Re: Itsy Bitsy Spider and other Liturgucal Themes

[Joe Kurland & Peggy Davis <ganeydn...>]

At 11:25 PM 2/24/98, W. Morrison wrote:
>It is the ultra-simplistic mindlessly cheerful nursery-rhyme quality of the
>former melodies that I object to. If Barney
>(he-should-be-swallowed-whole-by-a-T-Rex) were Jewish, he would sing them.
>
>They say nothing positive to me, and they do not deserve the words they
>convey - instead, they trivialize the meaning of the prayers. They do not
>enhance my davening experience, rather they impede it, and make me feel
>like a 3 year old who isn't allowed to sit with the grownups.

I must agree.  And to the list of inappropriate themes I'd like to add a
certain HaYom, HaYom, HaYom from Rosh Hashana musaf that sounds like it
belongs in a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera.  (If you've heard it, you
know which one I mean.)   Now I do enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan.  And perhaps
because I do, I also have the associations that make me feel that this tune
on Rosh Hashana is absolutely ludicrous.

I also think that Sholom Secunda's Germanic setting of Adoshem, Adoshem,
Keyl Rakhum v'Khanun, for the 1931 short movie, A Chazn on Trial, with
Leybele Waldman, is so beautiful that I love to perform it in my  band's
recreation of that piece.  But I wouldn't want to sing it that way on the
Yomim Naroyim.  It conveys a feeling of majesty, yes.  But where's the
rakhmones?

> I am on a campaign at
>>my shul to replace them as much as possible with more suitable tunes.

Me too!

By the way, i'm on my way home from Tucson where I had the opportunity of
hearing some beautiful davening of the Shabbos Minkhe nusakh as sung by a
man who grew up in Vilne.  He was kind enough to sing some examples onto a
tape for me to study from.

Yosl (Joe) Kurland
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Colrain, MA 01340
413-624-3204
http://www.crocker.com/~ganeydn