Cover Art BENZION MILLER A MESSAGE FROM THE MILKEN ARCHIVE FOUNDER Dispersed over the centuries to all corners of the earth, the Jewish people absorbed elements of its host cultures while, miraculously, maintaining its own. As many Jews reconnected in America, escaping persecution and seeking to take part in a visionary democratic society, their experiences found voice in their music. The sacred and secular body of work that has developed over the three centuries since Jews first arrived on these shores provides a powerful means of expressing the multilayered saga of American Jewry. While much of this music had become a vital force in American and world culture, even more music of specifically Jewish content had been created, perhaps performed, and then lost to current and future generations. Believing that there was a unique opportunity to rediscover, preserve and transmit the collective memory contained within this music, I founded the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music in 1990. The passionate collaboration of many distinguished artists, ensembles and recording producers over the past fourteen years has created a vast repository of musical resources to educate, entertain and inspire people of all faiths and cultures. The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music is a living project; one that we hope will cultivate and nourish musicians and enthusiasts of this richly varied musical repertoire. Lowell Milken A MESSAGE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR The quality, quantity, and amazing diversity of sacred as well as secular music written for or inspired by Jewish life in America is one of the least acknowledged achievements of modern Western culture. The time is ripe for a wider awareness and appreciation of these various repertoires—which may be designated appropriately as an aggregate “American Jewish music.” The Milken Archive is a musical voyage of discovery encompassing more than 600 original pieces by some 200 composers—symphonies, operas, cantorial masterpieces, complete synagogue services, concertos, Yiddish theater, and folk and popular music. The music in the Archive—all born of the American Jewish experience or fashioned for uniquely American institutions—has been created by native American or immigrant composers. The repertoire is chosen by a panel of leading musical and Judaic authorities who have selected works based on or inspired by traditional Jewish melodies or modes, liturgical and life-cycle functions and celebrations, sacred texts, and Jewish history and secular literature—with intrinsic artistic value always of paramount consideration for each genre. These CDs will be supplemented later by rare historic reference recordings. The Milken Archive is music of AMERICA—a part of American culture in all its diversity; it is JEWISH, as an expression of Jewish tradition and culture enhanced and enriched by the American environment; and perhaps above all, it is MUSIC—music that transcends its boundaries of origin and invites sharing, music that has the power to speak to all of us. Neil W. Levin Neil W. Levin is an internationally recognized scholar and authority on Jewish music history, a professor of Jewish music at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, music director of Schola Hebraeica, and author of various articles, books, and monographs on Jewish music. The performance of a prayer-oriented medium Introduction in a nonliturgical environment may at first seem The Hebrew title hazzan is translated in the modern incongruous—especially if we acknowledge the era as “cantor”—one whose function is to intone and entertainment-oriented parameters of some of those sing the liturgy in Jewish worship services as sh’liah concert contexts. Indeed, some cantors originally tzibbur (messenger of the congregation), lending opposed the practice on religious grounds. It is the prayer texts the added dimensions of emotional difficult for us to imagine today, for example, that as and artistic expression for—and on behalf of—the recently as the 1920s the cantorial fraternity in London congregation, and interpreting the words aesthetically. issued public warnings against attending concerts The term itself applies generically to prayer leaders in by the renowned (and undisputedly pious) cantor all Jewish traditions. However, in the Ashkenazi world Yossele Rosenblatt. Some, such as the erudite Odessa since the first half of the 19th century, where the cantor Pinchas Minkowski, opposed all recording of position of hazzan became professionalized largely hazzanut; and some in America shunned cantorial at the instigation of Hazzan Salomon Sulzer (1804– radio broadcasts as near sacrilege. But that opposition 90) in Vienna, the term hazzan has come to signify quickly faded. Cantorial concerts came to be accepted a clerical office—in tandem with the congregational as a logical extension of the art form, augmenting— rabbi on the western model—with the desiderata of but never replacing—the primary liturgical and professionally and artistically cultivated vocal skills and spiritual function of hazzanut. Concerts provided— musical knowledge. and still provide—opportunities for a broader public to avail itself of virtuoso cantorial expression; and In this context, hazzanut refers to a highly cultivated they have enabled legions of aficionados to hear the cantorial art form. The present recording concerns acknowledged masters of the day. eastern European Ashkenazi stylistic traditions—as The very nature of the concert atmosphere, they originated and were developed throughout the however, permitted and even encouraged further Czarist and Hapsburg empires—which were brought vocal elaboration and word repetition—as well as to America by touring as well as émigré cantors. lengthier renditions—than would be considered The selections here represent the liturgical art at its appropriate in the synagogue, even for the same zenith during the so-called Golden Age of Hazzanut— texts. Israel Schorr’s Sheyyibane beit hammikdash is generally considered to embrace the period from the such an example. Eventually, cantors created settings late 19th century until the First World War in Europe, specifically for concert use, which included texts not and from then through the 1930s and 40s in America usually emphasized musically in synagogue services. In (and in other flourishing Ashkenazi communities such addition, traditional cantorial concerts have frequently as in England and South Africa). The compositions included nonliturgical selections, such as Yiddish songs, here stem from that American phase. But, especially that nonetheless organically incorporate or quote in these versions, they represent a special subcategory elements of hazzanut. Pierre Pinchik’s Der khazn un of “concert hazzanut”—cantorial pieces or settings der gabe is a typical example—a song about a cantor either intended originally or expanded expressly for and cantorial issues in which florid hazzanut and even concert performance (or recording), rather than for improvisation punctuate the Yiddish story line, and synagogue prayer rendition. which requires a virtuoso hazzan for its performance. 3 8.559416 Traditional hazzanut is obviously an exclusively ilk composed only the solo vocal lines, and they relied vocal art form, accompanied throughout its history on arrangers or choirmasters to furnish the choral- by a cappella choir. But without the religious-legal accompanimental dimensions, or orchestrators to (halakhik) restrictions against instrumental usage fashion accompaniments for concert performances or that apply on Sabbaths, other holydays, and a few radio broadcasts. Since each cantor created particular other liturgical occasions, concert performance has settings for the unique qualities and attributes of his frequently invited instrumental support as a presumed own voice, some knowledge about individual artistic aesthetic enhancement. Hazzanut with orchestra approaches is necessary for our appreciation of this became a favored ideal, depending of course on the repertoire. available resources. In typical cantorial orchestrations —Neil W. Levin without choral participation, the orchestra substitutes for the choir in providing introductory phrases, About the Composers and Their Works interludes, cadential responses, “fills,” and sustained pedal-point underpinnings. The following discussion about the composers of the cantorial selections on this recording has been There is evidence of orchestral use in some cantorial conceived as a single essay, addressing the lives and concerts in prewar Europe, but very few notated contributions of these individuals within an overall orchestrations or even sketches from that time are context of hazzanut and in some respects as a group. extant. This medium truly blossomed in the United Definitions and explanations of terms, institutions, States, not only because resources were more available, and concepts are provided only at their initial but also because many radio stations typically appearance and therefore require reading of this employed resident orchestral ensembles for their live section in its entirety—even with reference to any broadcasts. A reasonable body of such orchestrations one cantor-composer. does therefore exist in archival collections, and others have been done by arrangers and orchestrators DAVID ROITMAN (1884–1943), “the poet of the in Israel. The orchestrations for this recording, pulpit,” was one of the leading virtuoso cantors of however, were commissioned by the Milken Archive the Golden Age of Hazzanut in America, celebrated for this project.