Old world vs. New world klez continuation

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Hi all, 

I just recently got back to my computer, and found some queries from an
old thread concerning klez in the old and new world. Matt Jaffey wrote:

Getting back to Old vs New World, Zev also put a lot of attention on
differences in STYLE and INSTRUMENTATION. His points were very similar
to these from Joshua:

 >micro-level change in parameters of performance brought about by
 >acculturative processes, i.e. differences in approach, straightness of
 >rhythm, lack of ensemble interaction, simplification of arrangments,
 >etc. all contributing to the statement that the old and new world are
 >very different.

But the words "micro-level" really don't convey what Zev conveyed by
playing
recorded examples from both worlds - the overall feeling is quite
different.
They are different aesthetically, and I think would attract a different
audience if both were freely available to the same population.

***************************************************
There were a lot of themes in Matt's letter, so I just randomly chose
this one to start with. Again, if this is boring anyone, we can take it
to a private room for ruminating...

I'll define my terms more precisely, because I think I did mix em up a
bit unwittingly:

When I talk about macro levels of performance, I mean the most easily
perceptible levels of music, i.e basic meter (3/4, 2/4 etc), form (AABB,
etc) harmonization (functional tonal harmony vs. modal harmony, etc),
basic melodic contour (i.e. the curve of the melody minus
ornamentation). 

By Micro I mean the subtler levels, such as phrasing (grouping of notes
in a line), articulation (the longs and shorts of musical notes and
whether they are tongued or slurred, fingered, swallowed, etc),
ornamentation (the trills, turns, inflections, krekhtsn, etc), timbre,
as well as variations on repeats of phrases and sections. There are two
levels here which might get a raised eyebrow if I mention them, because
they may sound vague and esoteric, but actually represent the deepest
level of style in music, and which are only perceptible when one is
historically informed about a genre (not implying that I am). These
levels I'll call 

1) aesthetic choice and 

2) artistic Intent. 

They're related, and I'll try to illustrate what I mean by both. 

AESTHETIC CHOICE:
Every time you perform you make decisions. Your aesthetic taste is
informed by what you know, what you like, what you want to convey. If
you listen to the old klez recordings, you will hardly ever find a whole
series of parallel thirds harmonization in the melody. Yet the same
melody played by Serbian musicians may well use them. Today you hear
them in many klezmer bands. I'm convinced that, while a good klezmer
musician of one hundred years ago would have heard the Serbian version
of a freylekh with the string of parallel thirds as  exotic,
interesting, even beautiful, used in his/her own music, they would have
sounded kitschy, so they were not used. Because we are inundated with so
much music today, we are not able to discern the emotional content or
semiotic meaning of such musical gestures, nor does anyone find it
necessary to do so. So today the use of a parallel third strain means
nothing more than another arranging technique. You must train yourself
in a completely different way to be able to *hear like the masters*,
which means rejecting many of the techniques which are so fun to use.  

Learning counterpoint in music school provides a good example. In
learning baroque style, after you learned WHAT parallel 5ths were
theoretically and that you were supposed to avoid them at all cost in
the strict style, if you trained your ears to hear them, everytime you
composed using them they begin to stand out like a pig in a shul. But in
fact, the masters actually DIDN'T avoid them. They used them for effect,
and exactly this aesthetic sense for WHEN to use such an effect and what
it communicates is not taught anymore, which is why students always end
up saying, *But Bach used them why can't I? And all you're bound to hear
as an answer from Professor Stickupthetukhes is *Because Bach knew what
he was doing and you don't, so shut up and eat your Palestrinas* And the
fact is, Bach did know how to use them, and Brahms was so interested in
the phenomenon that he kept a notebook collection of parallel fifths, so
as to be able to understand when and why the older masters broke their
own rules. 

And there is a multitude of such minutae in the older klezmer music
which has simply gone unnoticed in the *modern age*. I'm talking about
the sense of doing or not doing something. Ornamenting a line or
choosing NOT to ornament it. Changing your articulation at the repeat,
but only a little bit. This level of aesthetics deals with how MUCH you
do something and whether you HIDE what you are doing ( a very important
principle of aesthetics for the medieval, rennaissance and baroque  -
that what you do is actually NOT perceptible or analysible). Why has
this level been forgotten? I think because our musical INTENT (concept
2, above) does not include them in our system anymore. They are not
relevant, because the sum of their parts equals an aesthetic that
practically everyone percieves as old hat. If it is your intent to play
at a wedding and get everyone dancing and you have en electric bass and
drums, there is no place for changing your phrasing on a minute level.
If your intent is to play *world music with a Jewish slant*, there is no
place for the specificity of NOT playing parallel thirds in sequence. So
the klezmer style has become more exoteric, not esoteric as it may once
have been, but exoteric. This is not bad or good and there are very good
reasons for it. And what crystallizes out of the world as it now stands
is a whole NEW set of aesthetic choices which are felt and followed by
those performing the music. To internalize the aesthetics which you hear
all around you is very natural. 

In stricter systems of music (North Indian Classical music, Iranian
dastgah, baroque composition etc) such aesthetics are/were learned by a
gruelling apprentice training. Composers in Bach's time were not taught
the secrets of gematria, the Fibonacci series and convertible
counterpoint until they had proven their apprenticeship and even sworn
secrecy to divulging the to-be-learned secrets as was required by the
guilds. And if you divulged those secrets to the uninitiated, you were
immediately banned from the order. Imagine what talent we missed from
such cases? Today we don't miss this, because the content of our music
is no longer under the jurisdiction of the guilds. And there WERE
Klezmer guilds, by the way. I'd give my left thumb to know what musical
discussions those guilds had, but alas, we'll never know. And the reason
that we won't know is because it was a basic premise of the guild that
its members DID NOT propagate the information within the order. But if
they took their lead from the very highly developed musical guilds
existing throughout Europe then, you can be sure there were quite some
debates about harmonization, ornamentation etc. and fights too. But we
are so far removed such a world, that this forces us to talk in esoteric
terms about 
*aesthetic choice* and *intent*, when these were actually household
concepts for your professional musicians then and fell under the
category of *coveted secrets of the trade.* It's very difficult now to
learn the micro levels of music, which is why so few people bother with
it. You need years to learn such things from a master, and the
master-apprentice system all but dissappeared in the new world. 

And I think that the early American examples of klezmer music had
already experienced a watering down of these micro-stylistic elements by
virtue of the fact that the ensembles were a mish-mash of abilities.
Some knew klez style and some didn't. I've noticed in my own group that
when we have played with musicians who were not familiar with the
specifics of klezmer style, it changed the whole sound. If EVERYONE
knows the style intimately, the effect is quite different. If only half
know it, it's a different thing already. And I'm sure that this
constellation has always existed. There have been kapelyes that were
1/2, 1/3 and 3/4 stylistically *pure*. But I'm sure the ratio widened in
the new world, and the first thing to go is the micro level, followed by
the macro level. 

Does any of that make sense? Josh

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