Cedille Records CDR 90000 065 DDD Absolutely Digital™ CDR 90000 065 Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano Jewish Cabaret, Popular, and Political Songs 1900–1945

New Budapest Orpheum Society Philip V. Bohlman, Artistic Director • Ilya Levinson, Music Director & Arranger Stewart Figa, baritone (SF) Julia Bentley, mezzo-soprano (JB) Deborah Bard, soprano (DB) Ilya Levinson, piano • Peter Blagoev, violin Stewart Miller, bass • Hank Tausend, percussion Elizabeth Ko, flute • Jon Steinhagen, American lyrics

CD 1: All songs sung in original language CD 2: German (or German dialect) songs sung in English

Part 1 • From the Periphery to the Habsburg Metropole CD 1 CD 2 (Dates indicated where known) 1 “Wiener Fiakerlied” – “Viennese Coachman’s Song” (SF) (5:03) (5:00) Music: Gustav Pick (1832–1921)

2 “…Nach Großwardein” – “…To Großwardein” (DB)* (5:55) (5:53) Music: Hermann Rosenzweig / Text: Anton Groiss

3 “Der jüdische Landsturm” – “The Jewish Country Regiment” (SF)* (3:21) (3:21) Viennese Broadside / Music: Carl Lorens

4 “Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn” – “Levin and Hirsch and Cohn” (SF)* (3:06) (3:04) Viennese Broadside / Music: “Es klappert die Mühle” (folk song) 5 “Die koschere Mischpoche!” – “The Kosher Mishpoche!” (DB)* (2:42) (2:39) Viennese Broadside

6 “Jüdisches Fiaker Lied” – “Jewish Coachman’s Song” (SF)* (5:30) (5:32) Music: Gustav Pick / Text: Carl Lorens

7 “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars” (SF) (3:04) same Music / Text: Irving Berlin (1888–1989)

Part II • The Crisis of Tradition and Modernity

8 “Liebeslied an ein Proletariermädchen” (SF) (2:55) (2:51) – “Love Song to a Proletarian Girl” Music: Gerhard Bronner (b. 1922) / Text: Peter Hammerschlag (1902–c. 1942)

9 “Couplet des Schmafu” – “Schmafu Couplet” (SF)* (2:55) (2:55) Music: Adolf Müller / Text: Johann Nestroy in Der konfuse Zauberer Textual adaptation: Karl Kraus (1874–1936) bk “Eine kleine Sehnsucht” – “Do a Little Dreaming” (JB) (3:53) (3:58) Music / Text: Friedrich Holländer (1896–1976) bl “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” (JB) (3:50) (3:59) – “From Head to Toe I Am Prepared for Love” Music / Text: Friedrich Holländer bm “Gigerlette” (JB) (1:47) (1:49) Music: Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) from Brettl-Lieder (1901) / Text: Otto Julius Birnbaum bn “Mahnung” – “Warning” (JB) (2:35) (2:36) Music: Arnold Schoenberg from Brettl-Lieder / Text: Gustav Hochstetter 3 Part III • Response and Resistance: Political Songs CD 1 CD 2 bo “Haman-Arie” – “The ‘Haman’ Coachman’s Song” (SF)* (1:54) (2:00) Music: Gustav Pick from Akiba hat recht gehabt in the repertory of the Arche Revue, an exile cabaret in New York City during World War II bp “Ballade von der ‘Judenhure’ Marie Sanders” (JB) (3:04) (3:07) – “Ballad of the ‘Jewish Whore,’ Marie Sanders” Music: Hanns Eisler (1898–1962) / Text: Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) bq “Der Graben” – “The Trenches” (JB) (2:33) (2:32) Music: Hanns Eisler / Text: Kurt Tucholsky br “Solidaritätslied” – “Solidarity Song” (JB) (1:59) (1:59) Music: Hanns Eisler / Text: Bertolt Brecht bs “An den kleinen Radioapparat” – “To the Little Radio” (JB) (1:17) (1:19) Music: Hanns Eisler / Text: Bertolt Brecht bt “Und es sind die finstren Zeiten” (JB) (0:47) (0:51) – “And the Times Are Dark and Fearful” Music: Hanns Eisler / Text: Bertolt Brecht

Part IV • Zionist and Pioneer Songs ck “Havu L’venim” – “Bring the Bricks” (SF) (DB)* (2:03) same Music: Kurt Weill (1900–1950) on a melody by Mordechai Zaira / Text: Alexander Penn cl “Hine Achal’la Bachalili” – “Lo, I Play upon My Flute” (DB)* (3:59) same with Elizabeth Ko, flute

Music: Paul Dessau (1894–1979) on a melody by Mordechai Zaira / Text: Jacob Schönberg 4 cm “Gam Hayom” – “Day after Day” (JB)* (1:16) same Music: Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) on a melody by Shalom Postolsky / Text by Levi Ben-Amitai cn “Holem Tza’adi” – “My Step Resounds” (JB)* (2:49) same Music: Darius Milhaud (on a melody by Mordechai Zaira) / Text: Jacob Schönberg co “Ra’inu Amalenu” – “We Beheld Our Toil” (JB)* (1:40) same Music: Stefan Wolpe (1902–1972) on a melody by Shalom Postolsky / Text: Levi Ben-Amitai cp “Ba’a M’nucha” – “There Comes Peace” (JB)* (4:20) same Music: Kurt Weill (on a melody by Daniel Sambursky) / Text: Nathan Alterman cq “Banu” – “We’ve Come” (JB) (1:34) same Music: Aaron Copland (1900–1990) on a melody by Joel Walbe / Text: Nathan Alterman

*World Premiere Recording TT:CD1(77:23) /CD2(77:40)

Acknowledgments The New Budapest Orpheum Society would like to express its deep gratitude to the individuals and organizations that have kept it on the stage and that have made this CD possible:

Otto Holzapfel, Joel & Carol Honigberg, Mary Jean Kraybill, Rudolf Pietsch, The Department of Music at the University of Chicago, The Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, The Com- mittee on Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago, Deutsches Volksliedarchiv (Freiburg im Breis- gau, Germany), and A-R Editions.

For the Zionist and Pioneer Songs, the texts and translations are published in Israeli Folk Music: Songs of the Early Pioneers, edited by Hans Nathan, with a Foreword and Afterword by Philip V. Bohlman. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music, vol. 4. Madison, WI A-R Editions, Inc., 1994. Used with permission. 5 Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano Notes by Philip V. Bohlman

Ach, lieber Schaffner, Was haben Se gemacht? Se hab’n mich her nach Wien, Anstatt nach Großwardein gebracht! Führ’n Se mich nur schnelle Nach Tarnow wieder zurück, Denn a koscher’s Jüngel Hat in Wien ka Glück. Oh, dear conductor, What have you done? You brought me to Vienna, Instead of to Großwardein! Take me quickly back Again to Tarnow, For a kosher kid Is out of luck in Vienna.

isembarking at Vienna’s North Train Sta- Dtion in the closing decades of the nine- teenth century, the Jewish family emigrating to the Habsburg capital arrived at the threshold between two worlds. Below them lay, on one side of the tracks, the Prater, Vienna’s world- renowned melting pot, an amusement park seductive with its fantastic realization of mul- Illustration 1 – Print of “Das jüdische Schaffner-Lied” ticulturalism and modernity. On the other side stretched Vienna’s growing Jewish neigh- Figure 1 – Refrain to the broadside, “Das jüdische Schaffner- borhood, the Second District, known to the Lied” (“The Jewish Conductor’s Song”). Broadside version of cabaret song, fin-de-siècle Vienna. Viennese as the “Leopoldstadt” but to the new immigrants as the “Mazzesinsel” (the “Matzo 6 Island”) in recognition of the foodways of the world from which the immigrants had just not become easier as they settled in Vienna come.1 The train trip had transported them and charted their individual destinies across from the outer lands of the Empire, which had its cosmopolitan landscapes. Did one opt for spread across the traditional heartlands of tradition, that is, the seemingly familiar Jewish European Judaism — Galizia, Transylvania, the world of the Leopoldstadt, substituting the Bukovina in the east; Bohemia, Moravia, the urban ghetto for the rural shtetl? Or did one western Carpathian Mountains to the north; abandon oneself to the dizzying fantasy of the and the Balkans to the south. Prater, itself a metaphor for an Empire that Such areas provided the landscapes for the cul- forged the path of modernism by embracing ture of Ashkenaz. For those who created, sang, and absorbing differences through experiments and heard the songs, they were very real places in the arts, sciences, and human mores? indeed. The Großwardein of the song “…Nach Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano raises these Großwardein” for example, was the German questions. Jewish cabaret took the dilemma of name of the western Romanian city of Oradea. the Jewish immigrant to the metropole seri- In the Austro-Hungarian Empire it also bore ously. That is, seriously enough to poke fun at it the Hungarian name Nagysvarad, due to its in every way that songsmiths and musicians in mostly Hungarian-speaking gentile population. fin-de-siècle Vienna could devise. Jewish caba- As much as 70% Jewish in the century prior ret was an immigrant tradition, and it accom- to the Holocaust, Großwardein also contained panied the Jewish immigrants who traveled to a substantial Yiddish-speaking population. Tar- the Habsburg capital in search of opportunity. now was the German name for Trnva, today in Rooted in the narrative and theatrical tradi- Slovakia. From the Middle Ages to the modern tions of eastern European Yiddish culture, Jew- era the town was a center of Jewish art and ish cabaret found new soil in the city. Seasonal music including a school of Passover haggadah folk-song repertories, such as those performed illustration and a tradition of training cantors. in a shtetl for Purim, absorbed new themes For audiences hearing “The Jewish Conductor’s and took advantage of the transition from oral Song” in fin-de-siècle Vienna, Großwardein and to written transmission. The Jewish instru- Tarnow symbolized the Jewish tradition writ mental music of the country — klezmer and large across the face of empire. other forms — similarly became urbanized, not The two sides of the railroad track were no least because musicians turned to professional less real, and they presented new immigrants opportunities they could never have known with tough decisions — dilemmas that would before. The world around the immigrants 7 changed more quickly than they could possibly simply to East and West, or even more geo- have imagined. It was all very dizzying. graphically amorphous terminology such as The question still remained, not unlike the one shtetl and ghetto; but we know instead that the the kosher kid poses to the train man in “The misadventurous trains traveled along routes Jewish Conductor’s Song” of Figure 1: “Oh, dear from Vienna to Tarnow to Großwardein. conductor, what have you done?” Maybe the In most of the songs on this CD, the poets train really was headed in the wrong direction and lyricists who wrote their texts provide us after all. In the end, the kosher kid might be with specific places to chart what amounts to out of luck in Vienna. That question, in subtle a map of the worlds of modernity. As specific and not-so-subtle variants, finds its way into as such places were — for example, the Vien- almost every song on this CD. The challenge to nese streets and districts named in the several respond to, if not answer, the question is what versions of the “Coachman’s Song” or the kib- these songs increasingly represented during butzim in Kurt Weill’s “Ba’a M’nucha” — they the course of the early twentieth century as were also imbued with the power to convey Europe’s Jews came closer and closer to the meaning through stereotype. And this is where edge of the volcano. the stage tradition really entered the popu- lar-song scene, for it was on the stage itself that Großwardein or Vienna acquired diverse The Many Worlds of Jewish Cabaret and cosmopolitan Jewish populations. When it reaches the stage, a song invokes a distinctive Jewish cabaret and popular music mirrored world — a microcosm that itself sets a further the complex circumstances that accompanied stage on which encounter and confrontation the growing confrontation between traditional take place. Jewish culture and the modern world. That confrontation occurred in many places, which If they were to have meaning for their audi- together engendered the modernism that chal- ences, the songs had to stage worlds that were lenged and enveloped Jewish music and cul- simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. While ture. That it really was a matter of “place” is listening to these songs, it is important to revealed in the songs of the Jewish popular remember that they were produced with an stage, for they employ geographical references audience in mind. They needed to grab the that are both highly specific and richly sug- audience’s attention, usually by transporting gestive. The life-transforming detour in “The them to worlds in which the familiar and unfa- Jewish Conductor’s Song” might have referred miliar were juxtaposed. Most songs contained 8 specific references to both East and West, the available to a modernizing Jewish public. From two larger worlds of Ashkenazic Jewry from the turn of the century until the late 1930s, which the cabaret audiences came. East and an overwhelming majority of Jewish folk-song West were, in fact, crucial themes in the dis- anthologies appeared and increased their girth course of Jewish modernism, particularly at the by absorbing songs in Yiddish from the East. turn of the century, when attempts to bridge Many Jewish songbooks wore their eastern- the differences between the two found their ness on their sleeves by employing titles such way into popular and scholarly literature and as Ostjüdische Volkslieder, “Folk Songs of the popular and serious musical practices. Eastern Jews.”5 The songbooks, however, did There was nothing subtle about attempts to not simply import songs from the East; rather find common ground between the Yiddish- they provided transliterations and translations speaking Jews of the East and the German- of the Yiddish into German, thus inventing speaking Jews of the West.2 For example, — or reinventing — a previously non-existent folk-song repertory for the cosmopolitan Jews we find cabaret songs with titles like “Der 6 Ver- gleich zwischen den deutschen und pol- of central Europe. nischen Juden” (“The Comparison of the Ger- 3 The worlds of Jewish popular and cabaret song, man and Polish Jews”). The coupling of East however, exposed even more complex con- and West found its way into the titles of books, frontations between tradition and modernity. pamphlets, and journals, such as the literary One of the most common of all juxtapositions journal, Ost und West, published in Berlin from 4 placed the shtetl side-by-side with the ghetto. 1901 to 1923. Jewish intellectuals and writ- The shtetl — Yiddish for “little city,” but refer- ers embraced the dual theme of East and West, ring to the isolated Jewish village — embodied not least among them the religious philosopher the world of traditional Jewish culture, sym- Martin Buber and the novelist Joseph Roth. bolized by orthodox and Hassidic customs, Most important for the musical streams that and by the Yiddish language. The ghetto — a emptied into the cabaret repertories, the folk term originally referring to the Jewish quarter song of the Eastern Jews — the Ostjuden, as of Renaissance Venice — was the urban Jew- they universally came to be called — captured ish community that straddled the boundaries the fancy of Jews in central Europe: various between Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. Both kinds of secular and religious social organiza- geographical images appeared in popular songs, tions and the burgeoning publishing industry serving as an index to the transformations of were dedicated to making Jewish secular music Jewish culture along the journey from tradition 9 to modernity. These songs not only rendered mixed sundry musical acts ranging from folklike the shtetl and the ghetto with vivid imagery, to popular. An evening of cabaret unfolded as but they placed diverse Jewish communities in an actor or singer, or an ensemble with singers the shtetl and ghetto, effectively bringing them and actors, took to the stage to perform. An together on the stage. They also provided a evening of cabaret might hang together because mirror for their audiences, which had roots in its diverse acts contained some elements of a the shtetl but occupied the ghetto on the long common theme, perhaps from the cabaret itself journey to a fuller existence in the modern or a few notable performers associated with world of the metropole. certain types of acts. There were comic-singers s A sharply as the cabaret stage portrayed these (Gesangskomiker), those known best for singing different worlds, the border between the stage Couplets, and others who concentrated on politi- cal topics or other more serious themes, as in and the audience — the edge of the stage 7 itself — was indistinct. The edge might well be the literary and socialist cabarets. Because the viewed as a mirror, in which the audience saw characters who appeared on the cabaret stage itself, recognizing the familiar and the unfamil- were usually stock figures, individual actors iar as they played out in the songs and skits and singers often acquired fame by playing one onstage. Some would recognize themselves in a type of stock figure or another, demonstrating song unfolding along a rags-to-riches trajectory; a malleability that allowed them to move from others might see their neighbors from the old one stage to another. These popular perform- days in the shtetl; still others might wonder if a ers worked not only in Jewish cabarets but also new song was meant to be quite as personal as at non-Jewish and topical cabarets, as well as on other musical stages, from Yiddish theater to they found it. The worlds of the cabaret stage 8 did not stop and start at the edge of the stage. operetta. They flowed across it and thus also flowed Lyrics and musical style, too, might display together, making the confrontation between some attempt at unity; but more often than tradition and reality more real and more fan- not diversity or mishmash was the rule rather tastic. And by the 1930s, more tragic too. than the exception. Mishmash, however, was Form, Function, Genre not simply the random product of mixing dif- ferent repertories and styles. Cabaret arrang- Cabaret was not a genre of music theater in ers and the directors of cabaret ensembles itself, but rather a loose collection of skits, seized on the qualities that were inherent in monologues, and poems, into which were mixed programs and transformed them into 10 hybrid forms. Individual medleys (e.g., “. . . To everyone and everything. Großwardein”) were styled as potpourris. The For the Budapester Orpheum Gesellschaft the insertion of instrumental interludes between cabaret evening started with the Klabriaspar- songs and skits also created an overall impres- tie, and the card games-cum-skits became so sion of potpourri, in which one act gave way to famous that many versions survived in printed the next, sometimes with the seams smoothed forms. The card players took to the stage as if over, often not. it were the world, and in Yiddish and Viennese The songs of the Budapester Orpheum Gesell- dialect they shaped that world as they wanted, schaft sometimes became big hits but usually even when that meant dealing an extra card or did not, even though it was one of the best of betting more than they had in their pockets. all Jewish cabarets, spanning the fin-de-siècle Just a taste of the Budapesters’ signature skit era and surviving just past the end of World follows: War I. The biggest hit for the Budapesters was Werde jetzt’n G’stanzeln singen, a skit about a card game, Adolf Bergmann’s Tei ti ti to! Tei ti ti to! Klabriaspartie, “The Sheepshead Game,” which Möchte Si zum Lachen bringen, was actually a series of skits played out by 9 Tei ti ti, ti ti to! actors on the stage playing cards. “Klabrias” Sollte mir das nicht gelingen – ach waih! may lend itself to translation as “sheepshead,” Dann soll’n Se zerspringen! probably the closest North American equiva- lent, but the persistence of the name itself I’m going to sing G’stanzeln now, symbolizes the catalytic role of the skits, which Tei ti ti to! Tei ti ti to! appeared first on the Jewish cabaret stage and I want to make you laugh, then spread to other Viennese cabarets, where Tei ti ti, ti ti to! under the same name it became a standard If I don’t succeed at that – ach vey! opening act. “Klabrias” became one of many Then you’ll fall into pieces! Yiddish words that entered Viennese dialect The different skits, or “stanzas” of the game and German, mediated in this case by the pop- took aim at specific individuals or stereotypes ularity of cabaret. The skits and monologues of in Viennese Jewish society. A G’stanzel like the the Klabriaspartie were themselves like a card following took on religion and rabbis, recog- game, constantly shuffled, with songs thrown in, nizing that Jewish life in the metropole had among them Gestanzeln — traditional four-line become increasingly secular: stanzas that allowed the singers to poke fun at 11 Ein Rabbiner that in’ Tempel gehen, the stock character who was the allegorical Er wollte fromme Juden sehen, and literal representative of poverty (dalles Heraus kam er mit böser Min’ – ach waih! means “poverty” in Yiddish), would sing: Er war Kaner d’rin’. Das Klabrias, das Klabrias, A rabbi went to temple, Das ist mein ganzes Leben. He wanted to see observant Jews, E Dadel geb’ ich nix eher He left with a bad temper – ach vey! Far e Barches mit Zibeben. There was nobody inside. De Karten können meine Frau In größten Zorn oft bringen. Politics, too, ran through the stanzas and the Ich glaub’, sie wird vor Gift und Gall skits, giving Jewish audiences an opportunity Noch einmal gar zerspringen. to laugh openly about the anti-Semitism that Ich mach’ mir aber gar nix d’raus, afflicted them, especially during the many years Denn ich heiß’ Simon Dalles. when Karl Lueger served as mayor of Vienna, [:Das Klabrias, das Klabrias, beginning in 1895. Ist auf der Welt mein Alles.:] Es kaufte e Jud’ e alte Hosen, Sheepshead, sheepshead, Ä Paraplüi, ä Zuckerdos’n, That’s everything in life for me. Kurz, alles kauft er, was er sieht – ach waih! I’d rather play a hand Nur an’ Lueger kauft er nicht. Than eat chala on Shabbas. A Jew bought an old pair of pants, The cards often bring An umbrella, a package of sweets, My wife’s wrath down upon me. In short, he bought everything he saw – ach vey! Seems to me she’ll explode again Only he didn’t buy anything from Lueger. From all that bile and poison. But that doesn’t bother me, The members of the audience — a mixture of Because my name is Simon Dalles. new and old immigrants to Vienna, of working [:Sheepshead, sheepshead, and middle class, of observant and assimilated It’s everything in the world for me:] urbanites — were meant to see themselves and their own confrontation with modernity in the card game. The struggle to survive and make a living in the metropole took center stage as the game wound down. Simon Dalles, 12 Couplets, Contrafacts, and Covers — other areas of intensive Jewish settlement such The Music of Jewish Cabaret as Burgenland (the border area today shared Musicians and actors collaborated to perform by Austria and Hungary, but home since the Jewish popular music long before our spe- fifteenth century to the sheva kehillot or “Seven cific records of their identities. Among the first Holy Cities” of the Jews), Jewish instrumental- were no doubt the forerunners of what we ists were apparently active even during the today call klezmer musicians, and chief among threat from the Ottoman Empire in the seven- the actors were probably the traditional wed- teenth century. The tax rolls of the Hungarian ding and festival merrymakers, the badkhanim. capital of the area, Sopron/Ödenburg, provide Both klezmorim and badkhanim were profes- evidence of Jewish music-making during that sionals at least as early as the seventeenth time; the records show frequent payments century. As professionals they moved from from “musici” (pl. for the Latin musicus, “musi- community to community, already negotiating cian”) — local instrumental musicians (as dis- the boundaries between the traditional private tinguished from singers listed as “cantus,” no sphere and the public spaces of an emerging doubt the Jewish cantor or hazzan). modernity. Even during the Middle Ages, it is Printed broadsides also provide considerable the popular Jewish musician who finds his or evidence of popular music in early modern her way into the public record, exemplifying Europe. Among the very first printed ver- the transformation of Jewish musical traditions sions of ballads and other popular songs in from sacred, private, and communal to secular, the fifteenth century, for example, were songs public, and cosmopolitan. printed by Jewish printers and intended for We know about these popular musicians Jewish consumption. (They were printed in because they were professionals. They were Hebrew characters, even when in a German paid for their services and records of these dialect, and they often eliminated specifically payments were made. Under various guises, Christian references.) The famous German bal- Jewish popular musicians appear in records as lad, “The Count of Rome,” found its way into early as the thirteenth century, where Walter early modern popular tradition in precisely this Salmen has uncovered substantial evidence of way: It appeared first as a printed melody in their activities in the Rhineland — the main 1510, but the earliest surviving version is a text with Hebrew characters that appeared around centers of the Holy Roman Empire such as 11 Mainz, Speyer, and, above all, Worms, all cathe- 1600. dral towns with large Jewish populations.10 In The publication and dissemination of early 13 modern Jewish ballads were similar in almost songs on the road to inns and cafes in Poland, every way to the use of broadsides to popular- Romania, and Russia. Until the 1860s, they ize Jewish cabaret songs in fin-de-siècle Vienna were the model for all aspiring Jewish popular three centuries later. Jewish popular musi- musicians and actors. From the 1860s to the cians appear in both expected and unexpected end of the nineteenth century, that mantle places during the centuries stretching from was taken over by the “Herrenfeld Brothers,” early modern to modern Europe. One of the a theatrical troupe from Russia that extended most common places to find them depicted its tours increasingly into east-central and cen- visually was in drawings of weddings, where tral Europe. In the early 1880s, the reperto- the distinction between badkhanim and klez- ries of the Herrenfeld Brothers were so well morim becomes increasingly evident. Popular known that in 1888 they were gathered into music, we might imagine from the numerous an anthology, which stands as the earliest sur- etchings and drawings of the seventeenth and viving publication of Yiddish songs.12 eighteenth centuries, was parsed into differ- Jewish popular musicians were mobile, traveling ent repertories, for which different musicians especially from the provinces to the metropo- — soloists and ensembles — were responsible. le. Newly forming outer districts became the There was a division of labor, which in turn entrepôt for the musicians and audiences who required specialized knowledge and musical translated the traditional and provincial into skills. It is therefore hardly surprising that the the modern and urban. Theaters and dance popular musicians we encounter in the nine- halls of all kinds sprouted up on the outskirts teenth century possessed an impressive range of European cities in the second half of the of skills. nineteenth century, serving the entertainment The first popular musicians to gain a measure needs of a new bourgeoisie, within which the of visibility and even fame during the nine- growing Jewish middle- and upper-middle class- teenth century began their careers as tradi- es became increasingly visible. In Vienna, the tional performers in eastern Europe, and then stages of the so-called Vorstadt (best translated succeeded in winning over audiences in central as “edge of town”) were laboratories for pop- Europe by the mid-nineteenth century. The ular music. It was on the stages of the Vorstadt “Broder Singers,” a troupe from Brody, in Gal- that the hit quartet of late nineteenth-century izia (then a province in the Austro-Hungarian Vienna, the Schrammel Quartett, had its start Empire, today a region in Poland and western and where dialect songs mixed, matched, and Ukraine), took their skits, monologues, and poked fun at the languages spoken by the new 14 immigrants. The stage of the outer districts ture: “modern” because the songs themselves also provided a venue for new acts to emerge were produced using the machines of moder- and for new songs to catch on or fall victim to nity, such as the printing press, and because the first waves of critical response. the song texts addressed the conditions of Suburban theaters and dancehalls were home modernity, especially the confrontation of the to the couplet, a genre of popular song char- individual with a society undergoing rapid, dis- acterized by its mobility and flexibility. Singers junct change. and actors could take couplets with them, When couplets first began to appear on the inserting them in just about any skit and mak- city soundscapes of Europe in the second half ing a few quick adjustments to their texts so of the nineteenth century, they were already that they would appeal to any audience. Cou- something other than folk songs. Because of plets fitted the performative needs of the caba- their own rapid change and often ephemeral ret stage perfectly, and the historical trajectory lives, they were not necessarily popular songs of the couplet from the urban periphery to its either. They came into existence in a cultur- center narrates the history of the cabaret from al domain between the folk and the popular, he t late nineteenth century until the 1920s. The depending on both but fully participating in the couplet variously detailed, criticized, or simply musical life of neither. The melodies, for exam- made fun of the social pretenses of the very ple, had to be familiar, if not too well known, audiences that were listening to it and watch- and thus were drawn frequently from folk-song ing the skits and monologues it accompanied. repertories. The mechanical reproduction of The cabaret tightened the interrelations among couplets, however, made it possible to juxta- these popular performance genres, heightening pose a wide variety of disparate symbols from and politicizing its critique. an urbanized popular culture. The broadsides, couplets, and parodies that Just as Jewish couplets negotiated a space form the first group of songs on Dancing on the between folk and popular traditions, so, too, Edge of a Volcano grew from and served as sym- did they depend not only on the growing pres- bols for the modern, cosmopolitan European ence of Jews among Vienna’s musicians and city, whose cultural profile after 1850 increas- consuming public, but also on the reaction of ingly bore witness to the influx of minorities non-Jews to the transformation the growing and cultural Others, not least among them Jewish population was effecting on Vienna. Jew- Jews from the rural regions and shtetls of east- ish couplets, therefore, were often about the ern Europe. Couplets and cabaret were among relation between Jews and non-Jews, and the the modern products of this city music cul- dynamic shaping of the modern city that this15 relation engendered. a musical tradition based on couplet-singing Once established in the metropole, Jewish cab- and a theatrical tradition arriving with troupes aret musicians sought to achieve the greater from eastern Europe. The cabaret embodied musical sophistication that could lead to wider many genres of popular song and entertain- success on the stage in general (at least when ment, which made it possible to move deftly musical stages in the middle of the city were through various forms and degrees of cul- willing to extend opportunities to them). The tural and political critique. Music, because of its earliest musicians were not folk musicians in capacity to bear multiple meanings, enhanced any traditional sense, but they demonstrated and particularized the many forms and genres great prowess in moving from genre to genre, of song and theater, allowing for the formation repertory to repertory. The cabaret tradition of cabarets that served specific constituencies of parody frequently depended on the juxtapo- (poets and modernist artists, for example) and sition of country and city traditions, for exam- that juxtaposed social issues, as in the substan- ple, transforming scenes from operas, especially tial number of socialist cabarets, especially dur- Italian operas, into folklike skits that gained ing the 1920s and ’30s. The distinction between a considerable measure of humor because themes and genres in Jewish cabarets that the parts were not supposed to fit together. were political and those that were specifically Scenes from operas such as Verdi’s Nabucco, socialist or even Zionist, therefore, proved not for instance, found their way into the Jewish to be very great at all. For these reasons, the cabaret repertory because they provided a cabaret attracted a wide array of Jewish writ- representational template for the East and the ers, critics, intellectuals, and musicians including historical past of the Jewish people. Serious Karl Kraus, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, and Arnold art song, too, was not immune from attack by Schoenberg, all of whom appear on Dancing on cabaret parodies.13 The audiences and musi- the Edge of a Volcano. cians of the most popular Jewish cabarets pos- The cosmopolitan character of Jewish cabaret sessed considerable musical sophistication. That and popular song notwithstanding, the tradi- sophistication surfaces again and again in the tional always breaks through in poignant and songs on Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, from powerful ways. The most socially critical songs surprising sources, such as Arnold Schoenberg, intentionally employ texts in dialect; the loss as well as from theater and cabaret profession- of folk and religious traditions of the past is at als, such as Friedrich Holländer. once mocked yet also mourned with a cloying Jewish cabaret formed at the convergence of nostalgia; and the instrumental sounds that 16 mark a repertory as Jewish are worked into type — to make the song “sound Jewish.” This new arrangements in order to hold on to the is what Hermann Rosenzweig does in “. . . To past. At any one moment of performance and Großwardein” by using a potpourri of melodic in any single repertory, Jewish popular music fragments that many listeners to Dancing on the achieves its power and meaning because of Edge of a Volcano will imagine they have “heard the multiple genres it consolidates. This Jewish- before.” In fact, they have. ness was the common denominator for songs By the end of the nineteenth century, the face chronicling the confrontation of tradition and of Jewish public culture, which it displayed modernity and presaging an impending specter as self-identity to the outside, increasingly of crisis. depended on standardized images. The fun- damental axis for the standardization of the The Public Face of Popular Music public face was that of East versus West. As and the Paradox of Stereotype Jewish communities entered the public sphere of Western cosmopolitan culture, they often Jewish popular song depended on the inter- chose to display Easternness. For example, syn- play of image and stereotype. A musical genre agogues were often constructed to resemble that needed to capture the public’s attention Moorish mosques covered with arabesque, immediately, popular song relied on a vocab- even in the United States, where mosque-like ulary that was both familiar and accessible. temples were built in large numbers at the end The humor in its texts was not subtle, always of the nineteenth century. This architectural direct, and often vulgar. Social critique, in and style was employed for the major synagogues of itself, did not make a hit; but a song that of many of Europe’s largest cities.14 These poked fun at its victims and stripped them of were also being built precisely when syna- their respectability often did become a hit. gogues were starting to include mixed cho- The music of popular song also depended on ruses and proudly installing organs. stereotype. Because these songs plied the bor- ders between oral and written traditions, they relied on melodies that were familiar to every- one, not just a single community. Still, when attempting to broaden that community and to expand the audience for Jewish popular song, it was necessary to create and canonize stereo-

17 Jewish popular music underwent complex pro- cesses of orientalism. The East signified the tra- ditional world, be it the East of Europe in which Yiddish was spoken, or the East (mizrakh) of Jerusalem, to which the synagogue was orient- ed. The play and interplay of images and melo- dies signifying the East overflow, for example, in Hermann Rosenzweig and Anton Groiss’s “. . . To Großwardein.” For the cosmopolitan pub- lic of Budapest and Vienna, Großwardein was the East: geographically and literally the east- ern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The stage pictured on the cover of the sheet music, presumably that of the Budapester Orpheum Gesellschaft, included a group of dancing Has- sidic Jews, stereotyped images of the world of eastern European Jewry. Behind them, however, is another image of the East: a city in the east- ern Mediterranean, framed by palm trees and replete with mosques and minarets. Alone, these images are not completely meaningful, but when juxtaposed, creating the same con- trast as the potpourri style of the music, they draw attention to the ways in which changing could easily be viewed as offensive. One needs o Jewish identities contrast and conflict with t understand and appreciate how complex the modernity. codes of anti-Semitism became when imported into Jewish popular-song traditions through the The boundaries between images and sounds stocks of image and stereotype. Jewish popular that encode Jewishness and those that rely on songs intended for German and Austrian urban codes of anti-Semitism were often blurred and audiences often made fun of eastern European all too often, non-existent. There are moments Jews trying to find their way in the big city. in the texts heard on Dancing on the Edge of a Anti-Semitic songs directed toward a non-Jew- Volcano where stereotype produces images that ish public often employed this same theme and 18 used the same stereotypes of Jews from the the trafficking of images on the cabaret stage, shtetls of eastern Europe looking lost and over- where actors and singers relied on their audi- whelmed in the metropole. The contexts in ences’ abilities to recognize the images. It is which these stereotypes were presented were perhaps for these reasons that the stereotyped thus key to their meaning. images printed on the music are often depicted - he T song genres in cabaret and parody depend as on a stage, facing publics both literally and ed extensively on the potential of making fun figuratively present. of others. Dialect songs and the right mix- tures of Yiddish and Hassidic dances were cru- cial to the meanings that popular song could Jewish Cabaret and the communicate. Musicians and actors, therefore, Landscape of the Metropole needed to develop stores of Yiddish words and phrases, and of melodic fragments that made The epicenter of the Jewish cabaret scene in their songs sound obviously Jewish, but not so Vienna, the Second District, or Leopoldstadt, Jewish as to contain symbols that could not be was also one of the most multiethnic and easily recognized by a wide audience. rapidly changing quarters of the city. Its main streets radiated out from the Vienna North The technologies of popular-music reproduc- Train Station, the point of debarkation for emi- tion also bear responsibility for the stylization grating Jews, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians and trafficking of stereotype. Broadside print- — just about everyone coming to the capital ers, such as Carl Fritz, who printed several of of the Habsburg monarchy from its northern the broadsides used as sources for the reper- and eastern provinces. Also part of the second tory of the New Budapest Orpheum Society, district, the area known as the Prater was the would employ the same illustrations again and center of popular entertainment in the chang- again. We can trace the images of observant ing metropolis. It will be recognizable to many Jews or coachmen or, for that matter, schlemiels readers by the massive Ferris wheel that has as they move from broadside to broadside. come to symbolize it. The popular music of Melodic fragments, too, are reduced to the the Second District took the multicultural bare minimum, often to a few phrases, and and multireligious character of the quarter used as often as possible, with or without as its point of departure and moved across particular sensitivity to their appropriateness. the landscape of cultural difference with a Such technologically reproduced images were, dynamic dependent on each group’s willing- nonetheless, appropriate when they reflected ness to laugh at itself and its neighbors. Within 19 the Second District itself there was even a that the troupe be mobile enough to make dynamic of shifting repertories. For example, guest appearances in other city and suburban cabaret ensembles such as the Budapester areas and even tour beyond the city’s bor- Orpheum Gesellschaft would offer one set of ders on occasion. At all such venues, the best performances on their home stage, originally cabaret troupes were sensitive to cultural and the Hotel Schwarzer Adler, and then appear linguistic differences and turned these differ- for guest performances at one of the many ences to their advantage, absorbing new songs stages in the Prater amusement park. At the and acts, and adapting new versions of more Hotel Schwarzer Adler, they played to unsre standard fare. Leut (“our own people”) whereas in the Prater Ethnic difference was not the only factor upon they played for a mixed ethnic audience and which cabaret played. Almost as important for the mixture of classes that frequented the — and surely more so at moments of crisis, amusement park. such as the inflationary years of the 1920s and The density of Jewish stages in the Second early 1930s — were socioeconomic factors District notwithstanding — there were eight and class distinctions. Indeed, class is one of that held regular performances by circa 1900, the most central themes running through the with others offering less regular fare — Jew- songs on this CD. The narrators in the coach- ish cabaret rubbed elbows with the popular man songs sing with pride of their success entertainments of other ethnic groups. Songs as working-class heroes, all the while looking and singers, actors and satirists, moved from over their shoulders at their wealthy passen- troupe to troupe, from one side of the city to gers whose lives may not be as admirable the other. Mobility of repertory and change- as some might imagine. The songs that trace ability of audiences were crucial factors in the the careers of immigrant Jews from eastern shaping of cabaret traditions, and it was essen- Europe to the metropole also fix their critical tial for the best cabarets to respond to these gaze on class, particularly the spectacular rise factors with appropriate adaptability. The best from innocence (eastern European traditional troupes secured jobs outside the Second Dis- culture) to often ill-gained fortunes (cosmo- trict by making sure to vary their repertories politan assimilation). Class distinctions are also sufficiently to avoid being stereotyped only as stereotyped as interethnic differences, above all Jewish. This meant incorporating dialect songs when distinguishing between eastern European, that attracted many ethnic groups and a main- Yiddish-speaking Jews and central European, stream Viennese population. It also required German-speaking Jews. The two Jewish groups 20 pursue entirely different occupations in the stage, as depicted so vividly in the songs of songs, producing easily recognizable caricatures Hanns Eisler. in text and melody. These caricatures were The Jewish cabaret provided a stage that further enhanced by the costumes the cabaret allowed spectators to see themselves in the actors wore when playing the stereotyped guise of others. The audiences recognized roles in the songs. themselves, but just barely; the scenes and Gender differences, too, appear again and again couplets on the stage narrated the familiar- in the songs of the cabaret stage. The folk and ity of a world the audiences had once known, folklike repertories from which many broadside but which now had become foreign. Cabaret ballads came commonly included repertories allowed musicians, actors, and audiences to of songs with texts that reflected feminine ide- pick and choose, and ultimately to assemble als of family and tradition. The predominance, their own images of the popular against the in some areas, of songs about the travails faced backdrop of modernism. For these reasons, the by women (no doubt borrowing extensively cabaret had a seductive attraction for diverse from Yiddish folk song) suggests that women’s audiences, and also for modernist composers issues found their way into singing traditions such as Arnold Schoenberg, who wrote several that remained more or less isolated in the sets of songs for the “Über-brettl” cabaret at Jewish community.15 Once the broadside which he also played. traditions hit the cabaret stage, however, they Jewish cabaret would survive World War I, and had entered the public sphere, and it was there would thrive again in the 1920s and 1930s, that women accrued an entirely new set of when it proliferated and assumed new forms, stereotypes. Women still anchored the tradi- in particular the political and socialist cabaret. tional pole of the social continuum, symbolizing In Vienna, it was (literally and figuratively) only as often as possible the family as a cultural and a short distance for Jewish cabaret perform- religious cornerstone. But women now also ers from traditional Jewish cabaret to social- appeared as victims of violence, although less ist cabaret to Marxist cabaret or, following a often in the traditional cabarets than on other different trajectory, to Zionist cabaret. Hanns popular stages. By the 1920s and 1930s, with Eisler, Bertolt Brecht, and Kurt Weill all recog- the collapse of imperial Germany and Austria, nized the expressive opportunities that such and the subsequent rise of fascism and anti- cabarets opened for their political songs. More Semitism, women often occupied this new tragically, it was also but a short distance from role in the political songs reaching the popular Jewish cabaret to the cabaret of the Holocaust, 21 such as the stages in the Jewish ghettos of been waiting to happen. The announcement Poland or in the concentration camps.16 The above might seem innocent enough, buried as cabaret of the Holocaust demonstrated that it was inside the pages of Vienna’s most widely the traditions of Jewish popular music could distributed arts and entertainment newspa- not be restrained, even past the edge of the per. The announcement states clearly that the volcano. Budapesters had arrived for a “guest perfor- mance” — a Gastspiel — and a short one at that; but before the summer had passed, it The Budapester Orpheum Gesellschaft was evident that the Budapester Orpheum — Then and Now Gesellschaft truly had fulfilled the prediction “Was gibt es Neues — What’s New?” that it would “conquer” the Viennese public. In The Pester Orpheum-Gesellschaft in Vienna. The well- that first summer of 1889, the troupe would known musical stage director, Lautzky, has engaged the perform at several venues in the Leopoldstadt, members of the Budapester Orpheum, and those same as well as in the newly integrated suburbs. But members, under the direction of J. Modl, will make a by the end of the summer, it was the venue for brief guest appearance here in Vienna. The Society can their very first performance, the Hotel Schwar- point to a number of different players and musicians, zer Adler — the Black Eagle Hotel — that who are particularly beloved in the Hungarian capital; would provide them a stage to call their own among the members are the Württemberg Sisters and for the next seven years. It was on that stage the Duo Singers Rott, and thus there can be no doubt that the Budapesters would not just conquer that they will quickly conquer the Viennese public. For the Viennese public, but would lay the very th foundations for Jewish cabaret in fin-de-siècle the first time ever, on Thursday, June 27 , the guests 17 from Budapest will appear at the Hotel “Zum schwar- central Europe and beyond. zen Adler” on Tabor Street, where they will present a Why were the contributions of the Budapester very interesting program. (Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt, June Orpheum Gesellschaft so revolutionary? Were 27, 1889, page 9) they somehow the first troupe to consolidate With the appearance of the Budapester a modern Jewish cabaret tradition? Did they Orpheum Gesellschaft in early summer 1889, appear at just the right moment in the history the world of cabaret in Vienna changed for- of Jewish modernism in Vienna — on the eve f ever. The Budapesters really did burst upon the o the outbreak of a new wave of anti-Semitism cabaret scene, transforming Vienna’s culture of but also at a moment when many professional music and entertainment as if a revolution had and cultural boundaries between the Jewish 22 community and the public sphere were being the rapidly growing cosmopolitan culture of broached? To all these questions one must the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Their successes answer both “yes” and “no.” The Budapesters were so remarkable that by 1913 they no lon- entered a popular music and stage scene that ger needed to appear on the stages of hotels or clearly was primed for their appearances in the small theaters, for now they could claim a hall summer of 1889. They received an increasing near the Prater amusement park (Praterstraße number of invitations for guest performances 25) as their own. so that by summer’s end they were playing on During the 1890s, the Budapester Orpheum a stage somewhere in the metropole every Gesellschaft came to play a foundational role night. in the cosmopolitan popular culture of fin-de- The Budapesters became so visible so quickly siècle Vienna. It may not be an exaggeration to that they had to respond to their rising fame say that everyone in Vienna knew of them and by unleashing remarkable creativity. From early their repertory. Distinguishing the thirty-year programs, early advertisements and announce- career of the Budapesters was their prefer- ments in the entertainment media, and the ence to claim one stage as their “home,” but public censors’ records approving or rejecting also perform at other venues, both in the Jew- new songs and plays proposed by the troupe, ish Leopoldstadt and in Vienna’s central and we know that the Budapesters were constantly peripheral districts. changing and expanding their repertories in “Home” stages for the Budapester Orpheum Gesellschaft: many directions. Thus, they seized upon their success in Vienna. As we follow their triumphs 1889–1896 — Hotel Schwarzer Adler in the entertainment media, we see that they 1896–1903 — Hotel Stephanie took their initial potpourri of songs, operetta 1903–1912 — Hotel Central arias, skits, and satires, and transformed them 1913–1919 — Praterstraße 25 into longer, well integrated forms and genres. The permanence of such halls allowed them to Skits, for example, became one-act plays. The adopt and adapt different programs, build their Gestanzeln, or additive stanzaic songs they bor- stock of performances, and respond differently rowed from Austrian folk song, were woven to the varying degrees of tolerance that char- into larger improvisatory genres, including their acterized different parts of the city. Depending signature work, the Klabriaspartei. Not sur- on where they played, their programs might prisingly, they attracted the best singers and be more or less “Jewish.” In the Leopoldstadt, actors from Vienna, its outlying districts, and where all four of their home stages were locat- 23 ed, they could employ a much more varied use the theatrical side of their programs veered of Jargon, texts in Yiddish or with Yiddish words, sharply toward comedy, with a single Possen, and songs that were gejiddelt — sung with the or set of satires, laced through an evening’s characteristic markers of eastern European performance. As substantial as the program- Jewish vernacular speech. Press announce- ming was, it departed from the Budapesters’ ments and reviews often referred to the Buda- stock in trade, and may have caused them to pesters as a Singspielhalle — literally a “hall abandon the cabaret stage. for musical theater” — an indication that the On May 1, 1919 the Budapester Orpheum ensemble was mobile, that it could “take the 18 Gesellschaft announced that its performance show on the road.” in the hall on the Praterstraße that had been The Budapester Orpheum Gesellschaft dis- its home since 1913 would be its “Farewell appeared from Vienna’s cabaret scene in the Performance,” and that the troupe would play summer of 1919 almost as suddenly as it had the Klabriaspartie for the “1900th and final appeared thirty years earlier. World War I had time.” As it had in June 1889, the Budapesters taken an enormous toll on the musical and placed ads in the Illustrirtes Wiener Extrablatt to popular culture of Vienna, and the Budapesters’ announce several guest performances, the final own demise in some ways paralleled that of ones in June 1919 at Marie Pertl’s coffeehouse the multicultural empire and cosmopolitan in the Prater amusement park. On June 17th, city that produced them. Just as they had the very last performance at the Pertl coffee- constantly and consciously transformed their house contained two operettas, Robert Stolz’s programs and identity as a cabaret troupe in Familie Rosenstein, and Alexander Trebitsch’s fin-de-siècle Vienna, so too did they introduce Der Kerzenfabrikant. On June 18th, the Cabaret apparently deliberate changes into their per- “Hölle” initiated the summer season at the formances during World War I. Their musical Pertl coffeehouse. There is no surviving evi- performances became more substantial, requir- dence to suggest that Vienna’s most famous ing larger performing forces. Their wartime Jewish cabaret, the Budapester Orpheum announcements featured several operettas by Gesellschaft, ever performed again.19 the great musical stage composer Robert Stolz, including some premières. Alexander Trebitsch, the Budapesters’ own “house composer,” also created several significant new works for the company during the war. At the same time, 24 Jewish cabaret survives at the beginning of the notable success in the American film industry. twenty-first century, sometimes openly so, as At the turn of our own century, we are fortu- in the work of Gerhard Bronner (e.g., “Love nate to see a minor revival, or at least a sort of Song to a Proletarian Girl”), sometimes in final reprise. Historical recordings have been the revived cabaret scenes of European urban remastered for CD (see the “Selected Discog- centers. But it occurs more commonly in other raphy” below) and the older stars, most now forms of the musical stage, be they vaudeville, retired from Hollywood, have more or less Tin Pan Alley, or the modern genres of the open invitations to revisit the cabaret stages musical whose genealogy began with Yiddish they left in their youth. We recognize now that theater and the Jewish cabaret, and whose the Jewish cabaret tradition of central Europe, repertories of popular song would be unimagi- against all odds, retains its integrity even after nable without the repertories that coalesced the eruption of the volcano. Its complex web on the stages of Jewish cabaret around the of dialects, its subtle jokes and knee-slapping turn of the last century. After World War II, skits, and its surfeit of cloying love songs not- cabaret enjoyed recovery and an upsurge that withstanding, the core of the tradition itself eventually led to real revival by the 1970s. remains somehow intact, inviting us to revisit Cabaret can claim audiences and new tradi- the many sites that were milestones along the tions throughout Europe, with specializations journey traveled by the composers, musicians, ranging from comedy to political satire. Caba- and actors of Jewish cabaret. Thus, the final ret was able to survive transitions to radio and refrain of Gustav Pick’s “Viennese Coachman’s television, and new musical styles have come Song” still resonates. to share the stage with the more traditional genres and repertories of cabaret. Mein Stolz is i bin halt an aechts Weanakind, A Fiaker, wie man net alle Tag findt, After the Holocaust — the eruption of the Mein Bluat is so lüftig und leicht wie der Wind volcano — the Jewishness of cabaret slid pre- I bin halt an aecht Weanerkind. cariously close to a different periphery. The several stars of Jewish cabaret who survived in He was proud to be a true child of Vienna. exile — including Fritz Spielmann, Georg Kre- He served as a coachman, the top of the line. isler, and Friedrich Holländer — turned their His blood coursed and ran as swiftly as the wind. talents toward other media and different stag- He was truly a child of Vienna. es. Whenever possible, they chose to develop (Note: this more direct (non-rhyming) translation does not their trade in Hollywood, and several enjoyed match the English version of the song heard on Disc 2.) 25 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Brenner, David A. 1998. Marketing Identities: The Akademie der Künste, ed. 1992. Geschloss- Invention of Jewish Ethnicity in Ost und West. ene Vorstellung: Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Deutschland, 1933–1941. Berlin: Edition Brusatti, Otto. 1998. Verklärte Nacht: Einübung Hentrich. in Jahrhundertwenden. St. Pölten: NP Buch- Aschheim, Stephen E. 1982. Brothers and Strang- verlag. ers: The East European Jew in German and Budzinski, Klaus. 1961. Die Muse mit der scharf- German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923. en Zunge: Vom Cabaret zum Kabarett. Munich: Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Paul List Verlag. Beckermann, Ruth, ed. 1984. Die Mazzesinsel: Budzinski, Klaus. 1985. Das Kabarett: 100 Jahre Juden in der Wiener Leopoldstadt 1918–1938. literarische Zeitkritik — gesprochen — gesun- Vienna: Löcker Verlag. gen — gespielt. Düsseldorf: ECON Taschen- Bohlman, Philip V. 1989a. “The Land Where Two buch Verlag. Streams Flow”: Music in the German-Jewish Czáky, Moritz. 1996. Ideologie der Operette und Community of Israel. Urbana: University of Wiener Moderne: Ein kulturhistorischer Essay Illinois Press. zur österreichischen Identität. Vienna: Böhlau Bohlman, Philip V. 1989b. “Die Verstädterung Verlag. der jüdischen Volksmusik in Mitteleuropa, Dalinger, Brigitte. 1998. “Verloschene Sterne”: 1890–1939.” Jahrbuch für Volksmusikforsc- Geschichte des jüdischen Theaters in Wien. hung 34: 25–40. Vienna: Picus Verlag. Bohlman, Philip V. 1994. “Auf der Bima/auf der Dalman, Gustaf Hermann. 1891. Jüdisch-deutsche Bühne — Zur Emanzipation der jüdischen Volkslieder aus Galizien und Russland. 2nd ed. Popularmusik um die Jahrhundertwende Berlin: Evangelische Vereins–Buchhandlung. in Wien.” In E. T. Hilscher and T. Antonicek, Eliasberg, Alexander. 1918. Ostjüdische Volks-lie- eds., Vergleichend-systematische Musikwissen- der. Munich: Georg Müller. schaft, pp. 417–49. Tutzing: Hans Schneider. Ewers, Hanns Heinz. 1904. Das Cabaret. Berlin: Bohlman, Philip V., and Otto Holzapfel. 2001. Schuster & Loeffler. The Folk Songs of Ashkenaz. Middleton, Wisc.: A-R Editions. (Recent Researches in the Fechner, Eberhard. 1988. Die Comedian Har- Oral Traditions of Music, 6) monists: Sechs Lebensläufe. Munich: Wilhelm 26 Heyne Verlag. Editions. (Research Researches in the Oral Henneberg, Fritz. 1984. Brecht Liederbuch. Frank- Traditions of Music, 4) furt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Pressler, Gertraud. 1995. “. . . ‘an echt’s Weana- Holländer, Friedrich. n.d. Von Kopf bis Fuß . . kind’? Zur Gustav Pick-Gedenkfeier am . Berlin and Munich: Ufaton-Verlag. (Col- Wiener Zentralfriedhof.” Bockkeller: Die Zei- lection of well-known Holländer songs, tung des Wiener Volksliedwerks 1 (1): 6–7. arranged for piano and voice) Ringer, Alexander L. 1990. Arnold Schoenberg: The Jelavich, Peter. 1993. Berlin Cabaret. Cambridge, Composer as Jew. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mass.: Harvard University Press. Rösler, Walter, ed. 1991. Gehn ma halt a bisserl Keil, Martha, ed. 1995. Jüdisches Stadtbild: Wien. unter: Kabarett in Wien von den Anfängen bis Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag. heute. Berlin: Henschel Verlag. Kift, Roy. 1998. “Reality and Illusion in the Salmen, Walter. 1991. “. . . denn die Fiedel macht Theresienstadt Cabaret.” In Claude Schum- das Fest”: Jüdische Musikanten und Tänzer acher, ed., Staging the Holocaust: The Shoah in vom 13. bis 20. Jahrhundert. Innsbruck: Edi- Drama and Performance, pp. 147–69. Cam- tion Helbling. bridge: Cambridge University Press. Scheu, Friedrich. 1977. Humor als Waffe: Politi- Kraus, Karl. 1992. Theater der Dichtung: sches Kabarett in der Ersten Republik. Vienna: Nestroy — Zeitstrophen. Frankfurt am Main: Europaverlag. Suhrkamp Verlag. (Karl Kraus Schriften, 14) Segel, Harold B. 1987. Turn-of-the-Century Caba- Migdal, Ulrike. 1986. Und die Musik spielt dazu: ret: Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Chansons und Satiren aus dem KZ Theresien- Cracow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich. New stadt. Munich: Piper Verlag. York: Columbia University Press. Shahar, Natan. 1993. “The Eretz Israeli Song and the Jewish National Fund.” In E. Men- Mittler-Battipaglia, Diana. 1993. Franz Mittler: delsohn, ed., Modern Jews and Their Musical Austro-American Composer, Musician, and Agendas, pp. 78–91. New York: Oxford Uni- Humorous Poet. New York: Peter Lang. (Aus- versity Press. trian Culture, 8) Teller, Oscar. 1985. Davids Witz-Schleuder — Nathan, Hans, ed. 1994. Israeli Folk Music: Songs Jüdisch-Politisches Cabaret: 50 Jahre Klein- kun- of the Early Pioneers. Madison, Wisc.: A-R stbühnen in Wien. 2d ed. Darmstadt: Verlag 27 Darmstädter Blätter. Veigl, Hans. 1986. Lachen im Keller: Von den Budapestern zum Wiener Werkel: Kabarett und Kleinkunst in Wien. Vienna: Kremayr & Scheriau.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY Kabarettisten singen Klassiker. 1988. Presier Records Mono 93098. Altmeister des Wienerliedes. 1991. Preiser Records Mono 90082. Kreisler, Georg. 1993. Everblacks Zwei. 2 CDs. Intercord INT 880.002. Ammersfeld, Anita, Gerhard Bronner, and Ethan Freeman. 1997. Ich hab’ kein scharfes Messer: Der letzte Schmetterling: Kabarett und Lieder aus Jüdische Lieder und andere Weisheiten. AEJ Theresienstadt. 1992. Ruth Frenk, mezzo- CD E1718. soprano; Karin Strehlow, piano. Erasmus producties WVH 037 (audio recording). Bei uns um die Gedächtniskirche rum . . . Berlin Cabaret: Friedrich Holländer und das Kaba- Qualtinger, Helmut. 1996. Qualtingers böseste rett der zwanziger Jahre. 1996. 2 CDs. Edel Lieder. Preiser Records Mono 90312. 0014532TLR. Spielmann, Fritz. 1998. Fritz Spielmann: Ein Wie- Grünbaum, Fritz, Karl Farkas, and Franz Engel. ner aus Amerika. Preiser Records Stereo Altmeisters. Preiser Records 990. des Humor 1 90351. Mono 90066. Verklungenes Wien. 1997. Preiser Records Mono Kabarett aus Wien. 1991. Preiser Records 90321. Veigl, Hans, ed. 1992. Luftmenschen spielen The- ater: Jüdisches Kabarett in Wien, 1890–1938. Vienna: Kremayr & Scheriau. Wacks, Georg. 1999. “Die Budapester Orpheum Gesellschaft — eine Institution- sgeschichte.” Master’s thesis, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien.Mono 90081. 28 THE SONGS described the journey from the periphery to the Habsburg metropole, they actually empow- PART 1 ered performers and cabaret troupes to make From the Periphery to the that journey. From the moment they were col- Habsburg Metropole lected, adapted, and reimagined for the cabaret stage, the songs themselves physically moved The songs on Dancing on the Edge of a Vol- about, circulating in oral tradition, spreading cano unfold as a broad historical panorama that through Vienna’s working-class communities sweeps the listener across the landscapes of printed on cheap broadsides, and crossing from Jewish Europe in the half century before the one ethnic group to another in a turn-of-the- Holocaust. As these songs began to appear century cosmopolitan world that was increas- in the closing decades of the nineteenth cen- ingly multicultural. The texts and melodies of tury and then to accompany the singers and the songs, too, were mobile, moving from one performers who shaped them across Jewish genre to another and demonstrating the neces- Europe, they chronicled a journey from tradi- sary malleability to appear as contrafacts (what tion to modernity. At each stage of the journey, we today would call “cover” versions — in their meanings became more poignant and which a song’s original lyrics are replaced with political, so that what was once satire and met- new words) that borrowed as easily from the aphor shifted to the realms of everyday Jewish early nineteenth century as from the early life. Historically, the journey on this CD begins twentieth. Above all, song texts were concerned at the periphery, figuratively at the farthest with mobility: army regiments that formed and reaches of the Habsburg Empire in Galizia, the mobilized; the emigration of Jews from Galizia Bukovina, and the Balkans, and it follows the and the Carpathians; the social mobility traced accelerating migration of Jews to the metropo- by a coachman’s horses plying the streets of les of central Europe, where modernity offered Vienna and its wealthy suburbs. a seductive pull away from tradition. Moder- nity, nonetheless, held many different meanings, As different as the forms of mobility that char- which together came to constitute the variety acterized these songs were, it was the stage that fueled the explosion of Jewish cabaret and that served as a centripetal force behind their popular music from the turn of the last century movement across the social and ethnic land- until the Holocaust. scape of Vienna and the Habsburg monarchy. “The Jewish Country Regiment,” “Levin and If there is a leitmotif to the first group of songs, Hirsch and Cohn,” and “The Kosher Mish- it is surely mobility; for these songs not only 29 poche,” for example, have origins in oral tradi- Several of the songs in this first group circu- tion; but those who printed and performed lated in the orbit of popular culture surround- them sought to create a space for them on the ing the Budapester Orpheum Gesellschaft. stages in both the multiethnic workers’ dis- The singers who had popularized these ver- tricts and the intensely Jewish Second District, sions were known as performers at the Hotel or Leopoldstadt. The songs may have begun as Schwarzer Adler on the Taborstraße, the main covers of folk songs — every child in Vienna street of the Second District. Some of the would have known “Es klappert die Mühle,” the Budapesters, as they were known (although source for the melody to “Levin and Hirsch not all of the singers and actors were from and Cohn” — but overnight they found their Budapest or even Hungary), were success- way into couplets that were printed and circu- ful enough to make a living from their craft. lated in melodies that started life anew in pop- This was also the case for Hermann Rosenz- ular venues. They thus moved quickly into pop- weig, composer of “. . . To Großwardein,” which ular tradition. That is, they circulated in printed appeared in the rather elegant sheet-music form because publishers and performers alike publication shown in this booklet. Because his determined that they could make money from songs found their way into sheet music, much selling them. These songs, together with the of it published by the firm of Zipser and König “Jewish” version of the “Viennese Coachman’s in Budapest, we know a fair amount more Song” by Gustav Pick (himself a Jew), appeared about Rosenzweig’s stylistic decisions than we as broadsides, with text, illustration, often mel- know about his life. He was a master of the ody, and usually advertisements for other songs potpourri, capable of taking melodies and texts printed on both sides of a single sheet of paper. from any number of sources and suturing them The broadside lies at the intersection of oral together in a new song. Some of the sources and written traditions, requiring that the con- were printed — he moved motifs and melodies sumer understand something of the songs and from song to song — but others were oral, in symbols that the new songs juxtaposed, giving a few cases possibly borrowed from klezmer them a common meaning in the city. The con- and other popular musicians in eastern Europe. sumer becomes a participant in the popularity In this way, Rosenzweig literally composed the of the songs, reading and understanding, for journey from Großwardein to the center of example, the mixture of Yiddish and Viennese the Habsburg Monarchy (rather than the other dialect that the song texts contain. way around).

30 That the journey did not cease in the metro- The final song of the first group, Irving Ber- pole is evident from the three different ver- lin’s “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars,” sions of Gustav Pick’s “Coachman’s Song” recounts a different tale, this time the success included on Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano. story of the Jewish immigrant in the Ameri- The original version, published first in 1884 can metropole. Berlin (1888–1989) followed and quickly thereafter in different editions and a path from the periphery all the way to the languages that spread through Europe and the United States, where his compositions shaped world, has an almost autobiographical quality. American popular song. “Cohen Owes Me Gustav Pick (1832–1921) was born and raised Ninety-Seven Dollars,” like the other songs in in the multicultural world of Burgenland, the the first group, reveals that popular song did province straddling the border of Austria and indeed function as a mirror that reflected both Hungary, which contained the largest concen- self and other, blurring the differences between tration of rural Jewish communities in cen- them once they took to the popular stage. tral and east-central Europe — the so-called One need not search too far for common “Seven Holy Cities” of the Jews. As a young denominators, for they lie in the Jewish experi- man, Pick moved to Vienna and made a fortune ence in fin-de-siècle Europe. as an industrialist. He composed popular songs on the side, but with the success of his “Vien- PART 11 nese Coachman’s Song” he became increas- ingly more interested in popular music. By the The Crisis of Tradition and Modernity turn of the century, the “Viennese Coachman’s Cabaret came to have special meaning for Cen- Song” was the great hit song of the Austro- tral European Jews of the metropole because it Hungarian Empire, and its fame was almost as so magically projected the crisis between Jew- great in France and elsewhere. It contains a ish tradition and life in the city. The “Love Song simple rags-to-riches tale in which a coachman to a Proletarian Girl” juxtaposes class and Jew- attends to his career of transporting wealthy ish identity in ways both subtle and complex. customers back and forth across Vienna. The The singer sends his love song more to explain tale’s simplicity no doubt accounts for its pro- his longing than to win over the young woman liferation in countless variants, including the to whom he addresses the song. There is a cer- “Jewish Coachman’s Song” heard on this CD. tain hopelessness in the increasingly fractional- In that version, Vienna becomes notably more ized world of “Red Vienna” (as interwar Vienna Jewish, and the streets and traditions that criss- was called because of its communist leanings) cross it acquire a greater Jewish significance. 31 which the singer details frankly and ironically.20 satire; and by the mid-1920s, when the Vorlesun- That very irony underlies the lives of both the gen had moved into the chamber-music hall of composer and lyricist of “Love Song.” Gerhard the Vienna Musikverein, Kraus wove songs and Bronner (b. 1922), Vienna’s most distinguished arias from operettas and popular stage works living cabaret musician, from whose modern into his evenings, thus turning the evenings into cabaret setting we adapted the one arranged fully cabaret-like performances. for Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, learned The “Schmafu Couplet” offers an excellent his trade with Oscar Straus and returned to example of how Kraus helped cabaret insinu- Austria after the Holocaust. Peter Hammer- ate itself into new literary venues. The song schlag (1902–c. 1942) wrote for a number of itself began as one of several couplets that different media, but it was his Cabaret on the Johann Nestroy, the great Viennese dialect play- Naschmarkt (Vienna’s most extensive and mul- wright, inserted in Der konfuse Zauberer (“The ticultural open-air market) that established his Confused Magician”). Kraus regularly turned to notoriety in the 1930s. Hammerschlag escaped popular-song composers of his day, most nota- to England when fascism first swept across bly Franz Mittler. For the “Schmafu Couplet” 1930s Austria, but then returned, only to be he secured an arrangement from Adolf Mül- murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. ler, a less prominent composer.21 The song Among the Viennese Jewish intellectuals and offers an example of a cabaret couplet raised writers who drew attention to the crisis of to the most impressive level of stylization. The tradition and modernity most publicly was original German text relies on dialect, which Karl Kraus (1874–1936). Best known as the undergoes a remarkable transformation in Jon author of the literary journal Die Fackel, Kraus Steinhagen’s reworking into American lyrics. experimented with many different forms and The son of the operetta and satire composer genres of writing. He was particularly inter- Victor Holländer, Friedrich Holländer (1896– ested in exploring and articulating the fissures 1976) grew up in a world where the reality and between oral and written tradition. In 1916, the fantasy of the musical stage intersected. during World War I, he began to organize a After early compositional studies with Engel- series of performances he called Vorlesungen, bert Humperdinck, Holländer began creating “public readings” in the most general sense. stage works at the age of twenty-two, in the These “readings” resembled cabaret in many final months before imperial Germany’s col- ways. Kraus read scenes from Shakespeare and lapse in 1918. He enjoyed immediate success, his own critical texts; he juxtaposed poetry and writing music for the most notable actors 32 and producers in post–World War I Ger- sky text on this CD). many, including Max Reinhardt and Karl-Heinz In interwar Germany, cabaret provided Hol- Martin. In 1919, Reinhardt enlisted Holländer länder with his best opportunities to experi- for his new political cabaret, the “Schall und ment with text and style. In the early 1920s, he Rauch” (“Sound and Smoke”), the first in a associated himself with a number of cabaret steady stream of cabaret projects with which ensembles and troupes, including the Wein- Holländer associated himself throughout the traub Syncopaters and Café Größenwahn. He Weimar Period until his emigration in 1933. also established his own ensemble, Friedrich Holländer’s cabaret work was notable for the Holländer und seine Jazz-Symphoniker (“Fried- remarkable variety of its subject matter and rich Holländer and his Jazz Symphony Orches- musical style. He collaborated with poets and tra”). The mid-1920s witnessed several critical playwrights whose works were serious politi- transitions. Holländer’s concentrated effort cal critiques. He also explored the wide-rang- to compose entire “Kabarett-Revuen” (“caba- ing possibilities of popular song and dance ret revues”) provided the first step toward in an age when new media such as the cin- his work with sound film in the 1930s. Both ema were transforming the stage itself. Drama paths were key to Holländer’s career develop- and comedy both attracted his attention, and ment: the former as the initial stage toward he was equally brilliant whether composing Holländer’s founding his own cabaret, the “Tin- Schlager (hit songs) or sound tracks for films gel-Tangel-Theater”; the latter as the catalyst directed by Josef von Sternberg (e.g., Der blaue for his success in Hollywood after emigration Engel, 1930) or Billy Wilder (e.g., A Foreign Affair, and exile in 1933. In 1955, Holländer returned 1948). For his stage works, Holländer col- to Germany and intensive work with cabaret, laborated with Ernst Toller, Else Lasker-Schüler, especially the “Kleine Freiheit” (“Little Free- and Bruno Frank, among others. In his chan- dom”) in Munich. sons and cabaret songs he collaborated with We have included two of his most poignant Walter Mehring and Willy Prager, but he is and revealing songs for our historical journey perhaps best remembered for his marvelous to the edge of the volcano. Both became hits collaborations with Kurt Tucholsky in songs in 1930, “Eine kleine Sehnsucht” (“Do a Little such as “Ach, lehne deine Wange” (“Ah, Lend Dreaming”) by way of the musical stage (Fritz Me Your Cheek”), “Zieh dich aus, Petronella…” von Unruh’s Phäa), and “Ich bin von Kopf bis (“Undress, Petronella”), and “Der Graben” (we Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” (“From Head to Toe use Hanns Eisler’s setting of the same Tuchol- I Am Prepared for Love”) in one of the classics 33 of German cinema, Der blaue Engel (“The Blue 1900, when he received a collection of poems Angel”), based on Heinrich Mann’s Professor by Berlin poets called the Deutsche Chansons, Unrat and starring Marlene Dietrich. The songs or Brettl-Lieder. Brettl are “little boards.” In the brilliantly employ the stylistic juxtapositions context of cabaret this suggests “taking to of cabaret song to enhance the irony of their the boards,” or in other words, performing message. “Do a Little Dreaming” might well onstage. The Literary Cabaret did not attempt be an anthem for German everyday culture on to create a new popular stage for its poetry; the eve of fascism. The song’s narrator and his rather it turned to popular culture to inspire partner enter the dream through the ephem- a new literary movement. For Schoenberg, the eral quality of a tango, one of the most popular Brettl-Lieder provided a means for exploring dance styles in interwar Europe, signifying at the performative and aesthetic space opened once the exotic and the erotic. by the cabaret, a space that quickly acquired In “From Head to Toe I Am Prepared for Love,” biographical meaning for his own life. a slow waltz at first suggests restraint from Within months of receiving the texts of the the erotic but then unleashes passion. The Brettl-Lieder Schoenberg began to compose set- song captures the spirit of the cabaret stage tings for voice and piano. The songs appeared and conveys its capacity to blur, if only for a during 1901 in quick succession, at first proba- moment, the differences between the magic bly not intended as a single group or collection. of story onstage and the reality of history off By year’s end, however, the seven songs known it. “From Head to Toe” contributed substan- as Brettl-Lieder were probably all completed tially to Marlene Dietrich’s career, and became (some, including “Gigerlette” heard here, were Friedrich Holländer’s signature song, as well as not dated). A few of the songs likely found the title of his autobiography. their way to the popular stage quickly, maybe At the turn of the last century even Arnold even immediately after composition. The “Arie Schoenberg (1874–1951) found himself pulled aus dem Spiegel von Arcadien” (“Aria from to the cabaret stage and its music. Cabaret the Mirror of Arcadia”), to a text by Emanuel attracted Schoenberg not so much for the Schikaneder, for example, was initially included ways popular music subverted prevailing social in the repertory for the “Jung-Wiener Theater hierarchies, but rather because of the modern- zum lieben Augustin.” st i potential of the young poets associated with Schoenberg met Ernst von Wolzogen, director the Literary Cabaret in Berlin. Schoenberg’s of the Berlin cabaret company, “Überbrettl,” flirtation with cabaret apparently began in when it was on tour in Vienna in September 34 1901. Serving as music director of the Über- German song composers, especially the “light- brettl at the time was one Vienna’s greatest er” songs of Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf. cabaret composers, the young Oscar Straus, There is also a popular voice struggling to free who managed to secure a position for Schoen- itself, even though the narrator of “Mahnung” berg as “Kapellmeister” by the end of 1901. (“Warning”) urges caution. That voice finds full Schoenberg followed the company to Berlin, release, however, in the delightful “Gigerlette,” where he remained as a cabaret performer probably one of the last Brettl-Lieder completed until 1903. The Vienna-Berlin axis was among by Schoenberg. the routes most traveled by Schoenberg throughout his life as he searched for a cul- tural climate of tolerance for his modernist PART 111 compositions. That he first charted that route Response and Resistance: Political Songs as a cabaret musician may have left a greater Where the political is not implicit in popular impact on what modernism came to mean songs, it’s explicit. Indeed, the political and the for the composer than has generally been popular are often inseparable, one serving acknowledged. as context for the other. For many cabaret Do the Schoenberg songs included on Danc- writers and performers, contrafact and parody ing on the Edge of a Volcano reveal a “different” provided the vehicles necessary for politicizing Schoenberg or simply another side of an evolv- the meanings of well-known songs. Remaking ing composer searching for his compositional social commentary as social critique, more- voice in fin-de-siècle Vienna and Berlin? The over, broadens the potential audience, as well texts of both songs juxtapose the delight and as the consumer base. Cabaret and popular confusion that stem from youth — the blind- song, more often than not, flirted with scandal, ness and beauty of seduction and love. The and nothing heightens a scandal more than its experiences of youth are dizzying yet fleeting, political roots and popular implications. but are those reasons to let them escape? Political figures were not only the victims of Schoenberg’s compositional voice in the Brettl- social criticism in many popular songs; some Lieder shows that he succumbed to alternative even contributed to it. Theodor Herzl (1860– stylistic paths in the early years of the twen- 1904), for example, founder of the Zionist tieth century. There is no attempt to abandon Movement and a Budapest and Viennese feuil- or even alter tonality here. The most obvious letonist (arts and culture critic) very much influence is that of an earlier generation of in touch with the popular press, wrote skits 35 intended for the popular stage and the caba- of popular music into contexts for complex ret. Herzl’s “Im Speisewagen” (“In the Dining forms of political response during the Holo- Car”) depicts a conversation between a group caust. We witness these contexts clearly in of characters of different social ranks as they works created in the concentration camps, meet in the dining car of an express train from not just for the cabarets there, but also in the Vienna to Berlin via Prague. A one-act dramatic stage works. The cabaret-style instrumental work, such a play might easily have found its scoring for Viktor Ullmann’s opera, Der Kaiser way to the stage of a Zionist cabaret in the von Atlantis, composed in 1943 in the There- 1920s, when these began to appear. Socialist sienstadt concentration camp, is an example writers, too, who banded together as collec- of this. In fact, there were as many as nine tives, saw in the cabaret stage a potential for cabaret stages functioning in Theresienstadt at adding volume and unity to their common the same time: seven featuring acts in German cause and voice. and two in Czech. The genealogy of Viennese Over the course of the half century during cabaret, moreover, stretched to the camp, for it which the songs on Dancing on the Edge of a was in Theresienstadt that Leo Straus, the son Volcano were created and performed, Jewish of Oscar Straus, assembled a troupe and took cabaret and popular song underwent several to the stage. patterns of growing politicization. Until World That the trip from social commentary to War I, the political appeared most frequently political song was remarkably short is clear in the form of distinctive themes, particularly in the piece opening the group of political the causes of anti-Semitism and the absence songs on Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano. The of equal opportunity in the work place. In the “Haman-Arie” is none other than the “Vien- wake of World War I, the politicization of the nese Coachman’s Song,” this time transported Jewish stage became more explicit and fol- to New York City in a cover by the exile caba- lowed divergent paths. Jewish-socialist cabarets, ret, “Arche Revue,” literally the “Ark Revue.” for example, were different and separate from The musical transformations in “The ‘Haman’ Zionist cabarets. During the 1930s, when Jews Coachman’s Song” reveal a fine sense for par- in Germany faced official restrictions and those ody and a taste for political satire. The song elsewhere encountered increased intolerance relies on the audience’s familiarity with Gustav from the fascist right, Jewish cabaret thrived. Pick’s most famous Wienerlied. At the same Accordingly, the politicization of Jewish popular time, it makes direct connections between music accelerated, transforming the genres the evil Haman in the biblical story of Purim 36 from the book of Esther, and main figure of Eisler’s settings on this CD display quite dif- evil in Nazi Germany. Although the song surely ferent responses to the singability of Brecht’s was humorous in the early 1940s, its political texts and the popular traditions which gen- message was direct and explicit, made all the erated that singability. The “Solidarity Song” more so by the employment of popular song clearly owes its inspiration to the workers’ repertory from the Jewish cabaret stage, which song of the nineteenth century, which in the provided a common reference for the audience twentieth century became the musical vehicle in exile. for socialist and communist repertories. The The political could not be more explicit than in “Solidarity Song” found its way into the public the collaborations of Hanns Eisler (1898–1962) sphere of the GDR as a choral song, undergo- and Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956). Both Eisler ing quite a transformation from Eisler’s setting and Brecht spent World War II in exile, return- for solo voice to proletarian chorus. Also both ing to East Germany after the war. The socialist popular and political was Eisler’s gripping “The and Marxist threads of their work, therefore, Trenches,” with a text by the celebrated Ger- remain intact from the 1920s through the man-Jewish writer and satirist Kurt Tucholsky. 1950s, when Eisler and Brecht flourished in the Like other songs in the political group on this political-aesthetic environment of the German CD, “The Trenches” relies on the powerful Democratic Republic. Brecht would make his sense of irony that characterized the cabaret mark on German theater through the experi- stage, evident in the word play of the original mental approaches he brought to the Berliner German, in which der Graben (“the trenches”) Ensemble of East Berlin. Eisler received encour- and das Grab (“the grave”) function as morbid agement from both state and cultural organiza- puns. tions in the GDR, and he, like Brecht, took full Each of the Eisler songs reveals a special qual- advantage of realizing the political through his ity of the political presence in the popular. compositions. Brecht’s texts lent themselves to The “Ballad of the ‘Jewish Whore’ Marie Sand- settings by many distinguished composers, both ers” comes directly from the cabaret stage, as individual songs and as works for the stage, and recalls the functions that broadside bal- including operas by Kurt Weill. Scholars have lads played in the fin-de-siècle intersection frequently credited the singability of Brecht’s of oral and written traditions. The chanson- texts to his connections with cabaret and his like quality of the verse is interrupted by the interest in German broadsides, French popular textual refrain, in which a broadside hawker chanson, and American popular song. interjects with matter-of-fact commentary. The 37 Marie Sanders “Ballad” contains many different PART 1V voices: Marie and her mother; the stentorian Zionist and Pioneer Songs announcements of the ballad hawker; and the German masses echoing the Nazi propaganda The last group of songs on Dancing on the of Julius Streicher, the notorious editor of the Edge of a Volcano comes from the remarkable anti-Semitic magazine, Der Stürmer. A complex attempt to create a body of song for the grow- texture of voices also shapes the texts of the ing national presence of Jewish immigrants last two pieces in the group of political songs. in the Yishuv — mandatory Palestine — on Singing to her portable radio, the narrator of the eve of the Holocaust. Each song began its “To the Little Radio” finds ironic solace in the journey on a kibbutz or moshav (i.e., on one of voices issuing from her “little box” — voices the new forms of collective agricultural settle- that connect her to the world and her home, ment) as a Hebrew text usually created there which is being destroyed by fascism. The voices by a well-known poet, such as Chaim Nach- of exile find a different route through song man Bialik or Nathan Alterman, who wrote in the second of the two lullabies conclud- the poem to which “Ba’a m’nucha” was set. ing our political song set, “And the Times Are The next stage in the song’s life was the cre- Dark and Fearful.” In the song, the familiar has ation of a suitable melody for performance by become foreign, friends have become foes. Lilt- the new settlers, or chalutzim, “pioneers.” As ing, almost grinding to a halt in a dance style with the folk and popular songs that entered that doesn’t seem to know whether it wants the cabaret tradition of the metropole, oral to be a march or perhaps a slow waltz, “And and written traditions were rarely separable the Times” begins with a connective that has when these poems and songs came into exis- no connection, and comes to a tentative end tence; the Zionist songs were transferred to with nowhere to go. publishers in Europe, especially Germany, and the United States, where they appeared in anthologies of new Hebrew folk songs. Prior to 1920, such folk songs were published in Jewish song anthologies rather sporadically, but by the 1920s and ’30s, especially with the onset of the aliya germanit, the “German wave of immigrants,” “pioneer” songs occupied entire appendices in the backs of published folk songs.

38 As before, the growing popularity of these were among the others who accepted the invi- songs depended on mobility. The Keren Kay- tation.) By 1938, most of the composers who emeth, forerunner of the Israel National Fund, would need to leave Germany were already in printed them on postcards and sent them exile: some in the United States, others, such around the world to symbolize the attractive- as Erich Walter Sternberg, already permanently ness of life in the Yishuv. It was at this stage settled in the Yishuv. Though gathered in Berlin that the Jewish community of Berlin embarked for publication by Hans Nathan in 1938, the on a project to invite distinguished compos- postcard song project could not be completed. ers to create new music for these “postcard” It was not until 1994 that an edition, com- songs, to be included in an anthology of Zion- pleted by Philip Bohlman, would finally appear. ist songs. Such settings by Kurt Weill, Stefan That edition was used for the performances Wolpe, Darius Milhaud, Paul Dessau, and Aaron recorded here.22 Copland comprise the final group of songs on this CD. (Arthur Honegger and Ernst Toch

“Gam Hayom” called “Shir Chalutzim” (“Song of the Pioneers”)

39 The Zionist songs are as different as their cism in the songs, they also make clear that the composers, yet they all speak to the historical life of the pioneer is hard, with many struggles moment from which they emerged. When we and dangers. Kurt Weill’s “Ba’a M’nucha” maps hear the songs of Kurt Weill (“Ba’a M’nucha” the landscape of the Levant (the eastern Medi- and “Havu L’venim”), we hear Weill’s unmistak- terranean region) with details from the agri- able style and recognize the persistent influ- cultural settlements Beth-Alpha and Hahalal, ence of the musical stage and his familiarity in the fertile Yezreel Valley. The struggle of the with cabaret. By the 1930s, Stefan Wolpe had farmer is contrasted with the need to defend already demonstrated a deep commitment to the kibbutzim. “Havu L’venim,” by contrast, cap- socialism and Zionism in his music. A composi- tures the spirit of a workers’ chorus, combin- tion student of the quintessential modernist, ing traditions from nineteenth-century men’s Anton Webern, Wolpe was also the composer singing societies and the choral repertories of of numerous songs for workers’ chorus. For the socialist organizations that had prolifer- Wolpe, popular music meant people’s music, ated during the Weimar Period. In both songs, and it was this musical calculus, as well as his Weill’s sensitivity to popular music is unmistak- own immigration to Jerusalem in the 1930s, able as he transforms the Hebrew texts into that drew him into the postcard project. Dar- music truly for the people. “Havu L’venim” ius Milhaud brings a different sound to the is direct and straightforward; its unswerving Zionist songs, redolent of the composer’s Sep- march rhythm makes its message unequivocal. hardic heritage. The melos of the chanson from “Ba’a M’nucha” is a song of meditation and the urban French stage had long influenced contemplation, a lullaby that evokes the feeling Milhaud, and “Gam Hayom” reflects the cloy- of evening spreading across the lands of the ing, loving treatment of the text that owes Yishuv. its origins to the chanson. “Holem Tza’adi,” by The popular genres that characterize the Weill contrast, announces its allegiance to popular songs are retained by Stefan Wolpe and Darius dance with the feeling of a samba. Milhaud, but at the same time transformed into Like the cabaret and stage songs of the first different sounds as if to render the landscape group and the political songs of the second, of the workers’ world with greater nuance. the Zionist songs concern themselves with Wolpe, the cosmopolitan composer from specific themes, places, and events. While the Germany, had emigrated to the very differ- building of kibbutzim and villages in the Yishuv ent world of the Yishuv of the 1930s, and he has more than an occasional touch of romanti- renders the images of fields and farm labor in 40 Levi Ben-Amitai’s text with a sense of amaze- generation of Israeli composers, the so-called ment. The metaphors in the text are biblical, “Eastern Mediterranean School.” The song is rich with the imagery of a new land growing very different from Dessau’s collaborations from the soil of another time and place. In with Bertolt Brecht and other German poets, “Gam Hayom,” Milhaud spins out a Mediter- some of which would become foundational ranean melody with the rising, embellished works in the German Democratic Republic. arches of the Muslim muezzin’s call to prayer, Aaron Copland’s “Banu,” with a text by the which enveloped the hills of the Levant with a great modern Hebrew poet Nathan Alterman, new aura. Both oriental and orientalizing, the celebrates the power of a modern land. It may - ell call to prayer responds, in conjunction with the w have been Copland’s experience with mod rn song’s harmonic richness, not to the past but e dance in the 1930s that led him to treat the by opening a musical space for the future. The quintessential dance of modern Israel, the hora, composers saw in the Zionist songs an oppor- so boldly in the song. Among the pioneer songs, tunity to search for new voices. In “Holem it was “Banu” that found its way into oral tradi- Tza’adi,” Milhaud turns to Latin dance, which tion among youth groups in mandatory Pales- we recognize as significant for popular and tine and the United States on the eve of Israeli cabaret music from Friedrich Holländer’s “Do independence in 1948. a Little Dreaming.” The vocal style of “Holem The textual imagery and musical vocabulary Tza’adi,” however, is reminiscent of cantilla- of the Zionist songs would lay the foundations tion (not least because of its Hebrew text), for Israeli popular music in the second half thus evoking a Sephardic sound over the Latin of the twentieth century. One can hear their flourishes of the accompaniment. The contrast influence in the repertories of shireh eretz is fascinating. yisrael (literally, “songs of the land of Israel”) The Zionist and pioneer songs contain no in the first decades of statehood and in musica single image of mandatory Palestine and the mizrakhit (literally, “eastern music”), the eastern Yishuv. The poets and composers whose col- popular songs of the closing decades of the laborations created these songs perceived a century that gained entry for Israeli music world that was both ancient and modern. The and musicians into the global public sphere of collaboration of Jacob Schönberg and Paul Des- world music. With such songs the historical sau on “Hine Achal’la Bachalili” is stereotypical transformation of Jewish popular music in fin- in its representation of the “shepherd’s dance,” de-siècle central Europe comes full circle at one of the most common tropes of the first the turn of our own century. 41 1 See for example Beckermann 1984. 2 See Aschheim 1982. 3 Performed in fin-de-siècle Vienna by the well-known duo, Emil Schnabl and Eduard Blum. See Bohlman 1994: 442. 4 See Brenner 1998. 5 Eliasberg 1918. 6 See Bohlman 1989a: 47–78. 7 See Scheu 1977. 8 See for example Dalinger 1998 and Czáky 1996. 9 See Rösler 1991: 56–59. 10 See Salmen 1991. 11 Bohlman and Holzapfel 2001: 90–102. 12 Dalman 1891. 13 See for example Kabarettisten singen Klassiker 1988. 14 For example, Europe’s largest synagogue, the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest, and Berlin’s largest synagogue, the Oranienburgerstraße Synagogue. 15 Bohlman 1989b. 16 See for example Migdal 1986. 17 Wacks 1999. 18 Wacks 1999: 14–16. 19 Wacks 1999: 123–41. 20 For the original version of the poem, see Keil 1995: 131. 21 See Mittler-Battipaglia 1993. 22 Nathan 1994.

42 SONG TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS For these and other reasons, the English ver- A Note on the Texts and Translations sions performed on this CD are more than simple translations. They have passed through All of the German (or German dialect) songs several stages. First, Philip Bohlman transcribed on Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano are also the original texts in German, Yiddish, and Vien- heard (on Disc 2) in English translations. Our nese dialect from the broadside prints. Second, use of translations follows closely several of Jon Steinhagen created “American lyrics” that the practices common in Jewish cabaret and respect the poetic structures of the German popular song in fin-de-siècle central Europe, as while making them meaningful for modern well as the spirit that informed the composi- American audiences. Lastly, the singers them- tion and performance of political songs. The selves intervened, adding touches from their meaning of the texts was extremely important. own performances to make the songs “their The cabaret stage relied on the subtle and own,” much as a singer with the original Buda- not-so-subtle play of words. Different roles pesters might have done. Accordingly, we invite attended those understanding or not under- the listener to imagine the history of the songs standing the songs and skits: Those who did as beginning in oral tradition a century ago in not understand were, more often than not, Vienna, Budapest, or Berlin, passing through the real targets of jokes and Spottlieder (insult several stages of written tradition, and now songs). The political songs, too, created a sense reentering oral tradition with the performanc- of collective action through their use of pow- es heard on Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano. erful texts. It is for this reason that Bertolt he Brecht and others writing political songs used T performances of the Hebrew songs remain rue an economical and unambiguous language in t to the texts in the original 1938 collection. their texts. The frequent use of dialect in the For this booklet, Philip Bohlman has touched songs imbued them with multiple cultural up the English translations made in 1938 by meanings. Choices between Viennese dialect Harry H. Fein. For “Solidarity Song” and “To br bs and Yiddish, for example, often determined the Little Radio” (tracks and ), we have which audience would be appropriate for also remained close to the marvelous transla- which variants of common songs. The exten- tions by Eric Bentley, adapting them slightly sive use of dialect, moreover, was part of the only when necessary for musical performance exchange of the songs and their covers across reasons. cultural and class boundaries.

43 1 “Wiener Fiakerlied” – “Viennese Coachman’s Song”

I führ’ zwa harbe Rappen. I drive two midnight horses. Mein Zeug dös steht am Grab’n, They pull my fancy coach. A so wie dö zwa trappen They’re stronger than a Norse is, Wer’ns net viel g’sehen hab’n. And far beyond reproach. A Peitschen a des gibt’s net It doesn’t do to strike them. Ni jesses nur net schlag’n. I never use a whip. Das allermeiste wär tsch’, tsch’. I murmur, “Giddy-up, you two. Soust z’reissens gler in Wag’n. Let’s take another trip.” Vom Lamm zum Lusthaus fahr’n, In less than fifteen minutes, In zwölf Minuten hin; From Lamb Street to the club. Mir springt kanns drein net in Galopp, We don’t attempt a slow galopp. Da geht’s nun all weil trapp, trapp, trapp; I push them faster, clop, clop, clop. Wann’s nachher so recht schiessen, They sound like shooting rifles. Da spür i’s in mir drin, Then all at once I feel Daß i die rechte Pratzen hab, I’m not in charge of trifles. Daß i Fiaker bin. I’m a coachman, I mean real. A Kutscher kann a jeder wer’n. Now, anyone can drive a hack, Aber fahren kinnans nur in Wean. But Vienna calls for quite a knack.

Refrain: Refrain: Mein Stolz is i bin halt an aechts Weanakind, I’m proud to be Viennese. Life suits me fine. A Fiaker, wie man net alle Tag findt, I serve as a coachman, the top of the line. Mein Bluat is so lüftig und leicht wie der Wind I fly through streets with speed like none other can. I bin halt an aecht Weanerkind. I’m truly a Viennese man.

A Fiaka, der muss ans sein, To be the perfect driver, Dös nennen’s “delikat”, You must be like a god, Muass hör’n, seg’n, schweig’n, A silent, strong provider, Muass g’scheid sein und – schön stad. You listen, think, and nod. Mir führ’n oft noble Männer I often take the rich men Hinaus auf Numro Ans, To visit “Number One.” 44 Dös hasst, zum Grafen Lamezan, – In fact, last night, Count Lamezan Aber wissen derf dös kan’s. Stopped off to have some fun. Oft kuman zwa Verliabte I might pick up two lovers, Und steig’n bei mir ein, Improper true, I know. I’ mirk glei’, dös is net’ ak’rat, If later someone asks me, “Who Aber i’ bin so viel delicat – Those lovers were?” What do I do? Und will mar aner nochfoahr’n, I never stop to answer. Möcht’s wissen, wer dö sein, I glide on down the street. Da helfen nachher d’Rappeln aus, It’s safe for each romancer, Denn dö holt kaner ein. ’Cause the horses are discreet. Möcht’ oba ans wos aussiziag’n If grandpa wants to have a fling, Aus mir – der schneid’t si’, i kann a lüag’n – That’s fine with me, and I just sing. Refrain… Refrain… I’ bin bold sechzig Jahr’ alt. I’m turning sixty Monday. Vierz’g Jahr’ steh’ i’ am Stand, I’ve worked for forty years. Der Kutscher und sei’ Zeugl But I would not trade one day War al’weil fein beinand. For other bright careers. Und kummt’s amol zan O’fahr’n, A coachman and his carriage Und wir i’ dann begrab’n, Are mated well by fate. So spannt’s ma meine Rapp’n ein And when I die, hitch up my team, Und führt’s mi’ über’n Grab’n. And mention heaven’s gate. Da lasst’s es aber laf’n, Just let my horses canter Führt’s mi’ in Trabb hinaus As I go to my grave. I’ bitt’ ma’s aus, Direct them to the heart of town, Nur nöt in Schritt, The smart, expensive part of town. Nehmt’s mein’twegen a die Kreutzung mit – And though it’s rather tiny, Dös is’ a “Muass”, dös Umziag’n I want the town to see, In’s allerletzte Haus, My carriage black and shiny Und d’Leut’, dö solln’s mirken, Is the final ride for me. An Fiaka führt ma’ n’aus. Upon my gravestone, don’t forget, Und auf mein’ Grabstein da soll steh’n, I would like this simple epithet. Damit ’s die Leut’ a deutli’ seh’n: 45 Closing Refrain: Closing Refrain: Sei’ Stolz war, er war halt an echt’s Weanakind. He was proud to be Viennese. Life suited him fine. A Fiaker, wie man net alle Tag findt, He served as a coachman, the top of the line. Mein Bluat is so lüftig und leicht wie der Wind He flew through streets with speed like none I bin halt an aecht Weanerkind. other can. He was truly a Viennese man.

2 “…Nach Großwardein” – “…To Großwardein”

Eine Stadt in Ungarland – doi deridi ridi ridi There’s a place in Hungary. – doi deridi ridi ridi roidoi, roidoi, Ist deswegen so bekannt, – doi deridi… Why so famous? You will see. – doi deridi… Weil die allerschönsten Madlech dort zu finden All the raving beauties live there, ev’ry one a gem. sein, – doi deridi… – doi deridi… Und e Czárdás können alle tanzen, Gott wie God, how nice to see them dance the csárdás. Look fein. [Doi deridi…] at them! [Doi deridi…] Darum reisen voller Freud’ – doi deridi… Joyful men from far and wide. – doi deridi… Männer hin von weit und breit. – doi deridi… Off they go, they take the ride. – doi deridi…

Trio: Trio: Aron Hersch und Itzig Veitel, – doi deridi… Aharon Hirsch and Issac Veitel, – doi deridi… Moische Bär und Nachum Teitel, – doi deridi… Moishe Baer and Nachem Teitel, – doi deridi… Und die ganze Schnorer-Verein – doi deridi… Not one cent, but dressed up fine, – doi deridi… Fahren erein nach Großwardein. – doi deridi… All take that trip to Großwardein. – doi deridi…

Kobi Gigerl mit sei’ Schnas – doi deridi… Kobi Gigerlel wore his suit. – doi deridi… Will auch gehen auf der Ras’, – doi deridi… He wants to join us on the route. – doi deridi… Weil der Zonentarif eingeführt ist auf der He has heard they’ve put a brand new toll upon Bahn, – doi deridi… that stretch. Ist das Reisen heutzutag’ der allerneuester So he wears his finest just to show he’s not a Schau. [Doi deridi…] wretch. [Doi deridi…] Im Coupé, da sieht man heut’ – doi deridi… See that fancy carriage there? – doi deridi… Drinnen sitzen üns’re Leut’. – doi deridi… They’re all inside, they’ll have to share. – doi deridi… 46 Trio: Trio: Hier in Ungarn ist ein Städtchen, – doi deridi… Hungary has got an Eden. – doi deridi . . . Dorten sein die schönsten Mädchen. – doi deridi… Gorgeous girls, but not from Sweden. – doi deridi… Alle Männer jung und fein – doi deridi… Young men come to buy them wine. – doi deridi… Fahren erein nach Großwardein. –doi deridi… They’re on their way to Großwardein. – doi deridi…

Wenn ist Markt in Großwardein, – doi deridi… Market day and ev’ry stall – doi deridi… Seht man Jüden groß und klein, – doi deridi… Shows you Jews, both short and tall, – doi deridi… Kaufleut’, Schnorrer und Hausirer mit e Povel- Merchants, beggars, hawkers, ev’ry type the mind Waar, – doi deridi… conceives. Ganefjüngel und dann Gigerl eine ganze Schaar. Rough men, tough men, loud men, crowd men, [Doi deridi…] watch for little thieves. [Doi deridi…] Alle rechnen schon voraus – doi deridi… All of them are out for gain, – doi deridi… Auf der Bahn den Rebach aus. – doi deridi… Looking forward to each train. – doi deridi…

Trio: Trio: Kobi Gigerl mit sei’ Dalles – doi deridi… Kobi Gigerlel has no money. – doi deridi… Will bekücken sich de Kalles, – doi deridi… He desires a bride. That’s funny! – doi deridi… Und er mant, er kenn’ auf Leim – doi deridi… What’s he got to bait his line? – doi deridi… Fahren erein nach Großwardei. – doi deridi… He’ll take that trip to Großwardein! – doi deridi…

3 “Der jüdische Landsturm” – “The Jewish Country Regiment”

Gott, wie haißt, was hob ich gehört! Oy vays mir! Am I in trouble! Der Landsturm wird organisirt! The regiment needs their ranks to be filled. Soll iach zieg’n hinaus in’s Feld, They will draft me on the double, Dort wo mit Pülver geschossen wird! Then ship me out where I’m bound to get killed!

Soll mich lassen gar erschießen! If we Jews are sent off fighting, Püh! wie komm ich da dazu? You will hear a dreadful moan. Soi waß muß ein’ doch verdrießen, Party’s over! No firstnighting! Soll’n nur lassen mich in Ruh’, No one gets a business loan! 47 Iach will nix vom Landsturm wissen, Army life can be foreboding, Bleib’ bei meiner Kalle z’haus, Spending your days crawling in the dirt. Denn wenn die herüber schießen, Bullets flying! Bombs exploding! Das halt e koscherer Jüd nix aus. Oy! A Jewish boy could get hurt!

Refrain: Refrain: Radiwidibum! Radiwidibum! Radi-vidi-bum, radi-vidi-bum, D’rum lassen’s mich mit’n Landsturm aus! If we’re off fighting, who will mind the store? Radiwidibum! Radiwidibum! Radi-vidi-bum, radi-vidi-bum, D’rum lassen’s mich mit’n Landsturm aus! Just leave us out of your meshugeh war!

Wer soll auf der Börse spielen, Who will make the market soar, Wenn’s uns Jüden affentir’n? If all of the Jews are away making war? Wer soll alte Hoisen kaufen? Who will buy used pants and old shoes? Mit Promessenschein hausir’n? Where will you go just to browse and to shmooze?

Wer soll schrei’n: Iach geb’, iach nehm’! Who will shout out: “I’ll buy! I’ll sell!”? Wer fahrt in aner Equipasch? Ride in taxis looking swell? Wer soll einer Tänzerin geben Who will keep the chorus girls Monatliche Apanasch? In chic apartments, wine and pearls?

Es wird gewiß nix d’raus, iach waas, Sorry country regiment, Für’n Landsturm sein mer doch zu güt, We’re far too involved with our lives to get spent. Denn es laßt sich nix erschießen Self-respecting Jews do not Von dem Feind e koscherer Jüd’. Go out and engage with a foe and get shot!

Refrain… Refrain…

Wer soll uns dann Schollet kochen, Who’ll provide gefilte fish? Wenn wir soll’n in’s Feld marschir’n? A Jew wouldn’t fight ’til you serve him that dish. Was werd’ unsere Kalle machen. Who will entertain our wives, Wann wir draußen manövir’n? If we go to war and we risk our lives?

48 Iach soll schießen mit a Pülver I would faint at a cannon’s boom, Oder gar mit e Kanon’? And rifle shots would spell my doom. Wann ich hör’ e Schuß nur krachen, If I heard such a noise all day, Renn ich sicher gleich davon! By mincha I would run away!

Darum läßt’s uns armen Jüden Please just leave us Jews in peace. Mit dem Landsturm amal e Ruh’ The regiment can recruit ducks and geese. Wann mir durchaus schon soll’n schießen, If we have to shoot let’s try Soi schießen wir – Monetten vor. To aim for the dollars and cents going by!

Refrain… Refrain…

4 “Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn” – “Levin and Hirsch and Cohn”

Wer reitet so schön unt’ im Prater spazieren? Who rides on his carriage as if were king? Levin. der Leb. Whose eye zeroes in on a pretty young thing? Wer that mit’n Monokel die Kale’s fixirn? That’s Hirsch. der Hersch. Who visits the racetrack at least once a day, Wer wettet beim Rennen beim Tota li sa teur And wages a fortune on ponies? Oy vay! Und spricht nur vom Ferd und von sonst gar Levin and Hirsch and Cohn. nix mehr? der Leb. Yah, Levin and Hirsch and Cohn. Der Leb, der Hersch, der Kohn! Ja, der Leb und der Hersch und der Kohn!

Wer sitzt in die Redactionszimmer drinn’? You ask, “Who’s the editor?” That’s not a test. Levin. der Leb. In all of Vienna whose columns are best? Wer schreibt die besten Artikel von Wien? der That’s Hirsch. Hersch. What journalist started at twelve years of age, Wer wird mit zwölf Jahren jetzt Journalist Flew Godard’s balloon when balloons were the schon rage? Und fliegt mit’n Godard in einem Ballon? Levin and Hirsch and Cohn… Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn… Wer wird auf der Börse zuerst Galopin? The stock market opens. Who’s there right away? 49 der Leb. Levin. Wer hat für a schönes Ballet nur ein Sinn? And who loves the beauty and grace of ballet? der Hersch. That’s Hirsch. Wer wird dann zuletzt gar a Börsenseusal Who corners the market before it shuts down, Und hat im Theater a Losch überall? Then spends all his earnings at theaters in town? Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn… Levin and Hirsch and Cohn…

Wer wird jetzt sogar als Soldat affentirt? So, who just got drafted? Now, who could that be? der Leb. Levin. Wer ziehet als Doctor in’s Feld ungenirt? Who’s off to the battlefield as an MD? That’s der Hersch. Hirsch. Wer wird jetzt mitunter schon Edler Herr von And who is the count who assumes he’d be good Und später gar Freiherr und nobler Baron? As prince or as baron – or both, knock on wood? Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn… Levin and Hirsch and Cohn…

Wer fangt denn mit’n Handel so kleinwinzig Who started his business while deeply in debt? an? der Leb. Levin. Wer macht Masematten viel größere dann? der Who bought out his rivals, and now he is set? Hersch. That’s Hirsch. Wer wird dann Banquier a groißer von Wien Who sits at the helm of a banking empire? Und hat sein Palais und sein Wechselstub’ drinn? He’s richer than Croesis, but still won’t retire. Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn… Levin and Hirsch and Cohn…

Wer wird im Theater zuerst a Statist? der Leb. Who’s best as an actor, or so he insists? Levin. Wer geht zum Concert, was gibt Abbé Liszt? Whose concert premiere went much better than der Hersch. Liszt’s? That’s Hirsch. Wer spielt auf der Bühne so wunderbar schön And who was acclaimed on the stage? Ask me who! Und kommt dann auf einmal in die “Borg” He ended in debt paying off his debut. gar hinein? Levin and Hirsch and Cohn… Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn…

5 “Die koschere Mischpoche!” – “The Kosher Mishpoche!”

50 Frägt man so in der Welt: If you should want to see “Wer hat das meiste Geld? Who makes money constantly. Wer geht im Börsenhaus When the market rises up, Mit’n Dalles ein und aus? Who scoops all the prizes up? Wer speist beim Sacher, fein; At the Hotel Sacher, who Wer trinkt ein’ Champeswein? Drinks champagne the whole day through? Wer ist ein nobler Mann, Who’s prosperous, I’m told, Schaut’s Geld nicht an?” But never looks at gold? Chorus: Chorus: Das ist der Itzig Kohn, Oh, it is Isaac Cohn – Tralala, la, la, la! Trala-lala-lala! Reb Moses und sein Sohn, The rabbi and his son – Tralala, la, la, la! Trala-lala-lala! Der Hersch, der Mandelblüh, There’s Hirsch and Levi too – Tralala, la, la, la! Trala-lala-lala! Die kosch’re Kompagnie, The koshere mishpoche – Tralalalalala! Trala-lala-lala! “Wer kauft, wer spekulirt Whenever profits come, Mit’n Rebach? Wer verliert Who will promptly risk the sum? Gleich hunderttausend Guld’n? Speculate a hundred grand, Wer hat die meisten Schuld’n? Lose it all, like it was planned? Ich geb’, ich nehm’, wer schreit? Spends and lends, but always frets, Wer wird denn ausgeläut’ Who has got the biggest debts? Und geht doch wieder fein Who swears he’s quit the market In die Börs’ hinein?” Yet comes back ’til he’s Back in the black? Chorus… Chorus…

51

cantor in 1985. She studied voice and music performance at the Manhattan School of Music and did graduate work in creative arts education at New York University. Deborah was most recently heard in the role of Freda Brandeis in the Looking Glass Theatre production of Brundibar at Chi- cago’s Merle Ruskin Theatre. She has performed Off-Broadway with Theatre For the New City, at the Public Theatre and Epic West, and has sung with the Los Angeles Master Chorale under the late Robert Shaw, the Sine Nomine Singers, the Aspen Music Festival Choir, the Oakland Sympho- ny Chorus, and the Berkeley Chamber Singers. Her first commercial recording, Holiday Songs Kids Love to Sing, is among the best-selling recordings of Jewish music for children. A second recording, Lullaby, is in the works.

Philip V. Bohlman (Artistic Director) is Professor of Music and Jewish Studies at the Univer- sity of Chicago. An ethnomusicologist whose fieldwork has taken him to Jewish communities in central and eastern Europe, and in Israel, Bohlman undertook the research responsible for uncovering much of the repertory for Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano. His diverse scholarly projects concentrate on recovering forgotten or destroyed Jewish musical traditions. When the New Budapest Orpheum Society goes on the road, he plays the role of “Herr Ober.” The author or editor of many books, Bohlman has most recently published The Folk Songs of Ashkenaz (with Otto Holzapfel, A-R Editions, 2001) and World Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Ilya Levinson (Music Director, Arranger, and pianist) was born in the USSR and graduated from the Moscow State Conservatory with a degree in music composition. In 1988, he emigrated to the United States, where he completed his Ph.D. in composition at the University of Chicago in 1997. Mr. Levinson’s works have been performed by numerous Chicago-area ensembles including CUBE Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Contemporary Chamber Players, the New Music Ensembles of The University of Chicago and Northwestern University, and the Lake Shore Symphony Orchestra, among others. He was a winner of the Mid- west Composers competition in 1994, and received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Music

76 Composition in 1997. He has written music for several documentary films including Shtetl and Isa: The People’s Diva, a film about the life of singer Isa Kramer. A member of New Tuners Musical Theatre Workshop, Mr. Levinson writes frequently for the stage including musicals and operas. Ilya Levinson is also a composer-in-residence with American Music Festivals. His Klezmer Rhap- sody was recorded by the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band on the Shanachie label. Mr. Levinson is lecturer in music and instructor in the College at the University of Chicago.

A native of Bulgaria, violinist Peter Blagoev received his education at the Bulgarian National Academy of Music, where he studied with Joseph Radionov. In Bulgaria, in addition to his solo recital appearances, Mr. Blagoev was assistant concertmaster and soloist for the Orpheus Cham- ber Orchestra, played first violin for the Bulgarian National State Theatre of Music and the Bul- garian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, and co-founded and performed as soloist with the New Youth Symphony. In the United States since 1993, Mr. Blagoev is currently concertmaster for the Chicago Philharmonia. Mr. Blagoev has also played with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago under Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Metha, Pierre Boulez, and Sir Georg Solti. Peter Blagoev is a frequent soloist with the Chicago Businessmen's Orchestra, Classical Symphony Orchestra, Lake Shore Symphony, and Northwest Symphony Orchestra. An active chamber music performer, Mr. Blagoev founded a string quartet with his wife, Iordanka Kissiova, which performs frequently in the Chi- cago area and on recordings and live radio broadcasts.

A native of Louisville, Kentucky, bassist Stewart Miller is a graduate of music programs at the University of Kentucky and Northern Illinois University, and a regular in jazz clubs, recording stu- dios, and festivals in the Chicago area. After two years of touring with the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the early 1980s, Miller worked in a wide variety of musical settings in the Louisville-Lexington- Cincinnati area before coming to Chicago in 1987. He can be heard on recent recordings by Chicago jazz artists including trumpeter Brad Goode, trombonist Russ Phillips, and singer/pianist Judy Roberts.

77 Hank Tausend performs on drums, tympani, and percussion with a wide variety of ensembles, including symphony orchestras — the Northbrook Symphony in winter and the Wheaton Sym- phony in summer; jazz and dance bands including Airflow Deluxe, Woody Allen's Band in New York City, and Hank’s own Whoopee Makers; brass bands; army bands; marching bands; Klezmer bands including Maxwell Street, Yiddish Arts Ensemble, and Hasha Musha; and in musical comedy, where he has accompanied Edie Adams and Imogene Coca. Hank especially enjoys going into schools and religious organizations for Urban Gateways and the Northbrook Symphony, to give talks and demonstrations on drums and percussion. Hank also gives lectures for Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Flutist Elizabeth Ko is an active freelance performer in the Chicago area. An avid player of con- temporary music, she was a soloist at the 1997 National Flute Association convention in Chicago, where she performed on a concert showcasing music of Chicago composers. Ms. Ko’s other hon- ors include winning the University of Chicago Concerto Competition in 1994 and placing second in the 1996 Young Artist Flute Competition sponsored by the Society of American Musicians. Ms. Ko is on the faculty of the Merit School of Music, where she is chair of the Woodwind, Brass, and Percussion Department. She received her M.M. from DePaul University, where she studied with Mary Stolper.

Jon Steinhagen (American lyrics) has received two Joseph Jefferson Citations and three After Dark Awards for his work in the theatre since 1995. He wrote the music and lyrics to People Like Us, Inferno Beach, and Emma and Company. Jon also contributed to the book and the lyrics for Alice in Analysis and Toll Bridge to Iowa for Dreaming Tree Productions.

78

New Budapest Orpheum Society

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