Re: Jewish vs. Xtian music

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

>Christians do not believe this...they believe that JC was G-d...the trinity,
>actually.  This is NOT monotheism.

Just as clarification, the concept of Trinity as three separate entities is
primarily a tenet of the Catholic church.  Other groups within Christianity
tend to imply Jesus when they say "G-d," but avoid an ideological
separation as pronounced as the Trinity concept.

1) point of info: someone had mentioned (a while back) the authorship of
the trad. "maoz tzur" melody and its attribution to a 'drinking song'. It
is my understanding that the melody, in fact, was written by Martin Luther,
an ardent anti-semite. why/how the tune got attatched to the melody?
dunno... i _do_ know that those who know this information are somewhat
uncomfy with using it and favor either the marcello version (italian, very
pretty) or there are some others written by jewish composers. maybe Judah,
in his ethnological research has more details to this one.

I've never heard the Martin Luther authorship story, but I think I can make
a guess as to how that story came to be.  Martin Luther, in developing a
"new" liturgy for his ideology, translated pretty much everything
liturgical he could get his hands on into German, and then, in order to get
things to "catch on" among the populace, tended to create hymns to which he
coupled contemporary popular melodies--your proverbial "German Drinking
Song" among many others.  The general progression becomes a little muddy
here, but I think MY story (which may be just as inaccurate as anyone
else's) has one (or two, or three!) these hymn melodies as the basis for
Ma'oz Tsur.  Luther also composed some of his own melodies, if I remember
correctly; but until I see a primary source with such attribution for Ma'oz
Tsur, I will remain skeptical about that.

(For what it's worth, by the way--remember that when Martin Luther was
creating his liturgy, he was a self-styled Judeo-PHILE.  Only after the
Jews rejected him and his philosophy did he become bitter and angry.  This
clarification serves less to illustrate his tendency to write music for the
Jewish population; rather, it shows the ease with which popularly perceived
"facts" [such as Luther's anti-semitism] can become enmeshed into an
"ironic" explanation.)

As a little aside, I think this is really germane to the recent discussions
of Adom Olam.  Several of the melodies we now consider "Great" examples of
the deep Western musical traditions--set by Bach and many others as
cantatas and other sacred works--were brought into the Lutheran church
because of their popular appeal, from places many would not wish to
associate with the sacred.  (And they certainly had their detractors!)
Today, many say these same tunes are sacred melodies of untouched depth and
understanding.  What does that say about the process of canonization?

Judah Cohen
Music Department
Harvard University
jcohen (at) fas(dot)harvard(dot)edu
(617) 628-4783

"...I do not feel that my research suffered unduly from the fact that I
enjoyed it." -- Daniel Miller, "Modernity--an Ethnographic Approach" (p. 6)