Tsimbl revisited

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

The Jewish Tsimbl thread has begun again. Tim Meyen (Australian
tsimblist extraordinaire) wrote the following questions, and I tried to
answer them:

So do you think Jewish tsimbl was used in a primarily
> accompaniment role?

Definitely not exclusively. In fact, due its small size, it was probably
earlier used more commonly as a melody instrument. True, the earliest
tsimbl recordings show the tsimbl in its role as a simple accompaniment
instrument, but this is because those recordings are snapshots of the
tsimbl during its last breaths before dying out. There was a veritable
cult of Jewish tsimblists throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries. They
most certainly would not have reaped the adulation they did by playing
accompaniment. I'll quote from the text of our new CD (with the help of
info gathered by Paul Gifford) not yet
released...

 Although the tsimbl was considered a typically ?Jewish? instrument,
very little exists in the way of manuscripts and descriptions to give us
an idea of how it was played in previous centuries. However, in the epic
poem, Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz, written 1832-1833 after the 1830 
Polish uprising, the figure of the Jewish tsimbler, Jankiel, is given
central importance, and was probably modelled after two figures whose
acquaintance Mickiewicz had made; in the 1830s in St. Petersburg he met
the Lithuanian Jewish musician Jankiel Cimbalist (formerly Liebermann)
 who was a wandering musician
earlier in his life and who later settled as an innkeeper in Poland
around 1811-12 and asked Mickiewicz to enter his name in his album upon
his visit; and Mordko Fajerman (1810-1880), a tsimbler and unrivalled
performer of mazurkas and polonaises, once a very popular figure in
Warsaw. Although Mickiewicz?s description of the playing of Jankiel
serves primarily to provide a metaphor for the downfall of the Polish
nobility, it is the most detailed existing description we have of tsimbl
style prior to the 20th Century. It is also interesting that he played
polonaises (also the Oginski Polonaise, mentioned above) and mazurkas:

The sticks in his hands
awaken to life,
they whirl over the strings
and roar like a brushfire

It sounds as though he beats
a proud victory march 
and then it sounds like a rustling rain shower
and everyone hearkens, moved

...Then the sticks stroke 
the strings so gently
as if a mosquito wing 
touched them while gliding by

...Then the swarming tones
join in with the rustling choir
like full bell tones
and drums rolling on top

It could be en entire ensemble
of Yenicharies...

And then the chords form 
as if by magic
to a gigantic rhythm
of The Polonaise of the 3rd of May

But now the bass sounds rumbling 
muffled like a canon roaring
like wild screaming and groaning
like an attack signal, shrill and harsh
  
...And then a single tone, just a hum
came out from under his hands
as if a fly who lost itself 
in a spider?s web would buzz
 
And out of the soft sound 
the melody emerges...
 
...And Jankiel beats on the surface
with both hands at the same time
it sounds like trumpets smashing
like drum and cymbal together

> what are the features or hallmarks of Jewish tsimbl
> accompaniment? 

Here you need to do a lot extrapolation. I do this by using the
following sources:

1) secunda players (rhythmic patterns, also some chording structures

2) Romanian and Ukrainian accompanying styles (the Romanian tiituri you
mention are probably more complex than the old style of Jewish playing,
though some of the simpler patterns were used by Jews at the turn of the
century)

3) Imitating the ensemble arrangements of the early large ensemble
recordings

4) After learning the basic variations of comping patterns, fill them
out in different ways. Believe it or not, the variations are pretty
endless. At first, I thought, gee, with only 2 sticks and the simplicity
of Jewish dance rhythms, I'm not gonna get very far. But when you sit
with them, varying bass patterns, voicings, colla parta melody
doublings, etc etc, the possibilities are endless. Don't be afraid to
extrapolate. The tsimbl is not as obtrusive as other instruments when
you make stylistic diversions.

>  I remember you showing me the freylakh rhythm and the standard
> 'bass-note-then-two-note-chord' sort of oompah accompaniment for the
> khusidl.  This latter is sort of my basis for accompanying almost
> anything.  Then I'll throw in an arpeggiated flourish at the end of a
> section or double the melody line an octave down in another section, etc
> etc.

That sounds good to me what you're doing. The soft arpeggiated Hungarian
style you mention in your email was less common for Jewish playing, by
simple virtue of the fact that most of the Jewish tsimblists came from
the west Ukraine, Vitebsk, Galitsia, Bukovina, Bessarabia and probably
Vallachia, all east of Hungary, with a harder playing style. That soft
sound was a result of the urbanization of Hungarian Gypsy salon players
who were supported by the Gentry, beginning already in the late 18th
century. That process of higher class infiltration of style began in
Hungary perhaps a bit earlier than it did with its Jewish counterparts
in the pale of settlement and had a more official aura to it.
 
>  How does a skocne accompaniment
> compare to a freylakhs, and so on? I guess Jewish tsimbl styles would
> have varied from area to area and between city and country too.

The skocnes we have on record use a simple and unrelenting oom-pah
comping pattern. However, I had doubts about the simplicity of this
style. When recording Shloimke's Skocne on Bessarabian Symphony (using
accordion, not tsimbl) I chose a more complexly interactive style of
accompaniment, actually going against the examples of the recordings.
The reason was that many of the skocnes that developed in the west
Ukraine were melodically busy, sometimes harmonically experimental
virtuosic variants of freylakhs. If you look at them closely, they begin
to look like either carefully composed etudes or crystallized
improvisations of simpler tunes. Beregovski first noticed this, though
his informants all played them solo to him, without accompanists Still,
it stood to reason
that if the composition were striving toward a more "sophisticated"
ideal melodically, wouldn't this hold true for the accompaniment? Of
course you could argue the opposite - that if the melodies were intended
to showcase the soloists technique, shouldn't the accompanist lay back
and let the soloist shine? I chose the former by virtue of the fact that
this was what was missing in the recordings I knew... 

That's one example of what I meant awhile ago when I wrote that what I
was trying to do was go back to an earlier period to develop klezmer
style in a way it didn't necessarily go but MIGHT have. Whether or not
people actually played that way will always be open to debate. You see,
if you want to play in the traditional style, you can't avoid
extrapolation. After all, individuals have always been the agent of
change in any music. Since you are a practicing individual, to avoid
putting your stamp on the music would be a historically pretentious. The
only thing I can say is that you have to do a lot of homework to learn
the borders first, before going the route of, "Well I'm an individual,
therefore I can do what I want." That's BS, but, in musicological
terms... if folk music is the shared property of any culture, then it
must, by definition, include every rendition which that culture produces
as being authentic. Certain, unmentionable historians writing in German
try to make conditions for entry into the "true" musical culture by
setting up requirements which only fit their own performance abilities
(i.e. correct ornamentation, phrasing, improvisatory skills, etc). In
the end, such attempts are nothing more than a compilation of sine qua
nons to exclude most practitioners from the field while raising
themselves up to the throne of authenticity. This is self-appointed
pseudo-Darwinian selection. If musical style were analogous to  social
class, this idealogy of exclusivity would be the first premise of
racism.  

>   How appropriate is the
> kind of chromaticism employed by lots of Romanian gypsies (eg. playing
> F# G A Bb C# D or some such while in G minor, or using diminished 7
> chords)?

It's very appropriate for Romanian Gypsies.

I'll leave it here. It's 4:30 am and I want to get back to bed where I
can enjoy my insomnia in the proper setting. Have fun, Josh


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