Re: Doinas & taksim

[Judy Pinnolis <pinnolis...>]

Josh:
For us doinas-illiterates, can you give specific musical examples (i.e.
titles/tracks) from some currently available albums sprinkled into an edit
of this... that way I can go back and listen and study about what you're
talking about and actually hear it.
Thanks for any help on that.
Judy.
At 11:57 PM 7/19/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Yeah, that was a bit of a mouthful, Wolf, what you wrote about the
>doina. I hope you all don't mind me becoming long-winded about this (so
>what else is new?) I think the doina-kale basetzns subject is the most
>fascinating musicological question of the whole klezmer complex, because
>it points to the essence of how our music has changed. So let me go into
>conjectural mode about a subject that will baffle us all as long it's
>relevant. I'd been writing about this, because  a week from now Budowitz
>records the complete kale bazetsns as it was done in Piotrkow Poland
>with Majer Bogdnaski for our next CD: Wedding Without a Bride:
>
>The kale bazetsns:
>The whole ritual of seating the bride is called the bazetsns (some
>called it badekns, baveynens or bazingens, too) In actuality, what
>happens is the bride is seated (bazetst) , veiled (badekt), sung to,
>(bazungen) and brought to tears (beveynt), so any of these words can and
>do function separately to describe the entire ceremony. The ceremony
>itself involves the badkhn and klezmorim, and traditionally the women.
>The badkhn sings or ?zogt? (the musical ones used their voices partly to
>sing, whereas the less musical ones used  Sprechstimme) a
>semi-improvised text, which the klezmorim punctuate with chords. At the
>beginning there was often an instrumental ?opshpiln? which served as an
>introduction, and at the end a nokhshpil, which served to end this
>portion of the ceremony, with interludes placed at the end of the
>strophes. Sometimes the same procedure was done for the bridegroom
>(called Khosn bazingns, in which case there might have been an escort
>piece like a gasn nign which was played while walking to the groom, or
>another opshpiln was played. There was no standard, as the mood created
>was probably something which differed from kapelye to kapelye and
>belonged to each kapelye?s original style. The character of the kale
>bazingns was generally ?light?, instructive and in Yiddish, with very
>little Hebrew, as it was not expected that the bride know loshn Kodesh,
>whereas the character of the khosn bazingns was generally more serious,
>with more quotes in Hebrew from the holy books, and could also have been
>sung or ?gezogt? in a deeper voice, at least that?s how Majer Bogdanski
>and Toyvye Birnbaum both performed it for us.
>
>What you hear on the early recordings as a bazetsns (i.e., Brandwein and
>co.) is generally a condensed version of what the badkhn would ?sing? or
>?zogt?. There is a specific modality and basic modulation scheme he uses
>which seems to be fairly standard and is closely related to synagogue
>prayers, though, like the doina, the tempo and rate of modulation differ
>from performer to performer. Since there is syncretic overlap between
>the historically predated bazetsns (I don?t know how old it is, but can
>tell you that I am fairly sure it is the oldest strata of klezmer melody
>we have and goes back as far as any Mogen Ovos  and Adonoy Molokh
>prayers) and the later doina, it would appear that the doina gradually
>replaced the bazetsns and became a genre unto itself. Certain
>characteristics of the doina did in fact make their way into the
>bazetsns ceremony, though the VOCAL  portions never changed, they just
>gradually disappeared as the function of the badkhen became outdated.
>So, in fact what seems to have happened historically is: 
>
>The instrumental OPSHPILNS which heralded the Badkhn gradually took on
>characteristics of the doina. And when the badkhns ?hamule? was no
>longer a fixed part of the ceremony, the  INSTRUMENTAL IMITATION of the
>vocal portion could also have begun to sound more and more like a doina,
>though a klezmer playing a bazetsns melody to the bride would be more
>likely to sound like a badkhen than a doina, and his audience (up till
>roughly the 1930?s) in eastern Europe would recognize clearly the
>difference, as this is not difficult when you?ve heard both (typical
>bazetnsn move between say D mogen ovos to F adonoy molokh to r and G
>mogen ovos, Whereas the standardized doinas move from D mi shebarakh to
>G mogen ovos to D Mi shebarakh to G adonoy molokh to A freygisg, etc).
>The period of this transition whereby the doina was used for opshpilns
>begins, in my opinion, around 1900 and not much earlier. The bazetsns
>which uses the doina opshpilns seems to have already begun to disappear
>from the repertoire of the klezmorim in the Ukraine by the time
>Beregovski was doing his work. 
>
>Beregovski writes a short paragraph about the sung part of the kale
>basetzns being in minor (actually Mogen Ovos) while the extended
>instrumental interludes between the verses were in freygish. Well, sure
>enough, all the recorded examples of bazetsns I had showed this
>characteristic. The texts were remarkably consistent in all the
>bazetsns, and the interludes were almost always in freygish, though
>varied in contour. ALMOST always. I had one bazetsns from Beresh Katz
>with a different modality which indicated an older type - at least
>that's what I think, because I think the FREYGISH interlude was the
>overlapping link with the Moldavian doina particularly popular among
>Jews around the turn of the Century, but not much earlier.
>
>Well, then we interviewed Majer Bogdanski in London (born in Piotrkow,
>Poland), and he sang still another interlude type. I looked at the
>regions of the other bazetsns, and they all came from the Ukraine
>(Beregovsky's region was VERY contained- west Ukraine, radius average
>about 200 Km), so Beregovski?s observation that the bazetsns are sung in
>Mogen Ovos, while the interludes are played in Freygish, while common,
>does not represent an exclusive type. Since both the Katz bazetnsn and
>that from Majer had NO Freygish interludes, we can assume that the
>Ukrainian type was not omnipresent and there were others.
>
>I think the bazetsns represents the oldest layer of klezmer music we
>know, for these reasons:
>
>1) The text and modality of the sung parts are the most static,
>independent of region (according to my sources)
>
>2) The static quality of the text and it's modality (Mogen Ovos- one of
>the oldest of the Jewish modes) are religious in nature and content, and
>therefore less subject to change.
>
>3) It represents the only organic use of the voice in the wedding
>ceremony.
>
>4) It was the first genre to disappear on American soil, indicating it's
>incompatibility with modern trends
>
>So I think the key to understanding a whole pile of questions lies in
>comparing the differences in text/modality of the sung parts (minimal
>variance) AND the interludes (more variance than previously assumed).
>The bazetsns ceremony has fairly dissappeared now, but the doina has
>remained as its last vestige, ironically, since it probably wasn't
>originally connected to the basetzns.
> 
>The syncretic characteristics of the bazetsns and doina are:
>
>1) The typical doina used makes use of a simple and concise formula
>which can be completed quickly as the badhkn indicates.
>
>2) That type of doina was simply very popular and widespread (at the
>expense of the more interesting ones, perhaps)
>
>3) The modality of that doina corresponds sycretically with Mi shebarakh
>prayers. 
>
>The whole of our knowledge about whether or not Jews played Taxims is
>based on a sketchy statment that Beregovsky made when one of his
>informant stated that they were unfortunately not played anymore, and
>Jews only play doinas now. What that was supposed to mean in musical
>terms we'll never know, because we don't have a reference point for the
>Jewish taxim. We don't know if they were played commonly, occasionally
>or infrequently. Nor do we know what could have been meant by the term.
>The nominal taxim is played mainly in southern Romania. The rest of
>Romania plays doinas, and many different kinds. There are a few
>different modulation schemes which were used by Jews, but these
>represent a mere fraction of what was, and still is played all over
>Romania (why is everybody talking about doinas in the past tense? They
>are still quintessentially Dacian expressions). Because the Jewish
>doinas were already standardized by 1920, they became known as the
>*Jewish Doina* The schemes are limpid in comparison to what else exists
>and what is possible. People seem to forget that, while the modal
>modulation used in doinas is very limited, the motives used have very
>specific functions, and while flexible, are also recognizable at any
>moment. Therefore there are opening motives, connecting motives,
>episodal motives, closing motives, and motives which signal a change of
>modal area. This type of musical thinking is absolutely necessary to
>complete the ritual portions of the wedding, where musicians had to
>communicate non-verbally - another reason for adopting it. Gypsies still
>use motives when playing to indicate anything from, check out the cute
>girl to the left of the Primas, to watch out, here comes the Balaboste,
>etc. 
>
>If the doina were played at table, it's function would be emotional, and
>I'm convinced that one of the long lost vestiges of the klezmorim was
>the ability to weave zmiros motives into their improvisations in order
>to please religious members of the audience (thereby of course getting
>more tishgeld). In fact I would go so far as to say that many dances
>which formed came out of these improvisations. The *sher* technique,
>cutting and pasting motives from various dances to form a chain, uses
>the technique, so you no longer have a typical AABB or ABCBA dance form,
>but a chain form, AABBCCDDEEFF etc. Though the shertants is relatively
>new, the technique used in it's construction is probably quite old. 
>
>The doina was never a lullaby for sheep (why do I picture all those
>fluffy creatures snoozing on a green pasture?) One of my field
>recordings from Radioia Romania is a doina of violin and tsimbl. There
>is virtually no difference between this and the myriad Doinas you hear
>played by Jews on those old 78's. I would love to hear comments on this
>theme, because in truth, I don't feel I know what I'm talking about-
>just rambling on and on. So stop me, please. Josh Horowitz
>
>
>

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