Re: Re[4]: Itsy Bitsy Spider and other Liturgucal Themes

[Solidarity Foundation <svzandt...>]

In a message dated 98-02-26 02:00:37 EST, you write:

<< The person who was worried that it might upset people to learn that a
 tune they are singing is based on a nursery rhyme (or a drinking song)
 shouldn't be so concerned. >>

It would be naive....Arguments over the use of "profane" or secular melodies
go all the way back to the use of Piyutim, which are sung to (then popular)
Arabic melodies.  Most of my favorite Chassidic nigunum are related to Russian
folk songs....The origin of the melody is irrelevant.  The point to make holy
through usage...how we elevate the mundane is the ikar.

Lori
___________________

There's no intrinsic reason why a nursery tune, depending on the tune,
might not seem appropriate for some religious text. But there's also no
intrinsic reason why another nursery tune applied to that same religious
text might still sound like a nursery tune.

My point was not that "it might upset people to learn that a tune they
are singing is based on a nursery rhyme (or a drinking song)." As I pointed
out when talking about the Romanian folk song as the source of the tune
of "Hatikbah", I think this is ... well, I agree with Lori, it's naive.

My point was, rather, that it might upset people to suddenly become aware
that the tune they've been singing all these years REALLY SOUNDS like a
nursery rhyme (or a drinking song).

Lori writes: "The origin of the melody is irrelevant. The point [is] to
make [t] holy through usage...how we elevat the mundane is the ikar."
Right. The empasis is on the MELODY, not the ORIGIN of it. But the other
side of the coin is, not every melody is suitable . And for all the
hasidim that wnet around looking for goyishe melodies to liberate from
their _klippes_, they were not going to choose just any melody. They
were exercising discrimination, and in my view, some of them exercised
it very well, and some not so well.

Now, according to one way of looking at it, we're dealing here with some
issues that have nothing to do with musical taste and ethos. For example,
it may be -- i don't know, but it may be -- that the several-generations-
back Lubovicher rebbe that chose the Russian drinking song "Ne zhurite
Brati" to sing _with all the original words, in Russian_, chose it
precisely because here was a song which definitely had A LOT of klippes
(=imprisonment in matter). So let's have rakhmones on this _farfalene_
tune and work to sanctify it. While another rebbe would not have dreamt
of such a thing, but would have looked for tunes that were really
trying already, i.e. that showed real promise. A lot of melodies in
eastern Europe are very beautiful in a Jewish sort of way. So, according
to another way of lloking at it, the issue of beauty/ethos/appropriateness
of the music itself IS NOT different from the issue of holiness.

The second is my interpretation. I don't think "anything goes". I agree
with Wendy. It's not that we automatically elevate any tune by using it
in a religious function. Some tunes may lower us, coarsen us, instead --
because they are just crummy tunes. Which, exactly? Well, there are
different functions, and we're not all the same and we don't even all
come from the same tradition. But whatever our ultimate judgments about
this, I don't think we (especiallymusicians) should just shrug it off
and say "Whatever..." It would be better to accept that it is an issue.
It's not the ORIGIN of the tune, it's the ETHOS or TAM of the tune.

Itzik-Leyb