Simon Ascher
Simon Ascher (1789 - 30 November 1872) was a Dutch-born chazzan who served as First Reader at the Great Synagogue of London from 1832 until his retirement in 1870. He is remembered as one of the key figures in the transition from the older three-singer system to the organized Anglo-Jewish synagogue choir.
Background and appointment in London
Ascher was born in Groningen. He succeeded Enoch Eliasson as First Reader of the Great Synagogue, London, in 1832, after a vacancy of several years. Accounts of his appointment note that many candidates were heard before the congregation chose him.
Contemporary descriptions present him as a fine, clear tenor with a florid recitative style, including frequent roulades, which remained long in communal memory. He is often credited with introducing a German-Dutch cantorial approach into the London Ashkenazi setting, though none of his melodies were published. Other testimony emphasizes restraint rather than vocal display. Morris Duparc later described Ascher as a true "Master of Prayer" whose delivery "enthralled the worshippers," and recalled large weekday turnouts in London to hear his Selichot renditions.
Ascher officiated at several high-profile occasions in Anglo-Jewish life, including the funeral service of Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschell in 1842, and the opening service of the Central Synagogue, Great Portland Street, on 29 March 1855.
From the old vocal trio to choir
When Ascher began at the Great Synagogue, services still used the older format of three vocalists. In 1841, this system was replaced by an organized choir, with Mombach becoming choirmaster.
This development followed an earlier communal resolution, implemented under Ascher, that selected young men should be trained for synagogue musical leadership because it would promote piety and support the religious education of the younger generation. The longer-term hope of producing a stable line of "home-grown" chazanim was described in later writing as only partially fulfilled.
Ascher selected and trained boys with suitable voices, and this reform was a major step in systematizing English synagogue music.
Retirement, succession, and legacy
Ascher tendered his resignation in 1870, the year the United Synagogue was founded. A committee resolution accepted on 31 October 1870 and published in the Jewish Chronicle on 2 November 1870 praised his "talent and ability" and his "long period of thirty nine years" as first reader, and described the impact of his sacred ministration on congregants. At the beginning of the United Synagogue era, council minutes from December 1870 also recorded Ascher's letter thanking the council for granting him a retirement pension.
Marcus Hast succeeded him shortly afterward, and Ascher died on 30 November 1872. Later writers portray him as a bridge figure: rooted in earlier Western Ashkenazi cantorial practice, yet active during the institutional shift toward choir-based synagogue music in Victorian London.
Family
Ascher's son, Joseph Ascher, became a pianist and composer, studied in Leipzig, and later worked in Paris as private pianist and conductor to Empress Eugenie. Joseph is especially remembered for the song Alice, where art thou?