory structure, and it's just filled with stuff. It even has correct laining for Job, Proverbs, and Psalms! I should mention that there's much more in here than I can categorize myself, so if I missed anything, let me know! There are many recordings under Songs that I don't immediately recognize, so if you're looking for something in particular, it could be here. There are also many videos of classes which include songs and nusach at the main site.
Note: includes Psalm 128 under Songs
In Hebrew -- the versions of the page in Spanish and in English are still under construction and do not have all of the features of the Hebrew. This site contains extensive recordings and teachings of the Damascus Sephardic tradition, and there are actually quite a few of them. However, the interface is diffcult to use.
A chazan's website; features several audio clips from Shabbat as well as Im Eshkachech.
The Orthodox Berlin Synagogue, featuring a few YouTube videos of Cantor Arie Zaloshinsky, including Kol Nidrei and a wedding.
A cantor's professional recordings, taken from his CD's. Very beautiful settings. Includes Kol Nidrei, Sim Shalom, L'dor Vador, Mah L'cha Hayam, Hodu, Od Yishama.
A long list of audio shiurim, but also some songs as well, including L'chah Dodi, M'ein Olam Haba, Adon Olam, and a couple of others.
Has a few sample recordings of the Amsterdam Synagogue Choirp>
A few recordings of Jewish songs with good accompaniment. The group is Italian, so there are some Italian melodies along the modern Israeli melodies.
Several renditions of the Yekkish (German) Ps. 128 by Israel Meyer Japhet.
The website of the Santo Servicio Portuguese choir in Amsterdam. There's only one recording -- Shir Hamaalot, Ps. 128, sung at weddings -- but it's a great one!