Re: Hungarian/Romanian

[Solidarity Foundation <svzandt...>]

Ari Davidow <ari (at) ivritype(dot)com> wrote:
> 
> Hmmm. I believe that Josh Horowitz makes a point similar to Sherry's
> in the liner notes to the Budowitz album. His comments are online at
>    http://members.styria.com/budowitz/interview.html
> (or you can search for "horowitz" on my klez shack and follow the links).
> In a question on harmonization, he says, "This music is non-harmonic by 
> nature...." and goes on into quite a lengthy discussion of natural
> dissonances in Jewish music and the difference between melody and
> harmony.

As it happens, I'm having an exchange with Josh right now, but the
problem I have with this statement is that I feel that Jews introduced
the tsimbl to Eastern Europe and it was a part of most ensembles from
the 17th to 19th centuries.  The musical function of the instrument
was to provide harmony----it took the place of the harpsichord in
dance ensembles.  So the harmonic role was important as early as
1629, when Abus Cymbalista was one of 13 klezmorim granted rights in
Lvov.  In Hungary, Gypsies started using diminished chords a lot,
and they will argue over chords, but that is relatively recent.  In
Romania, once the tsambal took over the cobza part, harmony became
important, though not as important as in the Hungarian tradition.  

Paul Gifford

Ari and Paul,

Stop! You're both right! Seriously, I've always experienced harmony as
VERY important in klezmer music, yet Sherry is perfectly right, at least
for the great majority of pieces in the klezmer repertoire, that 
"over-harmonization robs the melody of its tension and thus of its
power." In other words, what's at issue is the approach to harmonization,
not harmonization itself. I believe the musicological term is "harmonic
density", i.e. the frequency and variety of chord changes. Hungarian and
Slovak Gypsy music tends to have very high harmonic density -- that's
part of the style -- whereas traditional klezmer has a spare harmonic
density. 

I don't think it's in the klezmer style to go to the other extreme and
eliminate harmony altogether. Doubling a melodic line, BRIEFLY, for
emphasis, on the tsimbal is appropriate, when accompanying a melody
instrument or voice, but the tsimbal is such a great chord/rhythm 
instrument for klezmer that, if the doubling goes on long enough for
the beat and harmony to fall away, I don't think it sounds like klezmer -
but rather like Middle Eastern music.

Paul Gifford writes:

The musical function of the instrument
was to provide harmony----it took the place of the harpsichord in
dance ensembles.  So the harmonic role was important as early as
1629, when Abus Cymbalista was one of 13 klezmorim granted rights in
Lvov.

This is very interesting, but we cannot assume the approach to harmonization
was the same as now - especially if it took the place of the harpsichord,
in Lvov in 1629 it it might have been a lot more like Polish Baroque music.

Itzik-Leyb