Ournal of Synagogue Music J September 2018 Vol
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ournal of Synagogue Music J September 2018 Vol. 43 No.1 September 2018 Volume 43 Number 1 [To navigate any item, either click on the article name or use the bookmarks on the left] ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH The Talmudic Debate about Hallel Judith Hauptman ............................................................................................................. 3 “It Took a Jew”: The Mendelssohns and the Bachs Nina Lazar Sobelman .................................................................................................... 13 Samuel Naumbourg: The Scholarly Parisian Cantor/Composer Who Rediscovered Salamone Rossi and Introduced Synagogue Music to the French Operatic Style Coreen Duffy ................................................................................................................ 31 How a Conservative Congregation’s Innovative Friday Night Service in Buenos Aires Led to the “BJ Experience” in New York Gastón Bogomolni ........................................................................................................ 52 A Song at Twilight: Options for A Transformed Cantorate Joseph A. Levine ........................................................................................................... 75 N’GINAH L’MA’ASEH [Click anywhere on its first page of music to access a particular audio file] Two High Holiday Transitional Passages: Max Wohlberg’s Emet ki atah hu yots’ram; and Abba Yosef Weisgal’s V’atah hu melekh…ein kitsvah (sung by Jennie Chabon) .............................................................................................. 96 Yizkor in Yossele Rosenblatt’s Style; Abba Weisgal’s Kaddish yatom (both sung by Alberto Mizrahi) .................................................................................... 99 David Kusevitsky’s Hatsi-kaddish for Friday Night (sung by William Lieberman) ..................................................................................... 102 D’VAR TORAH Purim and the Megillah—Its Music Is the Message Marcia Lane ................................................................................................................ 104 MAIL BOX Shabbat Morning—a Report—from the UK Victor Tunkel .............................................................................................................. 106 Echoes of the Past in Budapest Jaclyn Chernett............................................................................................................ 107 1 Teaching Hazzanut in Germany Today Israel Goldstein ........................................................................................................... 108 America Singing—from Mt. Desert Island to the Mississippi Delta Shoshana Brown ......................................................................................................... 109 Impressions of Sukkot at Toronto’s Song Shul Jacob Mendelson ......................................................................................................... 112 “Sing Hallelujah” in the Cradle of American Liberty Charles Davidson ........................................................................................................ 113 REVIEWS Sholom Kalib’s The Musical Tradition of the Eastern European Synagogue, Volume III-A, “The Sabbath Evening Service” Joshua Jacobson .......................................................................................................... 115 Shalom Kalib’s Response to Issues Raised in the Preceding Review ............................... 119 Daniel Akiva’s Ladino Song Cycle, Sarina Kanta, for Mezzo-Soprano; Malchut CD Charles Heller ............................................................................................................. 121 M. Marmer Verhoeff’s Novel, The Daily Diner Dorothy Goldberg ....................................................................................................... 122 Mark Elber’s Book, The Sacred Now: Cultivating Jewish Spiritual Consciousness Joseph A. Levine ......................................................................................................... 124 COMMEMORATING 100 YEARS SINCE THE 1918 ARMISTICE Adventures of a Polish-born Hazzan in the Austrian Army during the Great War Joseph A. Levine ......................................................................................................... 126 IN MEMORIAM Tzipora H. Jochsberger (1920-2017) Marsha Bryan Edelman............................................................................................... 135 (Click on the music excerpt of Magein Avot to access the audio file) .................................. 136 Rav-hazzan Avraham H. Feder (1930-2018) Joseph A. Levine ......................................................................................................... 137 Editors' note: The Journal of Synagogue Music is optimized to be read using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Click here for a link to the free download. The Bookmark feature, which allows readers to directly access and then jump between articles, may not otherwise function on some desktops or portable devices. Cover Art: The Great Synagogue of Kassel, Edwin Allen, 2016; after Wilhelm Thielmann’s Bilder aus der Synagoge (1899). 2 ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH The Talmudic Debate about Hallel By Judith Hauptman allel, as recited in the Second Jerusalem Temple, consisted of Psalms 113 to 118. A bit later I’ll discuss Hatsi (Half) hallel, where we drop the beginnings of Psalms 115 and H116, but for now I would ask my readers to think about Hallel as it was performed in the Temple and described in the Babylonian Talmud’s tractate Arakhin (Measurements), beginning with the Mishnah on 10a. Ein pohatin mei-esrim v’ahat t’ki’ot ba-mikdash, v’lo mosifin al arba ush’moneh. Ein pohatin mish’nei n’valim, v’-lo mosifin al shishah. Ein pohatin mish’nei halilim, v’lo mosifin al sh’neim-asar. They never blew less than 21 blasts [in the Temple], and never more than 48. They never played on less than two harps (n’valim) or on more than six, and never less than on two flutes (halilim) or more than on twelve. This does not mean that one person knew how to play more than one musical instrument. The 11th-century commentator Rashi points out that each Levite had his own instrument and took care of both the singing and the playing–in the case of lyres and harps, simultaneously with the singing. We assume that the greater the holiday, the greater the number of musical instruments. There were never fewer than two halilim playing in the Temple, nor more than 12. Today we talk of the halil as being a recorder made of wood, yet all the information I could gather indicated that it was a flute or pipe. The ancient halil, however, was made of reed. That’s actually very helpful to know as we jump ahead in the Mishnah. V’lo hayah makeh b’abuv shel n’hoshet, elah b’abuv shel kaneh, mipnei she-kolo areiv. And they did not play on a pipe (abuv) of copper but on a reed pipe, since its sound was sweet. The Mishnah states that they didn’t play (l’hakot means to bang when you play) on an abuv made out of copper but on an abuv made out of reed, because its sound was sweet. It’s strange that earlier they talked about the halil, and now, continuing with the very same statement, they’ve switched from the word halil to the word abuv, even though (as the Gemara says later on) in any event we are talking about the same instrument. We know that abuv in modern Hebrew means oboe–and in fact the Talmudic dictionaries (Krupnik, 1927; Jastrow, 1996) translate abuv as “reed or flute.” That is exactly what the Mishnah is telling us: it has to be made out of a reed, and this seems to have been true in ancient times as well: the abuv was made out of a reed. And the Hebrew word halil means 3 “hollow”–so a halil is a hollow reed. When was the Mishnah’s final compilation, relative to the Second Temple? 200 C.E. When was the Second Temple destroyed? 70 C.E. True, the materials evolved over time, so it’s likely that knowledge of musical instruments had faded a bit, a century or more later. The Tanna’im (Mishnaic sages) admittedly had lost a certain amount of precision in describing the Temple’s musical instruments, and so they are implying that there were two different–though related–musical instruments. The wording would appear to indicate that they are describing the same instrument, but only due to a lack of precision. If we look up the word “oboe” in Webster’s New International Dictionary (1981) we find that the modern instrument stems from the medieval French, hautbois. Haut is “high” and bois is “wood,” yielding: highwood. From this I am led to believe that abuv is clearly an oboe. Avraham Even-Shoshan’s Millon hadash (New Dictionary of the Hebrew Language, 1946- 1958) says that the word “oboe” stems from Arabic, which locates the equivalence of oboe with abuv in Semitic languages. t is unclear exactly where in the Temple they generally played the flute. We do know that the Levites stood on steps. On entering the Temple precinct, the first large enclosed area that Ione encountered was the Women’s Court. Most of us are under the impression that it was reserved only for women, but that’s not true. This large court–which covered almost half of the walled Temple compound–was called Ezrat ha-nashim (azarah meaning “court”) because, although everyone had to pass through it on the way in–men and women--the women could go no further. Men could continue up steps to Ezrat ha-yisr’eilim, the Israelites’ Court, if they had a reason for being there, such as fulfilling a sacrificial