Re: Benedetto Marcello and Italian Jewish melodies

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Robert: Probably this is all stuff you know, but concerning the "south
German" Ma' oz Tsur melody, this is the info I have:

The cantor Eduard Birnbaum wrote in Koenigsberg in 1889 that the tune
for Ma' oz Tsur was taken from the melody of the (Lutheran) choral: *Nun
freut euch, Christeng'mein* (Now be joyful, Christian congregation) and
later (1545) appears as the folk tune:  *So weiss ich eins, das mich
erfreut, das Blumlein auf breiter Heide* (I know one thing, that the
little flower of the wide moorland brings me joy). Arno Nadel wrote in
1937 (Juedische Fest, p. 50) that he disagreed with the Birnbaum
analysis on the grounds that the folk tune mentioned appears in 3/4
meter and has a melody which diverges too much from the Ma' oz Tsur now
sung. I thought it came from a piece by Joseph Haydn (?) and that this
was a well known fact. As to the Marcello version, that would be
interesting to hear... Josh


Francesco Spagnolo wrote:
> 
> >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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