Nussach & Niggunim: Our Liturgical Music

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

       W/ apologies for length (I've laid low for a while) and for the way 
these get re-formated when received:  I fear that I have perhaps been enlisted 
by the estimable Mr. Wiener to a more traditional point on the nussach/niggunim 
spectrum than I intended. (Nussach, again, = the characteristic musical modes 
and leitmotifs associated w/ different prayer services thruout the week and 
thruout the Jewish year.)                                                       
                Out of deference to some of my teachers, to the (more or less, 
sometimes less) longstanding and still viable nature of many nussach 
traditions, and to my own at-homeness w/ and understanding of the "signaling," 
associative function of nussach (e.g., Yom Tov musaf nussach is part of what 
makes Pesach/Shavuous/Sukkos a yom tov), I certainly would generally encourage 
(if anybody cared what I thought about it) that at least the rudiments of 
nussach be followed--in terms, e.g., of how to end brachot, the kaddishes 
appropriate for different services, and certain basic "signaling" prayers.  And 
I do think it would be wise for cantors to offer to teach these rudiments to 
non-cantor service leaders.                                               BUT:  
I did not mean to suggest that melodies outside (i.e., not in) the nussach of a 
given service are "un-Jewish"--a term I rarely if ever use, despite my having 
(supportively) cited Alfred Sendrey's using this term to describe the 
terminally uninspiring traditional "Ein Keloheinu."  I think this "Ein 
Keloheinu" should be permanently retired because it's execrable, not because it 
derives from German music or sounds "un-Jewish" to some.  (I've often remarked 
to my lecture audiences that saying that something doesn't "sound Jewish" is as 
dubious and problematic as observing that someone doesn't "look Jewish."  
There's a certain characteristic, Semitic Jewish look and certain 
characteristic Jewish musical modes, but we sing music that comes from 
everywhere, just as Jews can look like anyone--from Nordic blondes to African, 
and African-American, blacks.)        AND:  I don't think nussach should be 
used as a rigid filter to determine what new melodies are OK or not (Is that 
what Bob means by "inform[ing]" our musical judgment?--it's a good, but here 
perhaps ambiguous, word).  "It is one thing to urge that there is a need to 
re-educate our lay people in the traditional motifs and melodies which 
constitute the core of our musical tradition, and to treat that tradition 
respectfully.  It is quite another to argue that this musical _nusah_ of our 
liturgy is a closed canon, and that we therefore can never add to its musical 
idioms and melodies...."  That by Lippman Bodoff, an Orthodox cantor (as it 
happens) writing in an Orthodox journal (as it happens)--named, of all things, 
TRADITION (!)--in an article ("Innovation in Synagogue Music," Summer 1988) 
that I commend to Bob and all nussach-upholding traditionalists.                
  "[A]s a matter of history and halakha," Bodoff writes, "Jewish music has 
developed and should continue to be permitted to develop to meet the spiritual 
needs of the Jewish people....neither halakha nor history has ever imposed a 
test of authenticity."  The only appropriate guideline, he suggests, with 
respect to the incorporation of new music is the community's or congregation's 
judgment that a new melody "will beautify its services with greater 
spirituality and holiness."                                                     
              I helped confuse matters, perhaps, by using "nussach," in the 
manner (I guess) of Jeff Klepper (and, in the JEWISH WEEK article which started 
this, his composing and singing partner Danny Freelander of UAHC), to mean 
something like "the characteristic form or style(s) or totality of liturgical 
music in a given Jewish community."  I'm convinced that I've encountered 
(something like) this usage in print; indeed, the Shlomo Carlebach e-mail list 
occasionally discusses the melodies--the _melodies_ (niggunim), not the 
modes--that (based largely on Shlomo's own choices) constitute what has become 
identified as "Shlomo nussach"--which is clearly, I think, being used there in 
this (not the traditional) sense of that word.  (And these melodies _do_ bring 
Jews together, as the claim is made for nussach--Go to the Carlebach Shul 
sometime!--and can connect us "to Jews from other places," as Bob has it, as 
well.)                                            Nevertheless, I can't, now,  
find an instance of "nussach"  being used in this way (other than on the Shlomo 
list), so I guess that I, Klepper, and Freelander are using "nussach" to mean, 
roughly, what is sometimes called the musical "minhag" of a community.  But I 
think there may be some point to using the same word (nussach) to mean two 
different things.  Because the truth is that nussach in the 
technical/traditional sense--the modes and leitmotifs--comes to embrace, and 
may originally have developed from, the nussach (musical minhag) of a given 
time and place.  That's why I mentioned that the now quintessentially Jewish 
"Ahavah Rabbah" (Hava Nagilah) mode apparently grew out of musical elements in 
some particular non-Jewish cultures.  "[C]hanges ... made by the hazzanim of 
Eastern Europe," writes Bodoff, "incorporated musical scales and modes...based 
on local musical idioms that were different from what [are considered] the 
basic elements of synagogue music"--and he adduces, also, the example of the Mi 
Shebeirach mode, derived from Ukranian (Ukranian-Dorian) music.                 
                                                      Bob proposes consciously 
introducing "more Jewish" melodies--but what, after all, constitutes, or 
defines, Jewish music? Some great music historians (most notably Curt Sachs) 
essayed various definitions, all of which had the unfortunate quality of 
excluding music that we all know unambiguously (calling Potter Stewart) to be 
Jewish (like "Ma'oz Tsur"--derived, like "Ein Keloheinu," from German secular 
and church sources but now sung by Jews all over the world).  The late music 
educator Richard Neumann (he was, it happens, the music director of my Queens, 
New York, synagogue when I was a boy) settled on this definition:  "the music 
of Jews of a given time and place."  Exactly:  Jewish music is what Jews, as 
Jews, sing and recognize as their music.  (Among the myriad definitions of 
"folk music"--now _there's_ a dissertation!--that I've encountered is "music 
that people at coffeehouses and folk festivals accept as folk music"!)          
         There's also, BTW, at least one very conspicuous precedent--and 
probably others--for a melody not "in the nussach" (not in the appropriate 
musical mode) becoming an accepted part of a service.  The traditional 
"Shema"--don't worry whether you know which I mean; the (declamatory) Shema you 
know _is_ the traditional one--was composed by Salomon Sulzer of Vienna in the 
19th century and intended, so far as I know, _only_ for the Torah service, 
either (only) on yom tovim or (only) on the High Holidays:  i.e., for the 
hazzan to chant (followed by the congregation's repetition) while holding the 
Torah and facing the congregation, prior to the Torah reading.  It has become 
ubiquitously if not promiscuously used everywhere (i.e., every_time_) in 
American synagogue life, esp. during the Shabbat morning service, though it 
_isn't_ "in the nussach" for that portion of the service.  (Ask any cantor.) 
(As it happens--can that be AIH?--I regret its acceptance there, not because 
it's not in the nussach but because its declamatory style is totally out of 
sync w/ what should be the increasing kavannah (readiness), inwardness, and 
intensity of the morning prayers, culminating in the "silent" (and _ultimately_ 
inward/intense) Amidah--a very different reason, though, I think.)           So 
to debate whether Debbie Friedman's melodies are Jewish music or Jewish enough 
or should be admitted into services is ... just silly.  They are, and they have 
been--at least in non-Orthodox circles.  And no longer just in Reform circles:  
They're being sung at Jewish retreats, CAJE (Jewish educator) conferences, 
Federation General Assemblies, and Carnegie Hall, by Jews of (almost) all 
stripes.  (The musically minded, not-yet-bar-mitzvahed son of good friends, 
studying at a black-hat, _not_ Modern Orthodox, _not_ with-it Jewish day 
school, _loves_ the Debbie Friedman tape his mother introduced him to; will he 
still be listening to/singing it  20 or 30 years from now? Who knows?)          
                                        SO:  Let's _define_ Debbie's 
melodies--and some others in that style--as part of our American nussach (see 
why I like shuttling--toggling?--between both usages?), because American Jews 
sing them at prayer--and nussach ("traditional" meaning) _can_ expand to 
include them.  In time, Debbie's Havdalah blessings (on my CD!), her Mi 
Shebeirach healing prayer, her exquisite "Lechi Lach" (which, like the Mi 
Shebeirach, may _create_ occasions for its para-liturgical use) _will_ "sound 
Jewish" because so many Jews (will) sing them, in Jewish time/space, at Jewish 
religious and communal and spiritual and healing occasions.  And they will, 
just like (or more than!) and alongside older, more differentiated nussach, 
bring us together--and lift us up besides.  "[N]o person or group has the right 
to decide what kind of music is authentically Jewish," writes Lippman Bodoff.  
"That is a judgment to be made by the Jewish people in all their wisdom and 
with all their variety.  It is, ultimately, a judgment that has been made and 
will continue to be made by history."


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