Old world vs. New world klez continuation -Reply

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

>Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 09:13:05 -0500 
>Return-Receipt-To: Peter Rushefsky <rushefsky_p (at) univerahealthcare(dot)org>
>
>Josh-- wonderful thread!
>
>Having attended some of Zev Feldman's lectures at
>KlezKanada, I was particularly struck by a
>recording of the Bobriker Kapelye that he had
>presented.  I can't recall the tune's name, I think it
>was a zhok (to my knowledge it hasn't been
>rereleased on any of the recent compilations). 
>Anyways, the kapelye played it such that each
>melodic phrase was articulated separately and
>distinctly from other phrases.  Though Bobriker was
>an American ensemble, Zev said he believed that
>this particular recording represented more of a
>European klezmer asthetic.   Zev likened the
>philosophy to Torah reading, in which each word
>must be enunciated separately by the reader.  This
>is in direct contrast to Tarras's later style-- which
>strove to unify larger sections of melody by
>stringing together such phrase (we are much more
>familiar with the Tarras style).    
>
>Anyways, this track really blew my mind & has
>made me think a lot about how the different choices
>we make in phrasing klezmer melodies can give
>rise to very different artisitc effects.  Here's a
>thought-- I'd love to see a band like Budowitz
>perform the same tune a couple of different ways to
>present the concept. 
>
>Pete Rushefsky
>
>>>> Joshua Horowitz 11/29/99 04:43pm >>>
>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
>
>---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
>---------------------+
>