Re: Aleynu -- and the Bismark

[Joe Kurland <ganeydn...>]

>The melody sounds like the Intsy Wintsy Spider to me and I hate hearing
>in a prayer service.  There is a much nicer meoldy, based on simple
>chanting, which was composed by Pinchas Spiro and is used successfully in
>many synagogues, schools and camps. You can get that melody from the
>Weekday Musical Siddur by Pinchas SPiro from the Cantor's Assembly,
>(CAOffice (at) jtsa(dot)edu)
>
>Cantor Sheldon M. Levin
>slevin (at) mciunix(dot)mciu(dot)k12(dot)pa(dot)us

I've always hated hearing Shehu done that  way and now I can tell people
why.  It's not that it's a bad piece of music, I think it's great when my 3
year old comes home from pre-school singing it.  I guess I'm just one of
those grouches who likes it when synagogue music has some relationship to
the modes of our music's history.

It's amazing how something can be so insidiously familiar and out of
context you don't recognize where it came from.  But it's the way people
sing the end of that paragraph that  drives me up the wall.  Ayn od, ayn
od, with the last three notes sounding like  NBC.

Yosl (Joe) Kurland
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Colrain, MA 01340
voice/fax: 413-624-3204