Podcast #3 – Is this Jewish Music?

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Is this Jewish Music?

MOBILE STUDIO PODCAST #3

Mark:

Welcome to the Mobile Studio Podcast #3. Today in our continuing mission to learn about many different aspects of music composing, recording and post-production; I’ve great pleasure in introducing Stephen Newman, who, if truth be told, is my dad. Dad has spent many years researching the history and development of Jewish music and whilst on this quest one of the biggest problems he’s encountered is to actually define what Jewish music is. Something that I’ve always found quite surprising; I know what Jewish music is. It’s the music we hear in Synagogue (in Shule). It’s Kleizmer music, it’s Yiddish folk music. Isn’t it?

Stephen:

Yes. It’s all of those things but let me tell you a little story which I think illustrates the point. I was in Shule (Synagogue) one Shabbat (Sabbath) in Birmingham, in England. We got a visiting Chazzan (Cantor) who put on a beautiful service. He’d done a good job, he knew he’d done a good job. When up to him, bowled, one of our more energetic seventy year olds berating him for introducing film music into the service. This is a Jewish service. You don’t do film music!

Taken rather aback the Chazzan (Cantor) really didn’t know what to say and suddenly it came to him, ‘Ah’ he said, ‘Do you know what I was singing there?’ She said, ‘Yes. It’s that bit from Schindler’s list, isn’t it? It’s where the Krakow ghetto gets liquidated’. ‘Yes’, he said, ‘Do you know who it’s sung by?’; Well, no.’ She said. He said, ‘Well, it’s actually sung by the Li Ron Hertzlia Children’s choir. A Jewish choir from Hertzlia in Israel’. ‘Oh’, she said. ‘Do you know what they were singing?’, he said. ‘No’. ‘They were singing Oifen Pripitchik. Now do you know what that is?’. She said, ‘Yes, yes. I know what that is, my mother used to sing that to me. It’s an old Yiddish folk song’. He said, ‘Yes. That’s right.’

Mark:

So, great. We’ve found our first piece of Jewish music already. Haven’t we?

Stephen:

Well, I did some digging. The words were written by a Yiddish poet, Mark Warshawsky in the second half of the nineteenth century to a melody of his choosing. He wrote the music in the style of a Polish Mazurka (folk dance). Well, not very Jewish in its musical style then. The original sheet music, published in 1921; Warshawsky died in 1907, describes it as an old Hebrew folk song. However, there the trail goes cold, suggesting that the melody is in fact of much greater but lost antiquity.

Mark:

Okay. So, maybe this first piece wasn’t such a good example. It’s a piece that we’re not quite sure what the origins of the melody are. But there are plenty of pieces of music that we sing in Synagogue for example where we do know who wrote them. I mean, I open the Kol Rina, our music book in choir, in Shule (Synagogue) and who do I find? It’s full of the Lewandowskis and the Sulzers. Surely this is a good definition of what Jewish music is?

Stephen:

Well, if you want to tie it all down. You can say that, but you’re then restricting yourself to western Ashkenazi Jewish music. So, fine if you want to do that. I say, what we get here is the first really serious attempt to build a genre, to build a body of Jewish music and it was Sulzer who started it. Sulzer lived in Vienna. He was a Chazzan (Cantor) and he took upon himself the task of taking what he heard being sung in Synagogue at the time; and he was a member of the reform Synagogues in Vienna.

So what he was hearing was an attempt to be more serious with Jewish music. Remember at this time after the Enlightenment, the Haskala with Moses Mendelssohn; the reform movement was just starting and it was trying to, in many ways, go back to some of the original tenets of Judaism and build a new Judaism for the modern era as they saw it. What it did for the music angle was it stimulated a huge amount of composition in, first of all, Vienna, then Berlin and percolating through into England. All the way through the nineteenth century and there were powerful Jewish bankers like Rothschild, who were prepared to finance this reawakening of Jewish music.

Now, what Sulzer did, he took the melodies that he heard in the Synagogue and he, first of all, went back as far as he could to rewrite them in the original modes and these modes he knew because the Chazzanim (Cantors) had passed the modes down through the centuries and they’d been pretty accurate. They hadn’t embellished them, what they had done was they learned the base modes and then the Chazzan (Cantor) would teach his pupil – and these are the twiddles that you can do on top and below.

What Sulzer did in addition to getting the melody as accurate as he could, was he put it to four part harmony written for a male voice choir. He then added an organ because this was the nature of the reform synagogue. Again, very controversial because after the destruction of the second temple, the Rabbis had said, ‘No Music in Shule.’ Okay. Music crept back into Shule, but only in a vocal form. Instruments were banned. But the reform movement said ‘No, we should have instruments back in the Synagogue. Let’s bring it up to date’. So in Sulzer’s music, you’ve always got an organ line, you’ve even in some of the other pieces got a harp and flutes and his building of four part harmony gave rise to so many of the songs we hear in the English Synagogue today. Ein Kamocha, virtually every Shule sings the Sulzer version of Ein Kamocha.

Then in the 1830’s came Lewandowski. Lewandowski, born in a very poor family in the border area between modern-day Poland and Germany who ended up in the Berlin Synagogue and was sponsored by the community to write some of the most magnificent music that we sing today. The setting of Tov Lehodot, especially the Tzaddik Katamar part which is very often sung in Synagogues: Lewandowski. The Kiddush that we often sing: VeShamru. Lewandowski. There’s so much Lewandowski that we sing today and we sing it because the chords are wonderful. It’s lovely to sing, it’s lovely to listen to. Again it was written for the reform Synagogue and again it usually has an organ accompaniment. We then get other composers coming along, Mombach, Israel Mombach in the Kol Rina (Synagogue music book). The later composers like Mombach were actually in the Orthodox tradition, but it started in the reform tradition and I’m so glad that music is blind to the politics of religion.

Mark:

We’ve seen how Sulzer and Lewandowski and later Mombach were listening to the music that was prevalent in their time and they tried to formalize and develop this music into what we think of today as Jewish music. But were they following any rules? Is there some definition of what makes music Jewish?

Stephen:

Well, we can turn to a definition; Kurt Sachs, a very famous musicologist in 1957 addressed the international conference of Jewish music in his keynote address actually tried to define Jewish music. He defined it as: Music written by Jews, for Jews in a Jewish context. Now, I’ve taken that on a little bit and said: Okay. What is Jewish music? Yes, written by a Jew. Yes, performed in a Jewish context but what makes it essentially sound Jewish? There’s a sound there, where if you played a piece of music to say a non-Jewish person they’d say, ‘Ooh, that’s Jewish’. So, what’s making the music sound that way? Well, we can look at it technically which we can do later but let’s just have a listen to a piece of music, a very famous piece of Jewish music: Hava Nagila, because this is written in one of the traditional Jewish modes, the Ahava Raba mode and that is what is giving the essentially Jewish sound: these modes.

Song: Hava Nagila

Mark:

Beyond the fact that Hava Nagila is a very famous Jewish piece, there is something about it that does sound Jewish. What is it? Why does it sound so Jewish?

Stephen:

Right, okay. Well let’s have a look at Hava Nagila. The first passage:

Extract: Hava Nagila

There is your Jewish sound and what’s actually happening is the second note of the scale is being flattened which in a normal minor key it won’t be. It’s the third note that’s flattened and that’s giving it an essentially Jewish feel.

Mark:

But the Sulzer and Lewandowski pieces we heard before didn’t sound very much like Hava Nagila. So there must be other Jewish sounding modes.

Stephen:

Yes, there are the Magen Avot mode which is the mode used by a lot of Chazzanim (Cantors) in their normal singing of say, the Sabbath service. You’ve then got different types of Jewish modes, for example the Kleizmer bands. They are using something called the Freilich mode which is a slight variation on the Ahava Raba mode. But again, you’ll hear a clarinet for example playing that flattened second giving it essentially that Jewish feel.

Mark:

It’s interesting you mention the clarinet, because I always tend to associate the clarinet with Jewish music especially when it’s played at Barmitzvahs or weddings. Is the clarinet a Jewish instrument?

Stephen:

Not at all. Is it related to any of the temple instruments? Well, that’s for the historians to justify. The clarinet was adopted by the travelling Kleizmer bands together with the violin, the fiddle. Probably because they heard this in the gypsy music. A lot of this music originated around Romania. Especially Romania, Bulgaria, around there. Why around there? That’s quite interesting because this area was invaded by the Tatars and there’s been quite a bit of research done to say: was any of the music of the Tatars- does that give rise to any Jewish sounding music? And there’s a body of thought that said, yes it did. So, the local gypsy music used clarinets and used fiddles. Did the Jews pick it up? Probably; because most of Jewish music has been picked up from the indigenous society.  It’s made to sound Jewish because it’s usually sung in a Jewish context.

Mark:

So, what you seem to be saying is that a lot of Jewish music owes its origins, a lot of the Jewish modes owe their origins to styles that existed in the places where large concentrations of Jews lived.

Stephen:

Oh, yes. That’s right because you’re looking at large areas of Jewish immigration after the destruction of the second temple and then the expulsion of the rest of the Jews from Israel, apart from just a handful, by Hadrian. So, these various areas of Judaism that grew up in central Europe which gave rise to the western type of Jewish music, and that’s essentially what we’re talking about here, came from various sources. The people came out from Israel, were expelled, went through various parts of Europe. The music of that area was influenced by the various invasions that took place of which one was the Tatar invasion.

Mark:

We’ve talked here mainly about Western Jewish music. Can you give us any example of Jewish music that’s come from different sources?

Stephen:

Absolutely! Yeah, we’ve got loads sources. Ladino, Yemeni and in fact the piece I’d like to play to you is a piece of Yemeni music. It’s in Hebrew, but the music is from the desert in the Yemen and the mode is a Yemeni folk mode. It’s called Sa’enu

Song: Sa’enu

Mark:

In our quest to try and define what Jewish music is, we seem to be floating further and further back through time, you touched on just now about temple times and the destruction of the second temple. Is there any way that we can find out what music was like during the second temple?

Stephen:

Surely, somewhere in all the references to the temple, there must be an indication of what the music was like. Well, unfortunately, it’s descriptive of the instruments that we used, it was descriptive of the orchestra. The way the orchestra was organized, it’s descriptive about what psalms were sung when, what sacrifices occurred when and what songs preceded them and followed them. It’s descriptive about your qualifications to be in the temple choir and how the temple choir was actually organized. But nowhere does it tell us about what the music actually sounded like.

Stephen:

The closest we can get is in the introduction to many of the psalms Lamnatzeach LeDavid Mizmor  (to the conductor, a song of David) which is at the beginning of many of the psalms or Lamnatzeach Mizmor LeAsaf (a song of Asaf, the cymbal player, David’s cymbal player). That, it’s thought tells you what mode – it’s the instruction Lamnatzeach (to the conductor) to tell him we’re going to sing a psalm in the style of Asaf or in the style of David. Which probably meant, musically, a mode. But the trouble is because we had no written down music, then we don’t know what it sounded like. One of the major hurdles is because the written notation that we see today only originated round about the 12th-13th century CE. There were no tape recorders until the 20th century, so we don’t know what the actual sound of the music was; the very early Jewish music.

Now, there is the aural tradition that is so important in Judaism and many people argue that the Leining (reading of the law) we hear, especially the Leining (reading of the law) of the Sphardi [Jews] goes back virtually to the first time that Jewish music became to be sung. There’s no definite proof of that at all. In fact there’s far more proof that those various tropes and Nusach (musical styles) were used by the surrounding Arab population and they’ve just picked up the modes of the Arabs and pre-Arabs.

Now, people have said to me, but Steve you pick up a Chumash (Five books of Moses) and you’ve got the notes there. Yes, you’ve got the notes but they’re only squiggles written by the Ben-Asher brothers in Tiberius in the tenth century CE. Quite late on. And they’re fine if you know – how do you learn these notes? Well, you start with you Barmitzvah, don’t you? Where you learn them by wrote from your teacher, the good old handed down from father to son. You then open the back of your Chumash (Five books of Moses), Hertz for example, and it gives you it in Western notation.

But the problem is that, that shape of note a Pazer (a type of note) for example is sung differently in the Ashkenazi Synagogue, in the Sphardi Synagogue and even between the Ashkenazi Synagogues and between the Sphardi Synagogues there are different interpretations of that note. So, we don’t know what it sounded like.

Mark:

We know, though, some of the instruments that were in the temple.

Stephen:

We do indeed. In terms of the instruments themselves, I’m only going to deal with one or two of them. They were organized into three types of instrument, there were the stringed instruments which were essentially the melody. They carried the melody and there were the trumpets which were used as signaling mainly. There was the trumpet itself an unstopped instrument, that means it didn’t have any valves and the Shofar. And the Shofar we know today from Rish Hashanna, Yom Kippur and the trumpet which we know was in use from the arch of Titus which shows the Jews being taken into captivity: this is the arch of Titus in Rome and he brought back, in slavery, all the Jews from Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. But also the temple vessels and the temple instruments and there very clearly is a trumpet. A long trumpet with a bell on the end and a small mouthpiece at the other side.

That was used for signaling and the Mishnah states that and so do Kings and Chronicles. The Shofar was used also for signaling. But the stringed instruments, the Nevel which was a big harp with a resonant body – quite a loud instrument. And the softer instrument the Kinor, a small, square harp with a solid body. These were plucked either with a plectrum or the fingers. How many strings they had and how those strings were tuned has been – Josephus tells us there were 10. There are Shminit and Asor in the Talmud tell us there were between 8 and 10. Contemporary descriptions in Assyrian literature and the ancient Egyptian literature tell us there were between 3 and 22 strings. So, nobody really knows and how they were tuned is a complete mystery. Although you can go and see one of these harps in the British Museum in London.

So, it was probable they were used in conjunction with a choir. The final type of instrument were the flutes, there was an Ugav, a small pipe or flute. There was a Chalil which was a large pipe and there was an Alamot which is a bit of a mystery instrument, it’s thought to be something like a flute. These were blown and gave melody of one octave or possibly 2 octaves with over-blowing.

Mark:

But say you had a harp that had 10 strings, could they have divided an octave into 10 notes?

Stephen:

Well, speculatively, yes they could. So, had they learned harmony for example? We don’t know, there’s no reference to harmony in anything of the Tanach (Bible) or the Mishnah or the Gemara. There’s no reference at all in any of the contemporary writings of the time. The nearest we get to maybe there was harmony is ‘there was a sweetness of tone in the stringed instruments’ it will say.

Mark:

Well, what about the use of a boy soprano say in the choir?

Stephen:

Well, yes. Now, if we talk about the choir that’s very interesting. Choir comprised of Levites members of the tribe of Levi. It was about 12 strong normally but it was supplemented, the Choir, on festivals. There’s no maximum number ever stated, the minimum number however seems to have been 12 and the standard chorister could only sing from the age of 30 to the age of 50. 20 years singing life. However, there are references elsewhere that boys’ voices were used to sweeten the sound of the choir. Presumably these were boy Levites who would eventually train to be fully choristers.

Mark:

But we don’t necessarily know if they sung the harmony line or not.

Stephen:

Did they or didn’t they. We don’t know. We don’t know.

Mark:

We’ve spoken about Jewish music as it is today, we’ve looked at its recent history and we’ve tried to trace its roots back into temple times even if we haven’t had a great deal of success trying to work out what it sounded like. What about the future? In Israel today, there is a huge trend of very popular artists taking old prayers and writing new music for these old prayers. Surely this could be defined as Jewish music? It’s been written for Jews, it’s a new setting of the Jewish prayers, it’s been written by Jewish composers and it’s written for the Israeli public. 75% of whom, at least according to recent estimates are Jews.

Stephen:

Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. The problem is for me, what you’re saying complies exactly the Kurt Sachs’ definition but remember I put in: it must sound Jewish. And my definition, my little bit that I’ve added completely falls down when you look at modern Israel because what modern Israel has done is take forms of music for example from the Arab Maqams (system of melodic modes used in traditional Arabic music) which actually is a tradition that goes a long way back in Jewish music but also modern formats: Rap for example. Garage. All these modern formats have been brought in, and none of those have got flattened seconds or sharpened fifths or anything. They are musical forms in their own right, which has been adapted.

In my world that is absolutely Jewish music. Here we have the one Jewish State, Israel and it’s creating new Jewish music. It’s taking this old Biblical texts and it’s putting them in a modern format for our modern world and I find it incredibly moving when I switch on the radio when I come out to Israel to hear the Chassid version for example of some ancient prayer that I’ve only heard a half forgotten melody been wailed in Shule (Synagogue). One of the pieces I absolutely love is Uzi Chitman’s setting of Adon Olam. It’s got nothing to do with ancient Jewish music but it’s got a lot to do with modern popular music with its chord progressions, its harmonies and its arrangements and its difference in tempo.

Now, this brings us to where Jewish music is going in the future. Well, anybody can speculate. I’m certainly in no position or have any authority to speculate, but my own view is it will continue to proliferate. That the music of Israel is one of the most vibrant demonstrations of the Jewish state and will continue that way, already in the Diaspora (Jewish communities living outside Israel) we’re using melody after melody from Israel. The number of times for example a Chazzan (Cantor) suddenly pipe up with Yerushalayim Shel Zahav for a Kedusha. The Uzi Chitman Adon Olam is sung again and again and again. I think it will continue to flourish and influence very heavily the Diaspora (Jews living outside Israel.(

Will we lose the original roots? Will we lose the great traditions of Sulzer and Lewandowski and western Ashkenazi music? I don’t think so. It’s very much the classical music as opposed to the pop music of Jewish music, it’s so beautiful in the way it’s written and so moving when it’s sung properly that people will continue to enjoy that music. We will never lose it. Which is why when the original music goes out of print we really must make sure it’s reprinted and saved in electronic form or wherever so we’ve always got this music and got access to it.

Mark:

You talk with such enthusiasm about the history of Jewish music and it’s obvious listening to you that you’ve really enjoyed and continue to enjoy researching the subject. What was it that set you off on this line of research?

Stephen:

Well, I sing in two choirs and one of the choirs asked me announce the songs as their new conductor didn’t want to. As I researched my introductions I found this fascinating world of supposition and maybes and then I was asked to give a keynote talk to a conference of Catholic Church musicians on Jewish music and I chose as my subject the parallel paths of Jewish liturgical and Christian Church music and I found that there had been a quiet cooperation between the two genres which further fascinated me and this all lead to a series of illustrated talks over many years to various local audiences, each requiring some research.

Mark:

How did you conduct your research? I mean, where did you look? What sources have you used to find the information that you have?

Stephen:

Well, today I have to say the first stop is always the internet. It’s so rich in the amount of material that’s there. But when I first started we didn’t have the internet as we have it today. So, I bought and then my son bought me a second copy of a wonderful book called: Jewish Music: Its historical development by Avraham Idelsohn. Now this was written in 1929. Idelsohn was a Chazzan (Cantor) from South Africa and he took it upon himself to research where Jewish music came from. He tried to answer this question: What is Jewish music? It’s the seminal work about Jewish music, it’s a wonderful read. He’s got a very easy style and his examples which were fully notated are very, very helpful in trying to understand the structure and origin of Jewish music.

The second book that I acquired quite recently; it’s a new book. It’s called: What to listen for in Jewish music by a Canadian called Charles Heller. This is a wonderfully easy to read book even if you don’t know anything about musical notation, how to read music, how to play music. He takes you through the logic, the forms, what it sounds like; he’s concentrating on the sound of Jewish music and you come away from that book with a lot more thinking, a lot more thought – a lot more ideas and a measure of understanding of what definitely western Jewish music is all about.

Turning to the internet, everybody’s first stop – well I don’t know about everybody- but my first stop is always Wikipedia. Which I find extremely valuable; I have to be very careful though because I like to second guess and check and recheck what I’m being told in Wikipedia because A) it’s only one version and second of all just how accurate is the source material that it’s going from. But it is a very valuable source.

Mark:

So, if anyone listening is interested in getting hold of the two books you’ve mentioned, I’ve put links to the books on this podcast’s homepage. That’s at www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and click on podcast number 3: Is this Jewish music?

Dad, I’d like to thank you very much for a fascinating discussion. It’s lovely to finally have a recording of the sorts of discussions we’ve been having for years on the subject of Jewish music. Our recorded discussion actually covered a few more topics than I’ve included in this podcast. If anybody would like to hear our wider discussion on the topic of Italian Court music and its influences on another of the great Jewish composers: Salamone de Rossi including an example of one of the pieces he composed then this can be heard in the: Is this Jewish Music podcast extra available by subscribing to the Mobile Studio Podcast from the podcast’s homepage and again that’s at www.themobilestudio.net/podcast, your subscription will allow you access to the additional material not only for this podcast but also for all the other podcasts in the mobile studio series. There’s no money involved, subscription is free.

All that remains for me now is to thank the other contributors to this podcast, firstly to the Kol Kinor Choir, Heisse Kartoffel Kleizmer group and Zemel choir who kindly allowed me to use tracks from their CDs to illustrate the music which Dad was talking about. Thanks also to my brother and Chazzan (Cantor), Richard Newman for the cantorial examples. Links to the Kol Kinor and Zemel websites and to the CDs used in this podcast can be found on the podcast homepage at www.themobilestudio.net/podcast and click on podcast #3. I’ll leave you with a piece of music written in the Ahava Raba mode, remember: flattened seconds taken from the end of daily Amidah or standing prayer. Sim Shalom: grant us piece. This setting is by Berlin-born composer, Max Janowski and performed by the Kol Kinor choir. So, next time you’re in Synagogue or at a Barmitzvah, I hope we’ve managed to make you listen just that little bit closer and ask yourself: Is this Jewish music?

Song: Sim Shalom