Synagogue Music: Nusah (formerly known as: Very Interesting/Debbie Friedman article

[robert wiener <wiener...>]

I have given this post a new subject title that, I believe, reflects
the topic of the article that Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky gave us the
link for http://www.thejewishweek.com/jwcurr.exe?99041616

Recent posts (by Reuben Radding, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Marvin Margoshes,
Leonard S. Goldfine, and Joel S. Bresler) have shifted the topic to a
more general discussion of Jewish music.

I agree with Ari Davidow that the article focused on synagogue music.
I'd like to return to that topic in an effort to achieve some common
ground, an objective that I think Adrian Durlester shares.

In order to do so, it is important that I try to describe what I mean
by "nusah" and the function I think it serves.

Nusah (and I know that cantors who are list members can be much more
technical in their description) is the musical connective tissue, the
leitmotifs, that identify a prayer service as being Jewish and for a
particular type (for example, weekday or shabbat) and time (for
example, shaharit-morning or maariv-evening) of day.  It helps make a
Jewish prayer service cohesive rather than being a potpourri of tunes
like a Bar Mitzvah medley.  I am not discussing the melodies for
individual prayers.  I wish that I could sing examples.  (For a rather
comprehensive audio tour of nusah, one might listen to Saul P. Wachs's
Nusah Ha'Tefillah: Tapes for Teaching (United Synagogue Commission on
Jewish Education 1982  13 cassettes).)  For me, nusah is not
peripheral, but fundamental to a moving Jewish prayer experience.  It
ties us to the God of Jews of the past and the present.

This nusah, as we have observed, is made up of very old musical themes
used by the different Jewish groups (e.g., Ashkenazic, Sephardic...)
that are repeated, particularly by the shaliah tzibur/hazan throughout
the musical prayer service, especially when b'rakhot are recited
(i.e., barukh atah adonai...) and at the end of paragraphs (especially
during otherwise silent sections) in the siddur.  Some hazanim are
more scrupulous than others at singing those sections with the
appropriate nusah.  Some may think of it as superfluous, but for me it
is like the Million Dollar Movie or All Things Considered themes.

My appeal here is that, whatever we do with the other melodies in the
service, we keep the nusah alive and well so that someone who enters a
synagogue/temple can know in a short while, from the music alone,
where they are and when it is in Jewish time.

Then we will discover that nusah liberates, rather than constricts
musical expression in Jewish prayer.  The nusah themes allow for
variety (as Joe Kurland noted to me in a private post) so that you may
well be able to identify a particular variation of a nusah theme as
coming from a particular place (at least if you're a Jewish musical
Henry Higgins).

(See Abraham Millgram, Jewish Worship, p.522, "As a rule the Nusah
applies only to the rendition of the last passages of the ancient
prayers.  The hazan may improvise in his rendition of the earlier
parts of these prayers, but when he reaches the concluding passages he
is expected to lead smoothly back to the Nusah.  This insistence on
the Nusah has preserved the unity of the musical tradition of the
synagogue services, despite the innumerable improvisations and
compositions by hazzanim throughout the centuries.")

There's often something strikingly similar musically even in the nusah
of different Jewish groups quite distant from each other
geographically (again, also observed by Joe).

If the other melodies in the service reflect where we've been as a
people and where we are that is consistent with the nature of Jewish
liturgy.  The traditional siddur is a crazy quilt of material from
such disparate places as all parts of the Bible, the Zohar, Medieval
poetry, and writings since the establishment of the state of Israel.
Why not musically as well?  That is, as others have mentioned, very
Jewish.  (I would love, for example, to hear a lecture on the sources
of the tunes sung in the Birkat Hamazon (the prayer over the food sung
after a meal) -- now there's a topic for a dissertation.)  Whether a
particular setting of a Jewish prayer is effective is a matter that we
have discussed in the past and may want to revisit in the future.

For now, though, I ask only that we recognize that nusah is to the
siddur what trope is to the Torah.  If all of us, especially
contemporary composers of Jewish liturgical music, learn nusah and
trope, then I think that we will have ever more meaningful Jewish
prayer experiences.

Bob



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