Re: Orgin of Hatikvah

[Solidarity Foundation <svzandt...>]

"Hatikvah"/"La Montovana" FAQ

The first known appearance of the "HaTikvah" tune was in an intermedio of
1608, performed during celebrations of a Gonzaga wedding in Mantua.
Several composers collaborated on the music for this performance: they
were Claudio Monteverdi, his brother Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, Giovanni
Gastoldi, and Salamone Rossi. Which composer used the tune is not known,
although the fact that there are other tunes also called by some version
of the name "Mantovana," and that some of them are known to be by
Gastoldi, is suggestive. (The lutenist James Tyler attributes it to
Gastoldi on stylistic grounds, and that seems plausible to me.) There is
no evidence that this music was a setting of a pre-existent tune rather
than a new composition -- we simply don't know.

The tune became very popular: it was used for Italian madrigals (Cataneo),
solo songs ("Giuseppino"), guitar settings (Pico), instrumental settings
in Renaissance style (Zanetti, Giamberti, anonymous), violin divisions
[i.e., variations] (anonymous), trio sonatas (Marini), and was published
in England in Playford's collections of country dances. It is not known
where Smetana (1824-1884) got the tune, but he seems to have believed that
it was a Czech folk tune.

It is also not known for sure where Naftali Herz Imber (1856-1909) got the
tune, to which he wrote only the words (being a poet, not a composer).
Edith Gerson-Kiwi, in "Grove" (Vol. 9, p. 359), refers to the tune as a
"Romanian folksong." It is quite possible that Imber simply took the tune
from the "Moldau" movement of Smetana's "Ma Vlast" (composed in 1874), and
no evidence whatsoever that he did not do so.

Hope Ehn                                 <ehn (at) world(dot)std(dot)com>
(M.M., music history, New England Conservatory;
 ABD musicology, Brandeis University)
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This is all very, very interesting, but may I point out that she has left
out the one crucial fact, which is that a Jewish farmer named Samuel Cohen
set the words of Imber's Hatikvah to that tune. Now both Cohen AND Imber
were from Moldavia. Moldavia is the eastern part of Romania. Therefore,
doesn't it seem most likely that the immediate source was indeed the
Romanian folk song "Carul co Boi"?

You know, I'm beginning to get the impression that people actually have
some sort of problem with this -- namely, the same problem we've been
talking about, they don't want the tune to have such humble origins.

For my part, I'd be willing to bet that Romanian, particularly Moldavian
music has been a major source of a LOT of Israeli music. Did you know
that "hora" is a Romanian word?

Itzik-Leyb