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Joseph Yasser (April 16, 1893 – September 6, 1981) was a Russian–American organist, music theorist, author, and Musicology. An influential figure who established a handful of musical institutions, Yasser is noted for his 1932 publication, A Theory of Evolving Tonality. He was active until his death at age 88 in 1981. Yasser was married but had no children.
In 1923 he moved to the United States, where he studied musical tuning and Jewish music, and Russian music. Particularly interested in the Chinese organ, Yasser continued as a Chinese music lecturer in the United States. He served as organist and choir director at Congregation Rodeph Sholom from 1929 to 1960.
Yasser was a co-founder, along with Charles Seeger, of the American Library of Musicology in 1931, co-founder of the American Musicological Society in 1934, and collector and advocate of Jewish and Jewish-American music. In the 1960s, Yasser published The magrepha of the Herodian temple: A five-fold hypothesis in which he opined that the mysterious magrepha, an integral part of ancient Jewish rituals, was "not a musical instrument in the modern sense, and much less an organ" but instead a digging tool. However, he may be best known as the author of A Theory of Evolving Tonality (1932) and advocate of progressive equal temperaments; Yasser wrote music in 19 equal temperament.. Cites Douglas Leedy (1991). "A Venerable Temperament Rediscovered", Perspectives of New Music 29/2, p. 205. He supported the use of the musical interval measurements, namely the decitone, centitone, and millitone.Farnsworth, Paul Randolph (1969). The Social Psychology of Music, p. 24. .
In a series of articles from 1937 to 1938, which were later compiled into a book titled Medieval Quartal Harmony, published by the American Library of Musicology, he proposed the implementation of a system "harmonizing pentatonic melodies" based upon the perfect fourth interval. From 1944 till its closure in 1980, Yasser frequently participated in activities organised by the New York-based National Jewish Music Council, founded to raise awareness on Jewish music. From 1951 to around 1960, he lectured at the Jewish Theological Seminary's Cantors Institute, specialising in the theory and history of Jewish music. He was hailed as an "important mentor to younger students". Yasser was a contributor to Novoye Russkoye Slovo (New Russian Word), a Russian daily, and wrote about various topics in music.
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