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Joods

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HYMNOLOGIE

Geschiedenis van de Hymnodie

Oud Joodse Hymnodie
Vroeg Christelijke Hymnodie
Griekse Hymnodie tot 900AD
Latijnse Hymnodie
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Calvinistische (Franse) Psalmodie
Nederlandse Gemeentezang
na de Reformatie

Engelse Hymnodie

Muziekgeschiedenis



Joodse Liturgie: Zangontwikkeling


Joodse liturgische muziek deel II

  •  The Rise of the Synagogue, the Chazzan and Early Chant
  •  Halakhic Prohibitions
  •  Three Genres of Chant
  •  The Tiberias System of Cantillation
  •  The Chazzan and the Liturgical Recitative
  •  The Influence of the Piyyut
  •  Sephardi Culture (Spain and Portugal) and Islamic Influence
  •  Arabic Musical and Poetic Patterns
  •  Nuba and Bakkashot
  •  Paraliturgical Compositions
  •  The Maqam
  •  Judeo-Spanish Songs
  •  The Sacred and the Secular

    The Rise of the Synagogue, the Chazzan and Early Chant

    Even before the Temple was destroyed, synagogues were active throughout the country and in the Diaspora. The worship at the synagogue differed considerably from that of the Temple. Instead of a sacrificial focus synagogue liturgy centered on the reading of Scripture and on prayer, and the officiants were not the priests but the laity.

    Halakhic Prohibitions

    The simplicity of the music in the early synagogue was influenced by the halakhic prohibitions against playing musical instruments, or, under certain circumstances, even singing. These prohibitions stem from three different sources: rules of Sabbath observance; the mourning over the destruction of the Temple; and the struggle against what the Rabbis took to be promiscuity. [1]

    Musical instruments and the shofar were considered inseparable parts of the Sabbath service in the Temple; rabbinic law could do nothing regarding their presence there. But the Rabbis could and did prohibit them outside the Temple for fear that playing an instrument on the Sabbath, a permissible act in and of itself, might lead inadvertently to the musician's tuning it, mending it, or carrying it from one public place to another- all of these being forbidden acts of work. Since the main synagogue service took place on Sabbath mornings, no musical instrument could become an integral component thereof. Even the shofar could not be blown, if Rosh Hashanah occurred on the Sabbath.

    Mourning over the destruction of the Second Temple led to a rabbinic ban on all secular songs and instrumental music. Quoting Hosea (9:1), "Do not rejoice, O Israel, with merriments like the nations," the Rabbis declared: "An ear listening to songs will surely be cut off.... A song in the house means destruction is at its threshold" (Sotah 48a). Concessions were made permitting music, even instrumental music, for the sake of a religious obligation, such as rejoicing with groom and bride; but the Sabbath ban remained, and, in general, music was not favored.

    The only instrument allowed in the synagogue, precisely because of its nonmusical significance, the shofar was blown mainly on Rosh Hashanah, to fulfill the biblical obligation as stated in Leviticus 24:29 and Numbers 29:1. The instrument is also sounded at the end of the concluding service (Ne'illah) on Yom Kippur and after the weekday morning services during Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah. In the Sephardic and Yemenite rites,[2] the penitential services clustered around the High Holy Day season (selichot) feature many shofars blown simultaneously when the thirteen attributes of God (Exod. 34:5-7) are chanted. The awesome sound of the shofar served also to create a mournful atmosphere in services of public fasts, and even to invoke a sense of dread during ceremonies of excommunication.

    Behind both Sabbath regulations and the desire to mourn for the Temple, however, we see the Rabbis' puritanical ethic, with its fight against real or imagined promiscuity, as evident in the extremist talmudic maxim: "A woman's voice is indecency" (Ber. 24a). In the Temple, and later in the synagogue, men and women were separated and only the men sang. In spite of a unique testimony to the contrary among the Therapeutae,[3] the antiphonal singing of men and women became unacceptable in rabbinic worship. "Men singing and women answering is promiscuity; women singing and men answering is like fire set to chaff" (Sotah 48a) [4].

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    Three Genres of Chant

    Early synagogue music consisted of three genres of chant: psalmody, cantillation of Scripture, and the liturgical chant in which the statutory prayers were recited by a local worship leader (generally not a Rabbi) who functioned in many different roles in the early synagogue and was known as the chazzan (a word now reserved for, and translated as, "cantor"). Psalmody, particularly popular in the ancient Palestinian rite, though considerably restricted in the Babylonian rite whence most Western liturgies are derived, was adopted from the Temple and probably was performed in a similar manner. Cantillation of Scripture, a focus of worship on Mondays and Thursdays (the market days), Sabbaths, New Moons, holy days, and fast days, featured the chanting of a verse, followed by its translation into the vernacular and (perhaps) its immediate exegesis to the public. Both the verse and its translation were probably chanted to a simple psalmodic formula. This could have been the origin of the tradition, that later became the norm, of dividing all verses, even the prose ones, into half-verses. Remnants of the early psalmodic concept of cantillation can still be heard in the Torah reading of the Yemenite and some other Middle Eastern Jewish communities [5]. Some Yemenite congregations still retain the custom of reading and translating. Each verse is read once in Hebrew, by an adult, and a second time in Aramaic, by a child. The readers use different psalmodic formulas to differentiate the source from the translation.

    Current practice in both Jewish and Christian worship and the structure of liturgical texts suggest that liturgical chant consisted of simple melodies that were constructed as patchworks of traditional musical motives. Two of the three genres, namely, psalmody and centonization (melodic patchwork), had their counterparts in the early Christian church and became permanent elements in the chants of the Eastern and Western churches. [6]

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    The Tiberias System of Cantillation

    All ancient cultures, rabbinic Judaism among them, preferred to chant their sacred texts rather than to recite them. Talmudic tradition (Meg. 3a, P.T. Meg. 4a) holds that the cantillation of the Pentatuech was practiced even in the Second Temple. But various cantillation methods were crystalized only slowly, during a period of over eight hundred years.

    The liturgical recitation of Scripture in the synagogue service demanded the setting of norms for the proper chanting of the text. The scrolls used for liturgical reading contained only an unpunctuated and unvocalized text, so that the slightest change of a vowel or a misunderstanding of the proper division of the verse could introduce a new and unwelcome meaning to the reading. On the other hand, marking the scrolls with any additional signs was forbidden. Thus the right interpretation of the text had to be transmitted orally for many centuries.

    The invention of the codex, the bound book, introduced a change, in that it became permissible to copy the sacred text into the codex with additional signs to aid the reader. One could not chant from the codex in public, but one could study the proper interpretation of the text from the bound book and memorize the signs in the codex before chanting from the scroll during services. [7]

    From the seventh to the ninth century C.E., various schools of grammarians in Babylonia and Palestine attempted to build a coherent system of symbols for the entire text of the Bible. These attempts culminated during the ninth century in the development of the most sophisticated system by the Jassoretic school of Tiberias. [8]

    The grammarians of this school defined four objectives for their system: (1) to provide the text with proper vocalization; (2) to indicate to the reader what syllable to accentuate; (3) to divide and subdivide the verses according to syntactical and grammatical considerations; (4) to indicate the desired musical patterns of the traditional chant. These goals were achieved by furnishing the biblical text with the double system of nikkud and te'amim. The nikkud signs were written above, below, and inside the letters to indicate the vowels and the special pronunciation of some consonants. The te'amim signs were usually placed above or below the accented syllables, and they further divided and subdivided the verses, indicating the desired musical motives to which the text was to be chanted. The names and some of the graphical shapes of the te'amim were derived from hand motions (known as chironomy) which were used by prompters to remind the reader of the appropriate musical patterns. The original Tiberias signs have been preserved in a few excellent manuscript codices of the tenth and eleventh centuries,[9] whence new editions of the Hebrew Bible are derived.

    The Tiberias Massoretic system was universally accepted by all Jewish communities; but different musical interpretations of the te'amim developed through the ages. No community can claim today that it has preserved the ancient melodic patterns that were practiced by the Tiberian grammarians. [10] Eight different regional traditions of cantillation coexist now. [11] Some of them, like the Yemenite tradition, antedate the Tiberias system and ignore some of its components; others, such as the eastern European Ashkenazi tradition, follow the signs meticulously. This, however, does not mean that all the Ashkenazi musical patterns emerged the minute the theory of the te'amim was accepted by Europeans. On the contrary, some of their musical patterns developed much later, during the past four centuries. [12]

    Within the eight regional traditions one can further identify more specific local styles of cantillation belonging to the various countries or districts of the region. In addition, each of these traditions uses different musical systems for the various books of the Bible. Thus, for instance, the eastern European Ashkenazi tradition, which is practiced in most synagogues in the United States, consists of six different musical systems: (1) regular reading of the Pentateuch; (2) High Holy Day reading of the Pentateuch; (3) the Prophets; (4) the scroll of Esther; (5) the scrolls of Ruth, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes; (6) the scroll of Lamentations. [12]

    Since the liturgical reading of Scripture requires much knowledge and preparation, it is relegated in most Jewish communities to a professional reader called a ba'al keriah (literally, master of reading). Some communities of North Africa, Yemen, and Italy still follow the custom of using an assistant (somekh), whose hand motions prompt the reader.

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    The Chazzan and the Liturgical Recitative

    The early synagogue developed the role of prayer leader, or precentor, a knowledgeable man who was conceptualized theologically as serving as the "agent of the congregation" (sheliach tsibbur) in voicing the statutory liturgy before God. Though not necessarily possessing the most beautiful voice, the precentor was to be a paragon of learning and piety. Moreover, since prayer texts were transmitted orally until the fourth or the fifth century, precentors had to possess a strong memory for mandatory texts and an ability to improvise musical settings for them. The precentor chanted the prayers to simple traditional melodic patterns that developed locally but were then disseminated among other communities by wandering cantors.

    We think today of the chazzan (the cantor) as the precentor. But in the early synagogue the chazzan functioned in many roles before specializing as the leader of prayer. When the professional cantor emerged as primarily a singer is not clear, though the rise of the specialized piyyut (see below) may have been the primary factor, in that the piyyut, being complex poetry, required specialized education on the part of anyone charged with chanting it. [13] Then again, distinctions in musical ability have always been the norm. Various passages of the Talmud require two precentors for the morning services, and it seems that the second one was usually the better singer. Placing the better singer after a nonprofessional remains the custom today in most traditional Jewish communities, which still differentiate the lay precentor (ba'al hatefillah, master of prayer) from a professional or semiprofessional cantor (chazzan).

    Whenever it was that the post of cantor developed into a primarily musical role, good cantors were in great demand, and they went from community to community, shaping regional repertories of melodies and melodic fragments that eventually crystallized into fixed patterns that individual communities viewed as sacred and obligatory. Early forms of such chants were preserved in all Jewish communities, but we can never be certain about the antiquity of any particular chant. Simple tunes may be ancient, or they may be later simplifications of more complicated chants.

    The synagogal chant repertories are known as the collective noun, nusach. It serves today as the entire repertory for the lay precentor, but as the mere basis for the liturgical recitative of the professional cantor, whose liturgical art is called chazzanut. It makes use of the traditional melodic patterns — some of them fixed, others flexible or modular — in order to create an artistic musical expression of the form or content of the prayer. Particularly prominent in the Ashkenazi tradition, liturgical recitative involves some improvisation and artistic freedom; yet at its best, it is firmly bound to the traditional melodic formulas that in turn are connected to the liturgical function of the prayer and its calendrical setting.

    In the Sephardi tradition, cantors tended to emphasize diction and accurate Hebrew pronunciation, rather than vocal embellishment. Where such ornamentation developed into chazzanut, however, as in the Ashkenazi synagogue, ambivalent feelings developed towards cantorial artistry. At its best, chazzanut expresses sublimely religious sensitivity, even if the style is suspected of deteriorating into a display of cantonal vanity and of opening the back door through which foreign melodies may infiltrate sacred worship. Severe criticisms of chazzanut abound in the rabbinic literature of many countries and various periods from the ninth century to this day. [14]

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    The Influence of the Piyyut

    As synagogues grew in importance, their services tended gradually toward greater fixity, under the standardizing principles espoused by the Rabbis. Though no uniform text was universally accepted by all Jews, local customs emerged at least by the fifth century C.E. [14] Simultaneously, however, increasingly complex poetry was devised either as artistic additions to the fixed prayers or, on some occasions, actually as substitutes for portions of them. Precentors thus composed and sang new poems, called piyyutim, which combined references to the occasions on which they were sung, the relevant liturgical rubric in which they were placed, and the homiletic interpretation of the lectionary. Some of the poems had short refrains for congregational singing; others had more complicated responsive texts that were probably sung by a small choir. [15] The insertion of these poems into the prayers raised heated rabbinic debates [16]; yet the people loved this new art and cherished its singer-composers, the payyetanim.

    The early "preclassical" piyyut was built of lines containing two or three words each, or of lines combining two and three-word segments. The number of syllables and the meter were not fixed; they often changed from one line to the next. The music was probably built up from melodic formulas with fixed motives for the.stressed syllables and flexible auxiliary notes to accommodate the varying number of unstressed syllables. Such melodies are still used for these poems. That any melodies are the original ones is, however, highly doubtful.

    The classic piyyut of poets like Eleazar Kallir (c. sixth-seventh centuries) is built around new principles of rhyming and strophe, while the variable number of syllables within the lines remained. Musically, this structure called for a long melody to accommodate one strophe and perhaps another melody for a refrain, when needed. Since the poems were sung by the professional payyetan, it is safe to assume on the basis of common Middle Eastern practices that each strophe was sung to an embellished variation of the melody. The refrain sung by the congregation or the choir had a fixed melody. However, a common feature of refrains of this sort is that they are sung in heterophony; that is to say, the congregation never sings in exact unison, but different members of the congregation sing their own private versions of the melody, which together form a simultaneous rhythmical cloud of variations. Again, melodies to classical piyyutim exist in various Jewish communities, yet none can be identified as the original tune of a specific poem.

    We do, however, have some evidence of what such early music may have sounded like, the best-known example being a melody found in a Genizah fragment of the twelfth century. [17] The text is a piyyut for Shavuot or Simchat Torah by an unknown poet named Amar, with music notated in old, nonstaved neumes by Obadiah, an Italian priest who converted to Judaism at the beginning of the century and lived in Egypt after 1121.

    The melody and another one notated by the same hand [17] have been the subjects of scholarly debate since their discovery. Possibly the melodies are original compositions by Obadiah and were perhaps influenced, like the notation itself, by Gregorian chant; yet they may be transcriptions of Jewish melodies that Obadiah heard in the East. [18]

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    Sephardi Culture (Spain and Portugal) and Islamic Influence

    It is convenient to distinguish two liturgical-musical traditions in Jewish culture. Ashkenazi Jews hailed largely from Italy and began settling the Rhineland by the ninth century. By the eleventh century, they had already established their cultural hegemony there, whence they spread north and west to France and England, south and east to other German-speaking lands, and to Poland, Russia, and the various territories that constituted the Hapsburg Empire. By contrast, the Sephardi community was established in Spain, where it enjoyed cultural efflorescence first under Moslems and then again, after the reconquest, under Christians. The expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 resulted in Sephardi culture being carried elsewhere, to some extent northward to other parts of the Spanish Empire, where it was practiced secretly until it could resurface — in the Protestant Netherlands, for instance — but primarily eastward throughout the Mediterranean world, where it eventually adapted to various Islamic cultural patterns. We have already mentioned this or that aspect of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi music. This section and the next trace these two major cultures in more detail.

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    Arabic Musical and Poetic Patterns

    Arabic culture made an indelible impression on Jewish poetry and music. Initially, the influence was felt in Jewish theoretical treatises on music, as, for example, the last chapter of Saadiah Gaon's Sefer Emunot Vedeot (Book of Beliefs and Opinions, 933 C.E.), which deal with the eight rhythmical modes according to the Hellenized Arabic theory of the time. Later, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Spain and elsewhere, Hebrew poetry was written according to Arabic patterns and was structured after the Arabic qasida or muwashah forms. Poets like Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and Yehudah Halevi wrote secular and sacred poetry according to the new patterns established by Dunash Ibn Labrat (tenth century). These patterns were based on a Hebrew adaptation of the Arabic principle of differentiating short from long syllables [19], a consideration that now had to be added to such older factors as rhyming patterns, acrostic signatures, and the requisite allusions to biblical verses. The secular poems were recited or sung at social events; the sacred ones, chanted or sung during religious services. In the synagogue as at home, the poems were sung to Arabic musical patterns.

    As the new poetic beauty captured the public, Sephardi prayer books blossomed with sacred poems which are sung even today with great enthusiasm by all the Sephardi, North African, Yemenite, and Middle Eastern communities. Long-lost original melodies have been replaced by locally popular substitutes, some of which adhere strictly to the rhythmical patterns of the poems, others of which do not. [20] Sephardi communities thus established congregational singing as a major characteristic of their services. By contrast, in the Ashkenazi communities, where this poetry was unknown, cantorial recitative thrived while congregation singing was minimal until the late nineteenth century.

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    Nuba and Bakkashot

    After their expulsion from Spain in 1492 Sephardi Jews remained faithful to some features of Arabic-Andalusian music and poetry. Hebrew poetry and synagogue melodies were constructed according to the Andalusian nuba, an extended suite form, unified by specific melodic modes and rhythmic patterns, and using both songs and instrumental pieces, except in certain circumstances — e.g., on Shabbat, when (as we saw) instruments are not permitted — when vocal imitations of instruments occurs. [21] Such songs are still created by the Jews of Morocco and are sung at the Friday night Bakkashot services (a Sephardi liturgical practice derived from Kabbalistic theory, featuring the stylized singing of piyyutim in the hours after midnight). A "neo-nuba" style was created during this century in Morocco and Israel by the payyetan R. David Bouzagio and his disciples. [21]

    As the popularity of the Bakkashot service indicates, Arabic influence reemerged in the last decades of the sixteenth century in Palestine and Syria, under the influence of the Lurianic school of Kabbalah in Safed. Among other things, an attempt was made to modernize Hebrew poetry by using the old Arabic meters and combining them with the rhythm and style of popular Arabic tunes of the day. Poets such as Menachem Lonzano (1550 — before 1624) and Israel Najara (1555?-1625?) provided new sacred Hebrew poems to well-known Arabic and Turkish tunes. These were sung as ceremonial Sabbath table songs and they even penetrated the synagogue Services. [22] The trend still continues. In the Bakkashot services of the Aleppo Jews in Jerusalem, New York, and elsewhere, sacred poems are sung to the latest tunes of Arabic popular singers as heard on radio and television. [23]

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    Paraliturgical Compositions

    In Yemen, the favored form of paraliturgical songs is the Arabic-inspired sequence of Nashid, Shirah, and Hallel. The sequence begins with a free and florid solo recitative; continues with a strict rhythmical song in Arabic meter, sung and danced to by a small group of men; and concludes with a florid heterophonic recitation of sacred verses by all the male participants. [24] Also in Yemen, as in other Arabic countries, Jewish women adopted songs of non-Jewish women, or improvised Judeo-Arabic folk poems to rural Arabic tunes, using these in women's life-cycle ceremonies, such as the chinnah ceremony preceding the wedding, a Sephardi custom in which female friends and relatives of the bride meet to paint her hands with red henna as a means of warding off the evil eye.

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    The Maqam

    Arabic art music, and especially the model system of the maqam with its numerous scales and melodic patterns penetrated every musical activity of the Jews in the Moslem countries, so much so that special synagogue calendars were constructed to enable the cantors to sing their services each Sabbath according to a different maqam. The system has even taken over the cantillation of the Pentateuch, in that Jews who hail from Moslem lands chant the te'amim according to melodic patterns of a maqam called siga. [25]

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    Judeo-Spanish Songs

    The coexistence of Jews and Gentiles in the Diaspora, even in times of persecution, enriched both cultures. Medieval Spain was a special case in point. Under the Moslem rulers, the Jews developed the rich, new poetry that was influenced by the Arabic poetic concept; under the Christian rulers, they developed a rich treasury of songs in the Judeo-Spanish dialect sometimes called Judeo-Espal or Ladino. Many of these songs originated in the Christian kingdoms of Castile, Leon, or Aragon and were originally gentile folk songs and ballads. Both the gentile and Jewish songs were preserved by the Jews, mostly by Jewish women, in the various countries where they lived after their expulsion from Spain. Many more songs were created in the new countries, especially in the Balkans, in Turkey, and in Morocco. The new creations were also in the ancient Spanish dialect with a mixture of words in the local languages.

    A rich and beautiful melodic heritage has been transmitted with these Judeo-Spanish songs. [26] The melodies range from the simplest rhythmical dance songs to the most sophisticated recitative-like love songs. Scholars tend to doubt whether this melodic treasure represents the preexpulsion musical heritage in all its purity. In all probability, the Judeo-Spanish melodic repertory is rich precisely because it was able to absorb many local idioms that developed in various countries after 1492.

    Research has not yet exhausted the repertory's many forms, but four main genres are discernible thus far:

    1. romances: narrative, sometimes epic, ballads based on medieval knightly tales and sung to repeated four-line musical stanzas
    2. complas: songs for the celebration of the Jewish holidays, or songs that accompany important life-cycle events, consisting of long, asymmetrical stanzas
    3. canticas: life-cycle songs in simple, popular style and short stanzas, sometimes with a refrain, sung to lively, rhythmical melodies and at times accompanied by a tambourine
    4. endechas: dirges and other songs of mourning
    Melodies of the last three genres were easily adapted for liturgical use: complas are reserved largely for paraliturgical functions like Sabbath meals, and a limited number of synagogue services, such as the reading of the scroll of Esther on Purim; cantica melodies are adapted to the texts of Sabbath and festival hymns, such as Adon Olam, Yigdal, and El Adon, or even to the Kaddish: endecha patterns lend themselves during the Ninth of Av services and in the story of the binding of Isaac that is chanted before the shofar blowing on Rosh Hashanah.

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    The Sacred and the Secular

    Sephardi music is thus characterized absence of a sharp dividing line between the secular and the sacred. The practice of adopting secular melodies to synagogue use is so widespread that research into Sephardi sacred song often begins by locating secular Judeo-Spanish sources first, and only secondarily discovering how they have been adapted for sacred use.

    Credits

    This page is reproduced, in three parts, by permission of the author and publisher in three parts from "Jewish Liturgical Music from the Bible to Hasidims" by Eliyahu Schleifer, in Sacred Sound and Social Change: Liturgical Music in Jewish and Christian Experience published by University of Notre Dame Press. This book is available in our liturgical web store (learn more here).

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    [1] Cf. Aharon Kahn, "Music in Halakhic Perspective (Part I), Journal of Jewish Music anduturgy 9 (1986-1987): 55-72.

    [2] See n. 4, above (Jewish Liturgical Music, Part I). The Ashkenazi/Sephardi cultural differentiation can be further broken down into smaller, more precise categories, often identical with a geographical taxonomy (see Lawrence A. Hoffman, Beyond the Text: A Holistic Approach to Liturgy, Jewish Literature and Culture [Bloomington, Ind., 1987], pp. 46-59). The Yemenite rite is thus a subsection of Sephardi culture.

    [3] De vita comtemplativa, on the Therapeutae sect.

    [4] On subsequent halakhic rulings, see Baruch David Schreiber "The Woman's Voice in the Synagogue," Journal of Jewish Music and Liturgy 7 (1984-1985): 27-32. The Christian dictum, Mulier taceat in ecclesia ("Let woman be silent in church"), may have had a similar effect in the medieval church worship; but its original source and meaning were different. It is based on I Cor. 14:34, and is related not to eroticism in the female voice but to the duty of women to obey men and not to speak up in public meetings. See Gedaliah Elkoshi, Thesaurus of Latin Proverbs and Idioms [With Hebrew Translations and Annotations] (Jerusalem, 1981), p. 286.

    [5] On the Yemenite cantillation of the Pentateuch, see Uri Sharvit, "The Realization of Biblical Cantillation Symbols (Te'amim) in the Jewish Yemenite Tradition," Yuval 4 (1982): 179-210.

    [6] On the liturgical and musical relations between the synagogue and the church, see, e.g., Eric Werner's The Sacred Bridge, vol. 1 (New York, 1959); and The Sacred Bridge: The Interdependence of Liturgy and Music in Synagogue and Church during the First Millennium, vol. 2 (New York, 1984). While Werner's ideas are intriguing and thought provoking, his syntheses are speculative. See Peter Jeffrey, "Werner's The Sacred Bridge, Volume 2: A Review Essay," The Jewish Quarterly Review 77/4 (April 1987): 283-98. For a more modest, but more successful reconstruction, see Hanoch Avenary, "Contacts between Church and Synagogue Music," Proceedings of the World Jewish Congress on Jewish Music (Jerusalem 1978) (Tel Aviv, 1982), pp. 89-107.

    [7] This is still the custom today. The Pentateuchal reading, though prepared from a printed Bible, is chanted from the scroll. Other readings (generally the prophetic lection) are permitted from printed volumes. At specified holiday periods, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther (known to Jewish tradition as the five scrolls) are read from scrolls which, however, are differentiated visually from Torah scrolls in that they are constructed differently.

    [8] The most exhaustive studies of the Tiberias system in English are still William Wickes's books Ta'amei Kaf Alef Sefarim [The Accents of the Twenty One Books] and Ta'amei Emet [The Accents of the Poetic Books] (Oxford, 1887 and 1881); reprinted together, with a new prolegomenon by Aron Dotan (New York, 1970). The best new study is Mordecai Breuer, Ta'amei Hamikra Bekhaf Alef Sefarim Uvesifrei Emet (Jerusalem, 1989).

    [9] The best known are the Aleppo "Crown," c. 920 C.E. (now in the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem) and the Leningrad Codex, c. 1010 C.E.

    [10] For a recent speculative, but highly intriguing, attempt to reconstruct the original musical patterns of the Tiberias system, see Dalia Cohen and Daniel Weil, "Progress in Deductive Research on the Original Performance of the Tiberian Accents," Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 265-86. See also their forthcoming article, "The Scale System of the Tiberian Masoretic Accents," Orbis Musicae 10 (in preparation).

    [11] See the present writer's classification in "Cantillation," Encyclopedia of Judaism (Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 148-49. A different classification into five regions is suggested by Avigdor Herzog in "Masoretic Accents (Musical Rendition)," Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), vol. 11, cols. 1098-1111.

    [12] See Hanoch Avenary, The Ashkenazi Tradition of Biblical Chant between 1500 and 1900. Documentation and Musical Analysis, Documentation, and Studies, no. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1978).

    [13] For a detailed description of the musical systems (according to one interpretation) see A. W. Binder, Biblical Chant (New York, 1959). For one Ashkenazi system, see Solomon Rosowsky, The Cantillation of the Bible: The Five Books of Moses (New York, 1957).

    [14] Cf. Idelsohn, Jewish Music, pp. 108-9; Eric Werner, A Voice Still Heard: The Sacred Song of the Ashkenazi Jews (University Park and London, 1976), pp. 9-13.

    [15] For rabbinic writings on chazzanut, see Israel Adler, ed., Hebrew Writings Concerning Music in Manuscripts and Printed Books from Geonic Times up to 1800 (Munich, 1975).

    [16] For process of liturgical standardization, which continued until the eleventh century, cf. Joseph Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud (Berlin and New York, 1977); Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Canonization of the Synagogue Service (Notre Dame, 1979), especially ch. 11; and most recently, the summary essay by Stefan Reif, "The Early History of Jewish Worship," in the first volume of this series, Paul Bradshaw and Lawrence A. Hoffman, eds., The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship, Two Liturgical Traditions, Vol. 1 (Notre Dame, 1990).

    [17] For the standard account of the development of the art of the piyyut, see Ezra Fleischer, Shirat Hakodesh Ha'ivrit Bimei Habeinayim (Jerusalem, 1975). But see also Alfred Sendrey, Music of the Jews in the Diaspora (up to 1800) (New York, 1970), pp. 150-65.

    [18] See, e.g., Hoffman, Canonization, ch. 4.

    [19] JTS, Adler Collection, ms 4096b.

    [20] Cambridge TS K5/41.

    [21] The melodic structure of Mi al har horev, for instance, is indeed such as one would expect from a classic piyyut setting (see example 4). See also Idelsohn, Jewish Music, ch. 7, where some melodies deviate from the poetic rhythms or contradict them. See Israel Adler's musical transcription in Ariel 15 (1966): 32-33. A performance of this version is included in the recording Synagogal Art Music XIIth-XVIIIth Centuries, Anthology of Musical Traditions in Israel (Jerusalem, 1979), AMTI 7901. A different musical transcription has been suggested by Hanoch Avenary, Hebrew Hymn Tunes: The Rise and Development of a Musical Tradition (Tel Aviv, 1971), pp. 12-17.

    [22] Syllables with the semivowel sheva, or with its compounds (chataf) were considered short; those with any other vowel were deemed long.

    [23] Bouzaglo's singing is recorded in the album Chants hreux de la tradition des Juifs marocains (Tel Aviv, 1984), RCA RL90034.

    [24] On the nuba, see the classic work, Alexis Chottin, Tableau de la musique morocaine (Paris, 1939); and, more recently, Peter Schuyler, "Andalusian Music of Morocco," The World of music 21 (1978): 33-46. On the influence of the nuba on Jewish music, see Amnon Shdoah, "La nuba et la célébration des bakkashot au Maroc," in M. Abitbul, ed., Judaisme d'Afrique du Nord (Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 108-13. See also Abraham Eilam-Amzallag, Modal Aspects of the Singing of Supplications (Bakashot) among Moroccan Jews (Ph.D. Diss., Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1986), 2 vols. (in Hebrew, with an English summary).

    [25] Bouzaglo's singing is recorded in the album Chants hreux de la tradition des Juifs marocains (Tel Aviv, 1984), RCA RL90034.

    [26] The most famous song of this kind is Najara's Yah ribon olam which is modeled on a popular Arabic love song and has become a universally popular Sabbath table song. The original melody of the song is lost.

    [27] See Ruth Katz, "The Singing of Baqqashot by Aleppo Jews: A Study in Musical Acculturation," Acta Musicologica 40 (1968): 65-85. Bakkashot songs from a Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn are available on the record album Pizmon: Syrian-Jewish Religious and Social Song, Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Sarah Weiss, eds. (Ho- Ho-Kus, N.J.: 1985), Meadowlark 105.

    [28] See Yehiel Adaki and Uri Sharvit, eds., A Treasury of Yemenite Jewish Chants (Jerusalem, 1981), especially nos. 68-83. For studio recordings of Yemenite paraliturgical songs, with explanations and transcriptions, see Naomi and Avner Bahat, eds., Jewish Yemenite Songs from the Diwan: Anthology of Musical Traditions in Israel (Jerusalem, 1982), AMTI 8201.

    [29] On the Maqam in general, see Amnon Shiloah, "Arab Music," in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 514-39; see also Shiloah's article, "The Arabic Concept of Mode, " Journal of the American Musicological Society 34 (1981): 19-42. For the influence of the maqam on Jewish music, see Abraham Zvi Idelsohn, Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies, vol. 4 (1932), and preface to the German and Hebrew eds., ch. 4. The latest contribution to the field is Edwin Seroussi, "The Turkish Makam in the Musical Culture of the Ottoman Jews: Sources and Examples," Israel Studies in Musicology 5 (1990): 43-68.

    [30] See Israel J. Katz, Judaeo-Spanish Traditional Ballads Collected in Jerusalem: An Ethnomusicological Study, 2 vols. (Los Angeles, 1967). Susana Weich-Shahak, Sephardic Songs from the Balkans: Anthology of Musical Traditions in Israel, AMTI 8001 (Jerusalem, 1980), contains original recordings of secular songs and examples of their adaptation to sacred texts. The most recent publication in the field is Weich-Shahak's Judeo-Spanish Moroccan Songs for the Life Cycle: Recordings, Transcriptions, and Annotations (Jerusalem, 1989).

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