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Overview
The Book of Klezmer traces the music's entire history, making use of extensive documentary material; interviews with forgotten klezmorim as well as luminaries such as Theodore Bikel, Leonard Nimoy, Joel Grey, Andy Statman, and John Zorn; and dozens of illuminating, stirring, and previously unpublished photographs.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781613741399 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2002 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
The Book of Klezmer
The History, the Music, the Folklore
By Yale Strom
Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2002 Yale StromAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61374-139-9
CHAPTER 1
Fin David Der Melekh Biz Duvid Der Klezmer
* * *
(FROM KING DAVID TO DUVID THE KLEZMER)
Jewish Instrumental Music from Biblical Times to 1800
Origins
What is the origin of klezmer music? Who were these enigmatic Jewish folk characters? Why did they have such a strong influence on shtetl social life?
Today's klezmorim are often asked such questions, and all too often they base their answers only on what they know about the last three hundred years of Eastern European Jewish history — that is, on the most accessible written archival material. Before the eighteenth century (the Age of Enlightenment), very little was written about the Jewish folk musician, and only since the late seventeenth century was he known as a klezmer. But to fully understand his origins and the music he played, we have to first look at the earliest Jewish historical writings: those of the Toyre (Torah).
Music has been a vital part of Jewish culture since biblical times. The first Jewish musician appears in the bible as early as the fourth chapter of Genesis: Jubal, son of Lamech, played the harp and flute. Later, the Levites are mentioned as the only musicians allowed to perform at the Temple in Jerusalem. Their music not only emotionally heightened the religious symbolism of the sacrificial services, it actually performed miracles. The ancient Jews, like their neighbors, believed that music held magical powers: it could inspire ecstasy, foretell the future, and treat mental illness. "And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took the harp, and played with his hand; so Saul found relief, and it was well with him, and the evil spirit departed from him."
While the Levites were specifically trained to perform only sacred music in the Temple, other Jews played secular music. The most common instruments for both were the kinor, a lyre-type instrument which some musicologists believe is related to the Greek kithara, with ten vertical strings plucked with a plectron; the nevel, a psaltery-like instrument with ten to twelve vertical strings plucked with the fingers; the khalil, an oboe-like double-reed instrument; the uggav, a flute-like single-reed instrument; the khatsotserah, a trumpet-like instrument with a long cylindrical body ending in an expansive bell; the shoyfer (shofar, the only Biblical instrument still used in the synagogue), a ram's horn; various percussive instruments, including frame drums, cymbals, bells, and timbrels; and the magrephah, a pneumatic pipeorgan-like instrument. Interestingly enough, many generations of Jews, referring to the magrephah, claimed that the pipe organ had been invented by their ancient ancestors. But when organ music became indispensable to the church in Europe in the twelfth century, rabbinical authorities adamantly forbade its use in the synagogue.
After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., the Jews were dispersed throughout the world, and the Levites' sacred Temple services were no longer needed. The rabbis then banned all instrumental music with the explanation that their congregants should be in mourning for Zion. This self-imposed mourning was to be lifted only once the messiah came and rebuilt the Temple. The rabbis associated any kind of secular music with the decadence of Greek culture. "It became synonomous with obscenity and was chiefly used for carnal purposes at frivolous occasions. No wonder then that Judaism opposed 'profane' music." Unfortunately, these extreme attitudes persisted through the seventeenth century, and helped create a negative stance towards the Jewish folk instrumentalist among the community.
The earliest musical influence on Jewish instrumentalists was the melismatic sound of synagogue chants. Some of these melismas and melodies had been written, but most were handed down orally to be interpreted personally by each musician. The few music manuscripts available were jealously guarded by the khazn (Heb.: cantor), because, besides his musical knowledge and vocal abilities, his worth depended on the demand among his congregants for his compositions for specific prayers. For several centuries the nusekh and the trop were the only constant musical elements among the myriad synagogue chants in Western and Central Europe. The trops used in the Toyre were composed between the sixth and ninth centuries B.C.E., and recomposed by Ezra and Nehemiah and the Sanhedrin.
The other great influence on the khazn's repertoire was the relationship between the Jews and their gentile neighbors in Western and Central Europe. As A. Z. Idelsohn, the father of Jewish musicology, wrote,
The close relations between Jews and Gentiles in early centuries and especially during the reign of Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious brought about a cultural reciprocity in which at first the Jews were more frequently those to exert the influence than those to be influenced. We learn this fact from the campaign which Bishop Agobard of Lyon in his letters to Louis the Pious started in 825 against the Jewish influence upon the Christians, which in his opinion endangered the Christian faith. He complains that ... Christians attend Jewish services and prefer the blessings and prayers of the Jewish rabbis; that Christians attend Jewish meals on Sabbaths and that Christians rest on Sabbath. ... In view of this fact, Agobard demanded that a prohibition should be issued to the effect that no Christian man or woman should attend Jewish services, nor observe the Sabbath, nor participate in Jewish festal meals, and that Christian people should stay away from the Jews.
By the end of the Middle Ages, Christian liturgical music had moved from plainsong to rich polyphonic melody, while secular music and song became more accessible to the masses. And although Jews were forced to live in ghettos, these changes influenced them too. Among the Christians, secular music and song were represented by wandering troubadours, minstrels, minnesingers, spielleute and jongleurs who entertained both at the courts of the aristocracy and in market squares across Europe. But two of the most famous Provençal troubadours of the thirteenth century were Jews: Bonfils de Narbonne and Charlot le Juif. Among the German Jews, the minnesinger Süsskind von Trimberg (born around 1220 in Trimberg, near Würzberg) was the best known, often satirizing in song the gentiles' anti-Semitism. Traveling from town to town and castle to castle, these wandering minstrels endured hardships and abasements. One gets a sense of Süsskind's pain from a song he wrote:
I want to grow a beard,
Long must it be, its hair quite gray.
And then I'll go through life the way
The Jews have always gone:
Wrapped in a cape, billowy and long;
Deep under the hat hiding my face;
Meek and with a humble song;
Bare of God's grace.
The lyrics of these itinerant entertainers were written in the vernacular, and their themes were taken from the bible and medresh (midrash).
The early Jewish minstrel, called shpilman (Yid: gleeman), helped preserve not only Jewish folksongs but German ones as well. In the early Middle Ages, the church had taught that individual musical notes and the ways they formed melodies held certain spiritual powers. Thus the knowledge of writing music was kept secret from secular musicians. But around 1450 appeared perhaps the first German songbook with vocal polyphony, and its author is believed to be the Jewish minstrel Wolffle von Locham.
These early Jewish minstrels acted as go-betweens, disseminating popular gentile melodies (even dance melodies) that the local khazonim then incorporated into the Sabbath services. They also took the musical fashions of the ghetto to the outside world. For most Jews during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, life in these ghettos was difficult and depressing. Jews were governed by strict regulations, especially when they worked (often in hostile conditions) outside the ghetto walls. After a hard week, they sought respite in the synagogue service and, to the great dismay of the rabbis, often demanded that the khazn sing his prayers to the gentile tunes they had heard outside the ghetto walls. Quarrels and sometimes fistfights would break out among the congregants — and even with the rabbi — during services if the khazn was not satisfactory. Fearful that the singing and playing of gentile music was contaminating not only the synagogue service but the ethics and morals of Jewish life, the rabbis in Western and Central Europe one by one began to ban the playing of any kind of music and the singing of Christian melodies in the synagogue. They further forbade the male congregants to listen to female singing. Some khazonim followed these strict rules; others were persuaded not to by their congregants; still others were permanently banished from the community and forced to wander from city to city leading prayers and concertizing wherever they could.
Here we see just how early in our history — long before the advent of the itinerant klezmer — the rabbis made it hard for the Jewish musician to ply his trade among his brethren without social castigation. Even Idelsohn, centuries later, held a low opinion of itenerant musicians, writing: "This abnormal condition developed the type of the wandering khazn with all the bad habits of the wanderer. These, in addition to the artistic strain, gave the khazn a minstrel-like character, resembling that of the wandering Italian musicians of that time who overran Central Europe." From the Middle Ages on, the itinerant Jewish musician would constantly struggle for legitimacy and acceptance.
Despite strict rabbinical edicts against the playing of instrumental music for any happy occasion (religious or secular), the rabbis (often reluctantly) allowed it at weddings, which were generally celebrated by the entire Jewish community. The Maharil of Mainz (Jacob ben Moses Möllin, ?1360-1427) was a reknowned khazn and rabbi who performed at many Jewish weddings, and whose rabbinical authority at this time carried the strongest weight. He believed that the mitsve (Heb.: good deed) of making the wedding couple happy with song and music was a biblical command that overruled even the most zealous rabbis. Once in one of the smaller German principalities the wife of the ruling prince died; a year of mourning was declared and music was forbidden. So the Maharil took the wedding party to another city outside the district, where the local Jewish musicians were allowed to play. He felt so strongly about the importance of this mitsve that he would hire gentile musicians to play on the Sabbath for the bride and groom (Jewish musicians were not allowed to play on the Sabbath, not even for a Jewish wedding). And eventually, because Jewish instrumental folk music was such an emotional necessity in the crowded, unsanitary, dank Jewish quarters, it became an essential ingredient in most celebrations for the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.
Jewish Music in Italy
In Italy, meanwhile, the nobility's more liberal treatment of the Jews encouraged development of the arts, especially music. And, unlike the rest of Europe, there the rabbinate was not as exacting in the renunciation of music in the community. Exiles from the Iberian peninsula, the Middle East, and Central Europe made Italian Jewish communities the most cosmopolitan in all of Europe. Several Jewish artists were known throughout Italy, including Wilhemo Ebreo Pisarraisa, who hailed from Pisa and was known by his Hebrew name, Binyomin. A dance teacher who performed at many courts in Milan, Binyomin invented a number of new dances and wrote a book on Italian dance. And from 1555 to 1577 a Jewish family of musicians known as Efram performed in the court of prince Giosaldo Diva-nusa in Naples, later working with Monteverdi at the court of the Duke of Mantua. The majority of Jewish musicians in Italy, however, were not able to work at the courts and therefore traveled from town to town, playing for both Jews and gentiles.
At the Casale Monferrato, the most famous cantorial school in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century, synagogue music proliferated under the leadership of Salomone Rossi (ca. 1565-ca. 1628). Rossi came from an old and well-respected Jewish family and benefited from the encouragement of the local rabbis and the patronage of Duke Vincenzo I of the Gonzaga family, who ruled in Mantua. Rossi's orchestra at the Duke's court included several Jewish members; he was also the director of the violin academy, where he taught a generation of instrumentalists whose accomplishments made them world famous. As a conductor, violinist, composer, and teacher, Rossi's status was such that in 1606 he was given a rare exemption from having to wear the degrading yellow badge on his clothing denoting his Jewish faith. Besides his court music, Rossi wrote many instrumental and choral pieces for the synagogue, including his famous Ha-Shirim Asher L'Shlomo (The Songs of Solomon, 1622). This music was generally conservative in style and melodically similar to the madrigal church music of the time. Rossi and his fellow Jewish composers helped to make Jewish music more acceptable to the Jewish establishment; but they also may have helped usher in a process of assimilation that sacred Jewish music underwent in Europe, a process that ended only in the nineteenth century. Rossi's sister also achieved national fame as a singer, garnering the nickname "Madame Europa"; Monteverdi admired her so much that he had her sing in the first performance of his last opera, Arianna.
When Mantua fell to Kaiser Ferdinand II's Austrian army in 1630, many of the Jews (including the musicians) sought refuge in Venice. One of them was Leone Modena, a faithful supporter of Rossi's. A rabbi, khazn, and choral conductor, Modena helped establish the first music academy in the Venice ghetto in 1629; it gave weekly concerts and attracted Jewish and gentile visitors. Many of its musicians also performed in the Sephardic synagogue's orchestra, which, stretching the goodwill of the rabbis even further, used an organ on Simkhes Toyre (Simchat Torah). "This created such a sensation that Christians and Jews came in multitudes to hear this extraordinary performance. There was such a tumult at the doors that police were called upon to prevent a turmoil. To avoid further disorders, the organ was removed ... and the experiment was never again repeated, though the orchestra remained."
Jewish instrumental music flourished during the Italian Renaissance, with even women participating: playing lute or clavichord, they taught the synagogue hymns to their sisters. Jewish musicians, considered to be the best teachers, taught the children of many aristocratic families. But by the mid-seventeenth century, the church's permissiveness ended. Gentile musicians were angry about having to compete with Jewish musicians for church and secular functions; the priests were worried about the influence their music would have on their parishioners, and how they interpreted the Catholic church's music. Consequently, the church levied heavy taxes upon Jewish musicians and severely restricted who could play, when, where, and for how many hours.
The high level of musical training would serve these musicians well in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as they began to leave Italy and travel to Jewish communities in Central Europe in search of employment. From the archives in Breslau (Wroclaw, Poland), we know of some Italian Jewish musicians that came to Silesia as early as 1564. Because of their accomplishments and ability to read music, their Polish Jewish counterparts did not welcome them. But the lutenists Giovan Maria and Jacopo Sansecondo were so well liked by the Christian people of Brieg that they petitioned Pope Leo X to grant them permission to stay there. Eventually they were given a large parcel of land and the title of graf (Yid.: count).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Book of Klezmer by Yale Strom. Copyright © 2002 Yale Strom. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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Table of Contents
Contents
A Note on Yiddish Spellings,Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
One Fun David Ha-Melekh biz Duvid der Klezmer (From King David to Duvid the Klezmer),
Two Fun der Haskole biz Dem Khurbn (From the Enlightenment to the Holocaust),
Three Klezmer in der Naye Velt: 1880-1960 (Klezmer in the New World: 1880-1960),
Four Fun Zev biz Zorn: Di Bale-Kulturniks (From Zev to Zorn: The Masters of Culture),
Appendix I Klezmer Zikhroynes in di Yizker Bikher (Klezmer Memories in the Memorial Books),
Appendix 2 Klezmer Loshn (Klezmer Slang),
Appendix 3 Klezmer Nigunim (Klezmer Tunes),
Glossary,
Bibliography,
Discography,
Index,