Re: ¿origins of klezmer tonality?

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Hi Itzik-Leyb,

  on the other hand, chord changes in the
> right place can be astonishingly beautiful, and as dictated by the logic
> of the modes they result in a harmonic system that is quite different
> from the western.

While in Romania last year, talking to contra (chord violin) players and
their Primas' (lead violinists) I was on the trail of the answer to the
question, *when did Klezmorim discover harmony?*. I assumed that if I
could find out when Romanians and Gypsies started changing chords, it
could be used analogously for Jews.  Well, as it turns out, there are no
definite answers, but rather only elusive tendencies.

One key lies in tracing the contra function of the violin. I have been
told that Jews were the ones who started shaving down their fiddle
bridges, taking off the E string and playing with the instrument against
the chest, and Gypsies followed, though we will never know who really
*invented* it. But whenever this happened would imply some form of
harmonic playing, regardless of how primitive. It could have been as
early as the 18th century. I asked an old Gypsy accordionist who also
plays contra and played with the Hubertus Klezmorim from his region to
tell me how Jews used to play contra before the war, and he told me they
played much more simply. He remembered exactly when the accordion was
introduced into his village and how it revolutionized contra playing.
Because the accordion bass buttons yield chords without your having to
think about it, the contra players went crazy on the secondary dominant
thing which all the accordionists were doing with ease, and this is why
they harmonize so much now. When I asked the accordionist to accompany
in Jewish style he played one chord for the whole melody - sound
familiar?

Players in the Maramures area don+t even know what minor chords are.
They play a contra style of violin based only on an AEC#E tuning, which
becomes an AEA tuning when they tune their 3-string guitars and just
move up or down according to the general contour of the melody. The
guitar becomes a rhythm instrument in this case, and the bi-modality
creates dissonances that make an outsider think,

*can+t they play in the same key?*

I first understood Bartoks major-minor mixes when I heard this music. It
hasn+t changed since his research. In fact, if you listen to the
dissonance as rhythm and not as a tonal structure, you can hear that it
adds punch rather than detracts intonation, and this is the way its
performers perceive it.

Likewise, basses are often of such bad production quality, that you
can+t even speak of them providing a true harmonic ground- they were
also used as rhythm instruments. As far as bows go, well, string players
take pride in telling you how they single-handedly held the horse still
and simultaneously plucked the hairs one by one from the tail of the
animal, and the bows are usually clear evidence of this.

If a Jew played a home-made instrument, there could be little pretention
made of harmonicity. In such a situation, instruments which we see today
as being self-evidently harmonic were by necessity used rhythmically
under other conditions. So, a village Jew playing a peasant-produced
instrument would not have the same musical resources available to him as
a wealthier Jew playing a factory-produced one, which should also make
clear how important it is to know what kind of instruments were being
used and whether they were factory or self-made, because the limitations
of the instrument will determine how it is used.

One further key toward understanding the mechanics of accompaniment is
to observe which instruments pushed other ones out. So, in areas where
there was a kobza (Romanian Lute), the tsimbl later became popular, and
then even later the contra, or secunda violin, and finally the
accordion. The Kobza, in most rural regions, used to play the melody,
but eventually began using figuration, which tsimblists today still
play. Today the kobza mostly plays hard strummed chords when fulfilling
an accompaniment role. The accordion banalized the whole rhythmic
backbone by substituting it with harmonic changes, but eventually also
translated the tsimbl figures into its style, coming full circle back
into the tsimbl figuration.

Going back further: A fascinating satire of Jewish dance music was
composed by the court composer of Innsbruck, Hans Newsidler, entitled
*Der Juden Tantz*, from Em new künstlich Lautenbuch, 1544, reprinted in
Paul Nettl´s Alte jüdische Spielleute und Musiker ( Nettl´s book was
originally a lecture held in Prag), Verlag Dr. Josef J. Flesch, Prag,
1923. The music of this example shows a melody written in D# major (!)
over a pedal tone E which does not change during the entire course of
the 21 bar piece.The repetitive motives and the conspicuous bi-tonality
of the satire are perhaps based on actual characteristics of Jewish
dance music. It is not clear which milieu Newsidler is satirizing, nor
which region.  The music is perhaps only intended to parody bad
intonation, but could also be based on a more or less general tendency
toward modal mixing, which has been carried over even into the early
period of Klezmer music in the 20th Century. Specifically, the remnant
of this modal mixing phenomenon is found in tunes whereby you have a
Yishtabakh cadence in the melody and a dominant and leading tone line in
the bass. 
Say we are in D, it looks like this:
                        F C C F         F Eb  Eb D   D
                        A                 C#              D

I'm sure you've heard this. There are no rules to the
*harmonization* of the melody, as you can also hear early recorded
versions which do this:
                        F C C F         F Eb  Eb D   D
                        D                  C      Eb      D

in which no *clashes* occur. In the former version, it is a bit of a
danger to assume that the A and C#  are evidence of functional dominant
harmony. Actually both notes exist as part of the sub-tonic tone group
of the mode, and even if there are early recordings which show an actual
harmonization using those notes, it says nothing about their origin.
Historically, harmony follows melody, so it could be a historical irony
that the A and C# accompaniment line is actually older than the more
uni-modal C to Eb in the latter. 

My experience with hard-core folk musicians has often been that one
assumes that complex structures (like the A and C# against the modal
melody) are NEWER, so lets use the most *obvious* and 
*older* white-flour solution - the one that is perhaps less colorful,
but more folky-sounding...IDEOLOGY ALERT! Folk musicians weren't always
deaf and stupid, and color is also found in folk music. White flour came
later and is more refined, and brownish wheat flour with speckled bits
of yellowish whatever-the-hell-that-is came first. I recently read Pete
Seeger's Sing-Out suggestion to make the chromatic note a diatonic one
in the Christmas song 
 *O little Town of Bethlehem* when the word  *Town* comes. Don't want to
criticize Pete, (if I liked the tune I would probably welcome the
change, and even use it on my up-and-coming Klezmer Khristmas album) but
just wanted to use it as a typical example of a folky's solution.  

Okay, that's the serious answer. Primas' have their own version of an
old joke which explains the whole thing in a nutshell, which I heard
while Bosnians and Serbs were still shelling each other to oblivion....

A Primas goes fishing along the Dniester. He waits patiently for hours
and is getting very hungry. Finally, there's a tug on his line, and a
small goldfish is all that appears on the hook. Still, the Primas
decides he is going to eat the little goldfish, and just as he's opening
his mouth, the goldfish cries in a tiny voice,

*Please, please, don't eat me. I'm a magic goldfish and if you let me go
free I can grant you a wish that will actually come true!*

Well, the Primas thinks of the advantages, and after pondering a bit,
says,

*I do have a wish. I want you to stop the war in Bosnia.*

So, he throws the little magic goldfish back into the river, and the
goldfish swims around in circles, then he swims up and down the
Dniester, and after 2 hours, comes back, pops his head out of the water
and says,

*Uh, Mr. Primas, look, I'm just a little magic goldfish. I mean really,
I am magic and I do have my connections, but I'm afraid that wish is
just a bit out of my league. Couldn't you be a bit merciful and request
one that might be within my range? Give me another chance, please, and
make a new wish.*

Well, the Primas thinks for awhile, scratches his head, and after a few
minutes brightens up and says,

*Yes, I know exactly what I want. Make it so that my Contra player plays
the right chords in tune.*

So, he throws the little magic goldfish back into the water, and the
goldfish swims around in circles, then in figure eights, and up and down
the Dniester, to the top, then to the bottom of the river. He repeats
the procedure 3 times. Hours and hours go by until finally the little
goldfish returns to the place where the Primas is waiting impatiently,
pops his head out of the water exhausted, and says,

*Uh, Mr. Primas, sir.... uh........wh-where did you say that place,
Bosnia was?*

Be well. Josh Horowitz