Benedetto Marcello and Italian Jewish melodies

[Francesco Spagnolo <yuval...>]

>Dear Francesco Spagnolo:  Am looking forward to further postings from you on
>this topic.  Meanwhile, two questions, if I may:  1) Do we know for certain
>that none of Marcello's notated works (e.g. and esp., the "Ma'oz Tsur" are
>his original compositions)? and 2) Is the "Southern German tune" for "Ma'oz
>Tsur" that you refer to the traditional one we all know?  I.e., the Marcello
>is a variant of that?  (Or are you referring to some other?)  I've often
>wondered but am not usually good at hearing such things.  Many thanks in
>advance when you get a chance to answer--Robert Cohen  (P.S.  Is "Yuval"
>really your Hebrew name? Or just a super-appropriate e-mail moniker given
your work and interests?)


Dear Robert Cohen,

Below I am trying to answer your questions. Consider these as 
tentative answers, since I am still working on the topic of Italian 
Jewish liturgical songs, and the picture I have been able to draw so 
far is not clear enough to be too sure of what I say.

1) We do not know for sure that all Marcello's notations of Jewish 
melodies aren't his own compositions. Thus, I believe that we can 
somehow assume so -- given the context of the "Estro", and Marcello's 
own personality as a cultivated man, seriously involved both in the 
Renaissance concern with philology and the Baroque taste for the 
unusual (in this case, "Jewish musical tradition"). On the other 
hand, since Italian Jews by those times (and especially in Venice) 
knew well how to read music, and had developed a musical taste that 
was much closer to Italian music than to any kind of Jewish music, it 
could be also possible that they read/heard Marcello's melodies, and 
decided to use them in their liturgy.

2) Still, some further considerations push us to believe that 
Marcello's work is based on some kind of a "field work". As Leo Levi 
noted, some of his melodies were used among several Ashqenazi 
communities in Northern Italy: Venice, Padua, Verona, and possibly 
Ferrara. It is unlikely that Jews from all those towns would chose 
the SAME melodies from Marcello's Psalms. Also, the "Southern German 
tune" he notated is an Italian variant (more modalized) of the melody 
we all know about. Unless everybody else, and not only Italian Jews, 
took part of their synagogal repertoire from Marcello, which is quite 
a hard hypotesis to follow, it is therefore possible to assume that 
his notations were actual transcriptions. Maybe, not all of them.

3) Finally, given the fact that some of these melodies were actually 
spread around some Jewish communities in Italy, we ca also argue that 
if they were not "Jewish music" to begin with, they *became* "Jewish 
music" upon being adopted by Jews in their liturgical repertoire. 
Since one of the features of  music within the Jewish world is the 
possibility of "becoming Jewish music".

Bibliography on Italian Jewish musical traditions is quite small. I 
suggest reading under "Italy - musical traditions", in the 
Encyclopaedia Judaica (article by Leo Levi). Also, a detailed study 
of the XVII-XVIII centuries musical life in Italy has been carried on 
in Israel Adler's classic study "La pratique musicale savante dans 
quelques communautes juives en Europe aux XVII-XVIII siecles" 
[accents omitted to the Electronic God, which seems to only speak 
English ;-)], Mouton, Paris-The Hague 1963 (or 62?, I do not have my 
references with me right now).

All the best,
Francesco Spagnolo.

p. s. "Yuval" is not my Hebrew name (which is more "conventional"), 
but it is the name that prof. Israel Adler chose for the Hebrew 
University musical publications; a "Yuval" association for Jewish 
music was founded by Adler in Paris in 1985 (I was there with him for 
the preliminary work); finally, in 1997 I founded and currently 
direct "Yuval Italia" (in Milano, Italy), which operates in close 
contact with the Jewish Music Research Centre in Jerusalem.

>

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