Re: Northeast activities

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

>Zamir = high German style??  I sang with Zamir for a few years and while they
>may occasionally do a "high German style" piece, their repertoire includes
>everything from Rossi to Paul Ben Haim and other modern Israeli composers to
>Copland & Bernstein to David Burger, whose gorgeous commissioned pieces have
>long been Zamir favorites.

I preface this by saying that just because I'm an academic doesn't mean I'm
"right."  My only authority is what I've read, and while that may count for
something, it don't mean a heck of a lot more than that.

I had no intention of limiting the Zamir Chorale's repertoire by my
comments.  To me,"*derived* from high German style" (see my original note)
means:

an organized group of people standing on stage, delivering a song in
harmony which is usually composed and notated, and then learned and
rehearsed beforehand, to an audience who comes to hear this group perform.
In this setting, singing what is not on the page is frequently described as
"wrong," etc.  It is really the *formality* I see as indicative of this
style--I use the word "high" for emphasis.  In my opinion, the first Jewish
chorales (which seemed to be formed as such in Eastern Europe) took a great
deal of their claim for legitimacy from the German choral tradition of
performance and composition.  This is continued in Zamir.

As far as composers are concerned, there is a generalization in musicology
that from Bach's time on, the avant garde of composition (and thus the
styles of art music) came almost consistently from Germany (Beethoven,
Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Weill, Schoenberg, etc.); this tradition is
frequently connected with today's "classical music" composition schools
(now frequently known as "Art Music").  Note that nearly every music
student still must study the harmony of Bach and the counterpoint of Fux.
This "composed art music" tradition (which, of course, includes Sulzer and
Lewandowski) is continued in Israel by Ben-Haim (who was educated in
Munich) and others (there's a great book by Philip Bohlman ["The Land Where
Two Streams Flow"] which explains this connection in much greater detail);
in America by Copland (who studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger),
Bernstein, and Berger.  Again, this does not mean that the music all comes
from one style (i.e., compositions don't all have to sound like Bach), but
rather compositions tend to exhibit several similar idiosyncratic
approaches to the creation and performance venue of the music. (Including
specific systematic background methods of harmony and counterpoint,
frequent use and embellishment of "folk" tunes, and a tendency to use a
document [i.e., notation] as the primary form of information storage).

Please excuse me if I'm wordy.  I'm studying for general exams right now,
and if nothing else, this helping me to organize my own thoughts for
September.  I've got my own thoughts on Rossi too (and his connection with
German art music--don't think I forgot him), but I'll wait on that.

Be well.

Judah.

Judah Cohen
Music Department
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
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)