[HANASHIR:4890] Re: hatikvah

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

My two cents:  while I have not seen the pieces suggested in Hope Ehn's 
letter, I would be highly suspicious of their veracity.  She's great with
dates and "sources," but seems to be really lacking in hard proof.  There is
a relatively popular approach in musicological studies which seems to be
applied frequently in attempts to create musical links between published
music and "folktunes."  In informal terms, the best way to say it is the:
"this sounds like it, so it must be the same thing" approach.  Eric Werner
used it with great frequency to "prove" that Jewish melodies and Gregorian
chants were "related" to each other.  This approach has also been used in
studies of "Maoz Tsur," among others; and it remains in use today (many, I'm
sure are familiar with that old Barechu/"It Ain't Necessarily So"
"connection").  [For whatever it's worth, similar approaches are also used
to connect African musics with African-American musics, frequently in order
to bandage over a complete absence of factual information.]

With Ma'oz Tsur, the rub often comes in the "B" section ("L'eit Achim
Matbeach. . ."); it is my guess that such is the case with these "studies"
of Hatikvah.  People, when they make their comparisons, seem so intent on
the "first eight measures" that they don't really notice what comes
afterward (I don't have the recording with me right now, but isn't that the
case with the Smetana, too?).  Likewise with this "court of Mantua"
argument.  I have some experience with the time period, and it's pretty well
known; why, then has there been little (if any) mention of this "discovery"
in Jewish music literature?

One other flaw, in my opinion:  the only things people really look for in
the Hatikvah tune to prove similarity seem to me to be:
1.  An initial run up the first five degrees of the minor scale.
2.  A rise to the sixth scale degree (or the octave) before returning to 5
to end the phrase.
3.  A descent down from 5-1 at half the speed of the initial ascent.
4.  A vaguely similar rhythm (though even this is sometimes not necessarily)
Everything else is forgiven, it seems, in the interest of similarity.  This
makes for great "genealogical" lines (nice to know Monteverdi got in there,
along with Salomon Rossi [who, incidentally, did work at the same court,
though there is no evidence they ever met each other]), but rather
unfulfilling research.

I have no answers myself, but I am quite impressed with the range of
folkloric and semi-historical responses people have heard and picked up.
Seems like in the absence of hard data, there is still a real need for a
"story" behind the tune.  Will a definitive "missing link" ever be found?  I
have no idea; but the stated attempts are in themselves important as a
fingerprint of the search for meaning we seem to embark upon for a tunes of
particular significance.

Be well.
Judah. (Who's feeling a little curmudgeonly at the moment.)



----------
From: "Adrian Durlester" <durleste (at) home(dot)com>
To: <hanashir (at) shamash(dot)org>
Subject: [HANASHIR:4886] Re: hatikvah
Date: Mon, Jan 10, 2000, 6:51 PM


It's not cut and dry. Here are two articles I retrieved courtesy of the
Jewish-Music list:

>From Jewish-Music, 12/29/99

The tune is *much* older than "The Moldau" from Smetana's "Ma Vlast," and

seems to have come from further west. This is what, as a musicologist, I

have been able to discover about the origin of the "Hatikvah" tune:

"Hatikvah"/"La Montovana" FAQ (first written and posted in June, 1997)

The first known appearance of the "HaTikvah" tune was in an intermedio of

1608, performed during celebrations of a Gonzaga wedding in Mantua.

Several composers collaborated on the music for this performance: they

were Claudio Monteverdi, his brother Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, Giovanni

Gastoldi, and Salamone Rossi. Which composer used the tune is not known,

although the fact that there are other tunes also called by some version

of the name "Mantovana," and that some of them are known to be by

Gastoldi, is suggestive. (The lutenist James Tyler attributes it to

Gastoldi on stylistic grounds, and that seems plausible to me.) There is

no evidence that this music was a setting of a pre-existent tune rather

than a new composition -- we simply don't know.

The tune became very popular: it was used for Italian madrigals (Cataneo),

solo songs ("Giuseppino"), guitar settings (Pico), instrumental settings

in Renaissance style (Zanetti, Giamberti, anonymous), violin divisions

[i.e., variations] (anonymous), trio sonatas (Marini), and was published

in England in Playford's collections of country dances. It is not known

where Smetana (1824-1884) got the tune, but he seems to have believed that

it was a Czech folk tune.

It is also not known for sure where Naftali Herz Imber (1856-1909) got the

tune, to which he wrote only the words (being a poet, not a composer).

Edith Gerson-Kiwi, in "Grove" (Vol. 9, p. 359), refers to the tune as a

"Romanian folksong." It is quite possible that Imber simply took the tune

from the "Moldau" movement of Smetana's "Ma Vlast" (composed in 1874), and

no evidence whatsoever that he did not do so.

Hope Ehn <ehn (at) world(dot)std(dot)com>

(M.M., music history, New England Conservatory;



ABD musicology, Brandeis University)



And from:

From: http://www.jewishsf.com/bk980605/supphow.htm



The melody also has its own story. Imber wrote a poem without music. Various
attempts were made to set it to music. The first, apparently, was done by a
composer named Leon Igly. He had been brought to Zichron Ya'acov by Baron
Edmond de Rothschild for the express purpose of learning farming. He tried
to learn, but didn't like it, so a Rothschild aide gave him a room in Rishon
LeZion and handed him a copy of Imber's book of Hebrew poetry, Barkai
(Morning Star).

Igly immediately turned to "Tikvatenu," in its nine-verse version. In what
he certainly thought was a stroke of creative genius, Igly wrote a different
tune for each stanza.

Teaching the public to sing the unofficial anthem was so difficult that
children who succeeded in getting through all nine verses used to get a
prize of chocolate. But all the chocolate in the world couldn't make Igly's
masterpiece catch on. He returned to Russia, and the melody was lost.

Soon thereafter, a new melody emerged in Rishon LeZion, the melody Jews all
over will probably be singing on Independence Day. Where did it come from?
Some trace it to "The Bohemian Symphony," by the Czech composer Smetana, but
others say it is based on the Sephardic melody for Psalm 117 in the Hallel
service. Still others say it bears a striking resemblance to a Romanian folk
song.

"Tikvatenu" got a real boost back in 1890, when Rehovot was established.
Each new Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael chose a song or poem, and the
people who were building Rehovot chose "Tikvatenu."