Jewish music

Jewish musicis the music and melodies of theJewish people.There exist both traditions of religious music, as sung at thesynagogueand in domestic prayers, and of secular music, such asklezmer.While some elements of Jewish music may originate inbiblicaltimes (Biblical music), differences of rhythm and sound can be found among later Jewish communities that have been musically influenced by location. In the nineteenth century, religious reform led to composition of ecclesiastic music in the styles ofclassical music.At the same period, academics began to treat the topic in the light ofethnomusicology.Edwin Seroussihas written, "What is known as 'Jewish music' today is thus the result of complex historical processes".A number of modern Jewish composers have been aware of and influenced by the different traditions of Jewish music.

Religious Jewish music

Main article:Religious Jewish music

Religious Jewish music in the biblical period

Further information:History of music in the biblical period

The history of religious Jewish music spans the evolution of cantorial, synagogal, andTemplemelodies since Biblical times.

The earliest synagogal music of which we have any account was based on the system used in theTemple in Jerusalem.TheMishnahgives several accounts of Temple music.According to the Mishnah, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and a choir of twelve male singers.The instruments included thekinnor(lyre),nevel(harp),tof(tambourine),shofar(ram's horn),ḥatzotzᵊrot(trumpet) and three varieties of pipe, thechalil,alamothand theuggav.The Temple orchestra also included acymbal(tziltzal) made ofcopper.TheTalmudalso mentions use in the Temple of apipe organ(magrepha), and states that thewater organwas not used in the Temple as its sounds were too distracting.No provable examples of the music played at the Temple have survived.However, there is an oral tradition that the tune used forKol Nidreiwas sung in the temple.

After thedestruction of the Templein 70 AD and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews to Babylon and Persia, versions of the public singing of the Temple were continued in the new institution of thesynagogue.Three musical forms were identified by scholars of the period, involving different modes ofantiphonalresponse between cantor and congregation: the cantor singing a half-verse at a time, with the congregation making a constant refrain; the cantor singing a half-verse, with the congregation repeating exactly what he had sung; and the cantor and congregation singing alternate verses. All of these forms can be discerned in parts of the modern synagogue service.

Jewish prayer modes

Main article:Jewish prayer modes

Jewish liturgical music is characterized by a set of musical modes. These modes make up musicalnusach,which serves to both identify different types of prayer, as well as to link those prayers to the time of year, or even time of day in which they are set. There are three main modes, as well as a number of combined or compound modes. The three main modes are calledAhavah Rabbah,Magein AvotandAdonai Malach.Traditionally, the cantor (chazzan) improvised sung prayers within the designated mode, while following a general structure of how each prayer should sound. There was no standard form ofmusical notationutilised by the Jews and these modes and synagogue melodies derived from them were therefore handed down directly, typically from a chazzan to his apprenticemeshorrer(descant). Since the late eighteenth century, many of these chants have been written down and standardized, yet the practice of improvisation still exists to this day.

The synagogal reading of theparashah(the weekly extract from theTorah) and thehaftarah(section from theProphets), may recall the melodic tropes of the actual Temple service. Ashkenazic Jews named this official cantillation 'neginot' and it is represented in printed Hebrew versions of the Bible by a system of cantillation marks (sometimes referred to asneumes). In practice the cantillation often echoes the tones and rhythms of the countries and ages in which Jews lived, notably as regards the modality in which the local music was based.

Traditional religious music

Synagogues following traditional Jewish rites do not employ musical instruments as part of the synagogue service. Traditional synagogal music is therefore purely vocal. The principal melodic role in the service is that of thehazzan(cantor). Responses of the congregation are typicallymonophonic—the introduction of a choir singing in harmony was largely a nineteenth-century innovation. However, during the mediaeval period amongAshkenaziJews there developed the tradition of the hazzan being accompanied for certain prayers by abassvoice (known inYiddishassinger) and adescant(in Yiddish,meshorrer). This combination was known in Yiddish askeleichomos.

"Emet El Shmeha", traditional Jewish 17th century song.

There are many forms of song which are used in Jewish religious services and ceremonies. The following are notable examples.

With thepiyyutim(liturgical poems—singular: piyut), dating from the first millennium after the destruction of the Temple, one stream of Jewish synagogal music began to crystallize into definite form. The hazzan sang the piyyutim to melodies either selected by themselves or drawn from tradition.Piyyutimhave been written sinceMishnaictimes. Most piyyutim are inHebreworAramaic,and most follow some poetic scheme, such as anacrosticfollowing the order of theHebrew Alpha betor spelling out the name of the author. A well-known piyyut isAdon Olam( "Master of the World" ), sometimes attributed toSolomon ibn Gabirolin 11th centurySpain.

Pizmonimare traditional Jewish songs and melodies praising God and describing certain aspects of traditional religious teachings. Pizmonim are traditionally associated with Middle Eastern Sephardic Jews, although they are related to Ashkenazi Jews'zemirot(see below). One tradition is associated with Jews descended fromAleppo,though similar traditions exist amongIraqi Jews(where the songs are known asshbaִhoth,praises) and inNorth Africancountries. Jews of Greek, Turkish and Balkan origin have songs of the same kind inLadino,associated with the festivals: these are known ascoplas.Some melodies are quite old, while others may be based on popularMiddle Eastern music,with the words composed specially to fit the tune.

Zemirotare hymns, usually sung in the Hebrew orAramaiclanguages, but sometimes also inYiddishorLadino.The words to manyzemirotare taken from poems written by various rabbis and sages during theMiddle Ages.Others are anonymousfolk songs.

Thebaqashotare a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung for centuries by theSephardicAleppianJewishcommunity and other congregations every Sabbath eve from midnight until dawn. The custom of singing baqashot originated in Spain towards the time of the expulsion, but took on increased momentum in theKabbalisticcircle inSafedin the 16th century, and were spread from Safed by the followers ofIsaac Luria(16th century).Baqashotreached countries all round the Mediterranean and even became customary for a time in Sephardic communities in western Europe, such as Amsterdam and London.

Nigun(pl.nigunim) refers to religious songs and tunes that are sung either by individuals or groups; they are associated with theHassidicmovement.Nigunimare generally wordless.

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century synagogue music

L. Finzi synagogue music 19th c

Sabbath morning service for the synagogue: according to the Union Prayer Book, Rogers, 1913

Changes in European Jewish communities, including increasing political emancipation and some elements of religious reform, had their effects on music of the synagogue. By the late eighteenth century, music in European synagogues had sunk to a low standard. The Jewish scholar Eric Werner notes that among the European Ashkenazi communities of Europe "between 1660 and 1720 the musical tradition was waning, and the second half of the eighteenth century witnessed its worst decay".The historian of Jewish musicAbraham Zevi Idelsohnconsiders that "Eighteenth century manuscripts of Synagogue song display a striking monotony of style and texts".In this context the English music historianCharles Burneyvisiting the Ashkenazi synagogue ofAmsterdamin 1772, gave the opinion of one who was clearly ignorant of synagogue music (but did not regard that as a disqualification for comment) that the service resembled "a kind of tol- de rol, instead of words, which to me, seemed very farcical".

Others in England were more sympathetic to the synagogue service. The singing of the chazanMyer Lyoninspired theMethodistministerThomas Oliversin 1770 to adapt the melody of the hymnYigdalfor a Christian hymn,The God of Abraham Praise.Many synagogue melodies were used byIsaac Nathanin his 1815 settings ofLord Byron'sHebrew Melodies,and the popularity of this work drew the attention of Gentiles for the first time to this music (although in fact many of Nathan's melodies were not Jewish in origin, butcontrafactaadapted from European folk melodies).

Franz Schubertaround 1828 made a choral setting of Psalm 92 in Hebrew for the Vienna chazanSalomon Sulzer.German congregations commissioned works from other Gentile composers, includingAlbert Methfessel(1785–1869).

Later in the century, as synagogues began to utilize choirs singing in Westernharmony,a number of hazzanim, who had received formal training in Western music, began to compose works for the synagogue, many of which are still in use today in the congregations of their countries. These includedSalomon SulzerinVienna,Samuel Naumbourgin Paris,Louis LewandowskiinBerlin,andJulius Mombachin London.

Contemporary Jewish religious music

Main article:Contemporary Jewish religious music

Secular Jewish music

Main article:Secular Jewish music

Secular Jewish music (and dances) have been influenced both by surroundingGentiletraditions and Jewish sources preserved over time.

Klezmer

Main article:Klezmer

Around the 15th century, a tradition of secular (non-liturgical) Jewish music was developed by musicians calledkleyzmorimorkleyzmerimby Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe. The repertoire is largely dance songs for weddings and other celebrations. They are typically in Yiddish.

Sephardic/Ladino

Main article:Sephardic music

Sephardicmusic was born in medieval Spain, withcancionesbeing performed at the royal courts. Since then, it has picked up influences from across Spain,Morocco,Argentina,Turkey,Greeceand various popular tunes from Spain and further abroad. There are three types of Sephardic songs—topical and entertainment songs, romance songs and spiritual or ceremonial songs. Lyrics can be in several languages, including Hebrew for religious songs, andLadino.

These song traditions spread from Spain to Morocco (theWestern Tradition) and several parts of theOttoman Empire(theEastern Tradition) including Greece, Jerusalem, theBalkansandEgypt.Sephardic music adapted to each of these locals, assimilating North African high-pitched, extended ululations; Balkan rhythms, for instance in 9/8 time; and the Turkishmaqammode.

Jewish art music

Preclassical, classical, romantic and 20th-century composers

Salamone Rossi(1570 – c. 1630) of Mantua composed a series of choral settings called "The Songs of Solomon", based on Jewish liturgical and biblical texts.

Most art musicians of Jewish origin in the 19th century composed music that cannot be considered Jewish in any sense. In the words of Peter Gradenwitz, from this period onwards, the issue is "no longer the story of Jewish music, but the story of music by Jewish masters."Jacques Offenbach(1819–1880), a leading composer of operetta in the 19th century, was the son of a cantor, and grew up steeped in traditional Jewish music. Yet there is nothing about his music which could be characterized as Jewish in terms of style, and he himself did not consider his work to be Jewish.Felix Mendelssohn,the grandson of the Jewish philosopherMoses Mendelssohn,continued to acknowledge his Jewish origins, even though he was baptized as aReformedChristian at the age of seven. He occasionally drew inspiration from Christian sources, but there is nothing characteristically Jewish about any of his music.

The Jewish national revival in art music

Main article:Jewish art music

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries many Jewish composers sought to create a distinctly Jewish national sound in their music. Notable among these were the composers of theSt. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folkmusic.Led by composer-critic Joel Engel, these graduates of the St. Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories rediscovered their Jewish national roots, and created a new genre of Jewish art music. Inspired by the nationalist movement in Russian music, exemplified byRimsky-Korsakov,Cuiand others, these Jewish composers set out to the "shtetls"—the Jewish villages of Russia—and meticulously recorded and transcribed thousands of Yiddish folksongs. They then set these songs to both vocal and instrumental ensembles. The resulting music is a marriage between often melancholy and" krekhtsen "(moaning) melodies of the shtetl with late Russian romantic harmonies of Scriabin and Rachmaninoff.

The Jewishnational revivalin music was not only in Russia. A number of Western European composers took an interest in their Jewish musical roots, and tried to create a unique Jewish art style.Ernest Bloch(1880–1959), a Swiss composer who emigrated to the United States, composedSchelomofor cello and orchestra,Suite Hebraiquefor viola and piano, andSacred Service,which is the first attempt to set the Jewish service in a form similar to theRequiem,for full orchestra, choir and soloists. Bloch described his connection to Jewish music as intensely personal:

It is not my purpose, nor my desire, to attempt a 'reconstitution' of Jewish music, or to base my work on melodies more or less authentic. I am not an archeologist.... It is the Jewish soul that interests me... the freshness and naiveté of the Patriarchs; the violence of the Prophetic books; the Jewish savage love of justice...

As a child inAix-en-Provence,Darius Milhaud(1892–1974) was exposed to the music of the Provençal Jewish community. "I have been greatly influenced by the character" of this music, he wrote.His operaEsther de Carpentrasdraws on this rich musical heritage.Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco(1895–1968), an Italian composer who immigrated to America on the eve of World War II, was strongly influenced by his Sephardic Jewish upbringing. His second violin concerto draws on Jewish themes, as do many of his songs and choral works: these include a number of songs inLadino,the language ofSephardic Jews.

Israeli music

Main article:Music of Israel

Art music in Mandatory Palestine and Israel

The 1930s saw an influx of Jewish composers to British Mandatory Palestine, later Israel, among them musicians of stature in Europe. These composers includedPaul Ben-Haim,Erich Walter Sternberg,Marc Lavry,Ödön Pártos,andAlexander Uriah Boskovich.These composers were all concerned with forging a new Jewish identity in music, an identity which would suit the new, emerging identity of Israel. While the response of each of these composers to this challenge was intensely personal, there was one distinct trend to which many of them adhered: many of these and other composers sought to distance themselves from the musical style of the Klezmer, which they viewed as weak and unsuitable for the new national ethos. Many of the stylistic features of Klezmer were abhorrent to them. "Its character is depressing and sentimental", wrote music critic and composer Menashe Ravina in 1943. "The healthy desire to free ourselves of this sentimentalism causes many to avoid this...".

From these early experiments a large corpus of original Israeli art music has been developed. Modern Israeli composers includeBetty Olivero,Tsippi Fleischer,Mark KopytmanandYitzhak Yedid.

Israeli folk

From the earliest days of Zionist settlement, Jewish immigrants wrote popular folk music. At first, songs were based on borrowed melodies from German, Russian, or traditional Jewish folk music with new lyrics written in Hebrew. Starting in the early 1920s, however, Jewish immigrants made a conscious effort to create a new Hebrew style of music, a style that would tie them to their earliest Hebrew origins and that would differentiate them from the style of the Jewish diaspora of Eastern Europe, which they viewed as weak.This new style borrowed elements from Arabic and, to a lesser extent, traditional Yemenite and eastern Jewish styles: the songs were often homophonic (that is, without clear harmonic character), modal, and limited in range. "The huge change in our lives demands new modes of expression", wrote composer and music critic Menashe Ravina in 1943. "... and, just as in our language we returned to our historical past, so has our ear turned to the music of the east... as an expression of our innermost feelings."

Your Land, a Hebrew song adapted to a traditional Bedouin Melody.

The youth, labor and kibbutz movements played a major role in musical development before and after the establishment of Israeli statehood in 1948, and in the popularization of these songs. The Zionist establishment saw music as a way of establishing a new national identity, and, on a purely pragmatic level, of teaching Hebrew to new immigrants. The national labor organization, the Histadrut, set up a music publishing house that disseminated songbooks and encouraged public sing-alongs (שירה בציבור). This tradition of public sing-alongs continues to the present day, and is a characteristic of modern Israeli culture.

Mizrahi

Main article:Mizrahi music

Mizrahi music usually refers to the new wave ofmusic in Israelwhich combines Israeli music with the flavor ofArabicandMediterranean(especiallyGreek) music. Typical Mizrahi songs will have a dominantviolinorstringsound as well as Middle Easternpercussionelements. Mizrahi music is usually high pitched.Zohar Argovis a popular singer whose music typifies the Mizrahi music style.

Non-Jewish composers using Jewish music

A number of non-Jewish composers have adapted Jewish music to their compositions. They include:

• Maurice RavelwroteMélodies hébraïquesfor violin and piano.
• Max Bruch,a German Protestant, (but a student of the German Jewish composerFerdinand Hiller) made an arrangement,Kol Nidrei,of the Jewish Yom Kippur prayerKol Nidrefor cello and orchestra.
• Sergei ProkofievwroteOverture on Hebrew Themes,an arrangement of traditional Jewish folksongs for clarinet, string quartet, and piano.
• Dmitri Shostakovichincorporated elements of Jewish music in some of his compositions. Most notable are the song cycleFrom Jewish Folk Poetry,and the13th symphony,titledBabi Yar.

See also

• Biblical music
• List of Jewish musicians
• Klezmer

Bibliography

• Burney, Charles, ed. Percy A. Scholes (1959).An Eighteenth Century Musical Tour in Central Europe and the Netherlands."vols. London: Oxford University Press.
• Conway, David (2012).Jewry in Music: Entry to the Profession from the Enlightenment to Richard Wagner.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN978-1-107-01538-8
• Gradenwitz, Peter (1996).The Music of Israel from the Biblical Era to Modern Times.2nd. edition. Portland: Amadeus Press.
• Idelsohn, A. Z.,Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental song(10 vols.)
• Idelsohn, A. Z., int. A. Orenstein (1992).Jewish Music: Its Historical Development.New York: Dover.
• Seroussi, Edwin et al. (n.d.),"Jewish Music"inOxford Music Online(subscription required)
• Walden, Joshua S. (2015).The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music.Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Werner, Eric (1976).A Voice Still Heard: The Sacred Songs of the Ashkenazic Jews.Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press

Further reading

• Rabinovitch, Israel,Of Jewish Music, Ancient and Modern,trans. from the Yiddish by A. M. Klein

External links

• London Jewish Male ChoirArchived2011-02-08 at theWayback Machine- Perform wide range of Jewish music
• Jewish Sheet Music ArchiveArchived2017-09-07 at theWayback Machine
• Milken Archive of Jewish Music
• The Dartmouth Jewish Sound Archive
• Jewish Music Research Center
• Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University LibrariesArchived2020-09-29 at theWayback Machine
• The Jewish Music WebCenter
• Music and the HolocaustArticles, images and recordings of music of 1933–1945.
• A listof Jewish composers with sheet music published by IMSLP.
• Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World: "Music", excerpt, p 18 sqq,print: Brill, Leiden 2010