Klezmer: an Exploration of a Genre Through
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4/25/2019 Thesis - Google Docs KLEZMER: AN EXPLORATION OF A GENRE THROUGH ARRANGING AND PERFORMING ____________________ A Thesis Presented to the Honors Tutorial College, Ohio University ____________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Music ____________________ by Nikhita Sheller 26 April 2019 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FaoGp-yvax30xiLZkAlYZuqRvTxvu7Z7Ijk7lDm_VZc/edit 1/32 4/25/2019 Thesis - Google Docs Sheller 2 INTRODUCTION Klezmer is the traditional music of Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews. The word “klezmer” is a combination of two Hebrew words- kle , meaning “vessel,” and zemer , meaning “song.”1 Originally, this word referred to an instrument, but gradually came to describe the musician him/herself.2 By the sixteenth century, the word klezmer was being used by Eastern European Jews to describe the socio-economic group of instrumentalists who performed music at ritual festivities.3 The instrumentation of klezmer is unique; often, a violin or clarinet will be in the leader of the band, with accordion, drums, and brass horns playing an accompaniment role. Starting in the mid-sixteenth century, klezmer musicians and bands performed for Jewish traditional holidays, weddings, and other communal events. Klezmer sings and cries, rejoices and grieves, all in the same breath. This thesis aims to provide a comprehensive guide to skillfully arranging and performing klezmer. This guide was devised based on my own personal experience in arranging and performing klezmer at my lecture recital at Casa Nueva in Athens on March 28th, 2019 at 6:30pm. In order to understand the technique of arranging and performing klezmer, some historical background is necessary. HISTORY A. Early history- Middle Ages to 20 th century 1 Hankus Netsky, “An Overview of Klezmer Music and Its Development in the U.S,” (1998), 5-12. 2 Yale Strom, S hpil: The Art of Playing Klezmer , (Lanham, Scarecrow Press, 2012), 3. 3Joel Rubin. The Art of the Klezmer: Improvisation and Ornamentation in the Commercial Recordings of New York Clarinetists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras , (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, City University London, 2001), 20. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FaoGp-yvax30xiLZkAlYZuqRvTxvu7Z7Ijk7lDm_VZc/edit 2/32 4/25/2019 Thesis - Google Docs Sheller 3 Music has been present in Jewish culture since biblical times. Ancient Jews believed in the spiritual and healing power that came from performing sacred music, an idea reinforced in the Old Testament. The first Jewish musician described in the Old Testament is Jubal, an organist and harpist, son of Lamech.4 Jews in ancient Israel practiced secular music in their daily lives, whereas the Levites (ancient Israelites who descend from the Tribe of Levi) were specifically trained to play sacred music in the Temple. The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE changed the lives of both the Jews and the Levites. The Jews migrated around the world, and the Levites, relieved of their musical duty, stayed to mourn their loss. The rabbis banned all instrumental music on the basis of mourning for Zion until the Messiah would come to rebuild the temple. The rabbis grew to see secular music as frivolous and decadent, like that of Greek culture. These attitudes carried forward in Jewish culture into the seventeenth century and painted klezmer in a negative light.5 During the Christian Middle Ages, traveling musicians played secular music and songs in courts and market squares all throughout Europe. The Jewish musicians among them were called shpilmen (Yiddish for “glee men”). Eventually, these men adapted and picked up new forms of entertainment, such as clowning. They were referred to as letsim , possenreiser, and narim (plural), which were all various words used to describe fools or clowns. Being one of the letsim eventually became comparable to that of the role of a batkhan , a wedding bard, or a marshalik, a wedding marshal.6 The combination of the Jewish community’s disapproval of the above art form and the lack of space to practice it led letsim and shpilmen to erect their own dance halls, called Juden 4 Strom, S hpil, 1. 5 S trom, 1. 6 Strom, 14. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FaoGp-yvax30xiLZkAlYZuqRvTxvu7Z7Ijk7lDm_VZc/edit 3/32 4/25/2019 Thesis - Google Docs Sheller 4 Spielh äuser (plural). These dance halls sprung up throughout Jewish ghettos in Germany, France, Holland and Switzerland. In 1190, Augsburg, Germany hosted one of the first Jewish dance halls.7 Klezmer guilds would be hired to play in the halls or weekly dances. Eventually, this popularity pushed the rabbis to remove some prohibitions on music in their religious community. Women were now allowed (though the prohibition had earlier been ineffective) to dance with men, play instrumental music, and sing in public.8 From the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, letsim (in Germany, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia) played a wide variety of instruments. These instruments included the cittern, lute, zither, shawm, harp, flageolet and harpsichord, dudelzak , Judenleier, positive , Judenharfe , zink and the hackbr ett .9 Similar to a French bagpipe in size, the dudelzak (“tootle sack”) was a melody pipe attached to a sheepskin or goatskin bag. The Judenleier was used mainly by poorer Jewish musicians and resembled a hurdy-gurdy. The positive was a fixed organ. Also known as a Jew’s Harp, the Judenharfe was played mainly to accompany voice. The zink was a leather-wrapped goat’s horn with six holes and a trumpet’s mouthpiece. The hackbrett 10 was most closely-related with a hammer dulcimer. B. 17th Century through 19th century Following the defeat of the Ottoman Turks in 1699, klezmer musicians from southern Poland, Bohemia and Moravia integrated musically with the Roma community or started solo careers in Hungary. Since Constantinople had several major trade routes, klezmer musicians went traveling to pick up tunes (especially from Roma musicians on the road) and spread their 7 Strom, S hpil, 10. 8 Strom, 2 . 9 Strom, 2. 10 Strom, 2-3. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FaoGp-yvax30xiLZkAlYZuqRvTxvu7Z7Ijk7lDm_VZc/edit 4/32 4/25/2019 Thesis - Google Docs Sheller 5 own music. The emancipation of the Jews by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867 caused klezmer musicians of the western part of the empire to seek out better-paying jobs, while others chose to assimilate with the rest of the empire. In Ottoman Moldavia and Czarist Bessarabia, klezmer musicians chose not to assimilate and instead chose a life that was still under the influence of local rabbis or rebes . Work for the klezmer and Roma musicians was abundant.11 C. Twentieth century and forward The largest migration of Jewish people since the Spanish Inquisition happened between 1880 and 1924. Nearly one-third of all Eastern-European Jews fled to the United States. to escape poverty, pogroms, and anti-Semitism. Yiddish culture began to fade as Jews were thrown into industrial American life. Whereas weddings in their home countries had been a week-long celebration, immigrant Jews celebrated smaller weddings in a single day.12 D. Revival In America, klezmer grew out of obscurity to a resurgence in the 1970’s. American Jewish musicians began to draw repertoire from recordings, Yiddish film musicals, published klezmer melody collections, and material transmitted from Eastern European elders. The repertory of klezmer expanded from the traditional, Yiddish-speaking Jewish world to fusion with modern genres and original compositions onto the concert stage.13 E. Timeline of the genre Klezmer is a folk dance-band genre. Sokolow speculates that this music was non-harmonic in its beginnings, and became more dance-band focused later on. He also suggests 11 Strom, S hpil, 9. 12 Strom, 18. 13 A bigail Wood, The Multiple Voices of American Klezmer, 369. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FaoGp-yvax30xiLZkAlYZuqRvTxvu7Z7Ijk7lDm_VZc/edit 5/32 4/25/2019 Thesis - Google Docs Sheller 6 that originally, the musicians all played melody at the same time over drones.14 The mid-nineteenth century introduced new counterpoint and harmony to the genre, and during the forties, klezmer even “swung.” In recent decades, klezmer music has taken after disco and rock, featuring disco beats, electric guitar, horn licks, and bigger drumsets.15 The majority of traditional klezmer music today is in Polish-Ukrainian style, originating from Jewish musicians in Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. In the eastern parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman empire, klezmer music had a more near Eastern sound than other parts of Eastern Europe. The second-most dominant klezmer style, Romanian-Turkish, stemmed from (what is today) Eastern Hungary, the Carpathian region and Romania (including the former provinces of Bukovina and Bessarabia). Klezmer musicians in the Czarist army performed Romanian repertoire that included waltzes and marches. Constantinople’s population of Ashkenazi Jews included many Ukrainian and Polish ancestors who sought refuge during the Chmielnicki pogroms (1648-1649) and Great Deluge.16 The two capitals of these differing styles was Berdiciv, Ukraine, and Iasi, Romania. In Berdiciv during the nineteenth century, some fifty klezmer musicians and virtuosi led bands that grew in popularity throughout the southwest part of Ukraine and Galicia. In Iasi, during the mid-nineteenth century through the beginning World War II, klezmer musicians and bands gained popularity in Moldavia and Bessarabia.17 By the end of the nineteenth century, the majority of klezmer musicians dwelled in the Pale of Settlement in Czarist Russia. This territory comprised about twenty percent of European 14 Pete Sokolow, Klezmer Guide: Piano and Keyboard, Arranging and Orchestration, Transcriptions . Cedarhurst, 2013. 15 Sokolow, 54. 16 Strom, S hpil, 8-9. 17 Strom, 10. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FaoGp-yvax30xiLZkAlYZuqRvTxvu7Z7Ijk7lDm_VZc/edit 6/32 4/25/2019 Thesis - Google Docs Sheller 7 Russia, and was economically depressed.