Tsimbl revisited 2

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

Tim Meyen wrote: 
> > Definitely not exclusively. ... There was a veritable
> > cult of Jewish tsimblists throughout the 18th and 19th Centuris. They
> > most certainly would not have reaped the adulation they did by playing
> > accompaniment.
  
> OK.  Do you think Moskowitz was the tail end of this 'tsimbl soloist'
> tradition, or was he more of a maverick, doing something new (the concert
> cymbalom was pretty 'new' in early 1900s)?

Josh Horowitz wrote:
Moskowitz represents for me a quantum leap from the Jewish tsimblists of
the 19th Century to the concert and cafe tsimblist. His father was a
tsimbler so I'm sure Joseph must have started on the smaller models
which were common in Jewish music. I've always thought of Moskowitz as a
modern day cafe player (not meant as criticism). His repertoire is
eclectic and sophisticated and his style is urban Romanian almost
through and through. So I don't see him as the tail of a Jewish
tradition, but at the beginning of the modern concert/cafe tradition. Bu
again the problem is, we only have a smattering of his playing Jewish
repertoire, and what we do have is very concertante. The lion's share of
his recorded rep is popular salon stuff. But his repertoire I'm sure
included masses of Jewish pieces, and I'm sure he could play in the
older simpler style as well as the concertante style he recorded in. 
 
>  Would early klezmorim have accented the off-beat as much as
> the Ukrainians seem to?

That's a very perceptive question, and we've spent a lot of time with
this important rhythmic aspect. My ears tell me the "Jewish offbeat" is
longer than the Ukrainian, Romanian and Gypsy offbeat, but shorter than
the Hungarian. This gives Jewish music a rounder quality, in contrast to
that sharp stinging offbeat you get in the 
2/4 dances of say Hutzuls and Ruthenian people. Plus, Jewish contra
style seems to have been busier than the estam contra styles of other
east Europeans.

> By the way, this is completely unrelated but thinking about Ukrainian music
> made me wonder - what's the role of the drum in klezmer music? I mean before
> the snares and woodblocks of the US recordings.  Would a bass drum and cymbal
> combination (like a baraban or whatever) have been used in some areas? 

Sure, it was used all over the place, usually called a poik (like the
German term for kettle drum- Pauke), either with or without the metal
cymbals.

I get
> the impression Jews considered drums pretty low-brow.  Is there a reason for
> that? (Besides the obvious mentality of most drummers).

Big portable drums always seemed low-brow to upper class Europeans, but
they were very commonly played by klezmorim. I don't know how they were
viewed by fellow musicians. In Moldavia drummers are very respected.
They are not seen as instrumentalists who play another instrument but
beat the drum when the village idiot isn't present to do it, but take it
seriously. Good ones use lots of different strokes and play tastefully.
Ask Michael Alpert how Ben Bayzler percieved it...

> Another kind of unrelated question: you know how in Romania they favour a kind
> of muffled small tambal sound ... They even stuff rags under the strings next
> to the wrestplanks, but in Poland and Ukraine the tysmbaly sound is a lot more
> 'ringing'.  Any idea which would have been more common among klezmer tsimbls?
> (I'm guessing the ringing)

We have virtually no info about this. The only old Jewish tsimbl I ever
got a chance to see was the one given to Anski by Rabinovitch I took all
its measurements and will be publishing the results on my study of the
tsimbl at the Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna in 2002. The strings
are so thin and delicate with lower tension (probably 7-10 kilos, as
opposed to today's Romanian constructions, which have 40-50kilos), that
I'm pretty sure they DIDN'T dampen. The dampening is common when piano
wire is used, which is a new development (since the Schunda concert
cymbalom) The tension is much greater, the strings are much denser,
therefore the sound hangs around for a long time. On Bessarabian
Symphony I used a small tsimbl and didn't dampen the strings. The sound
is more Ukrainian that way. Your average 19th century Jewish tsimbl was
probably no higher quality than a plank and some rusty strings. I'm
pretty sure the players were happy when a sound came out at all, let
alone, being afforded the choice of dampening it.
 
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."
> 
> I agree completely.  This is some of my homework you're helping me with now :)

Yeah, and its a mekhaya, too.

> > >   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.
> 
> But not particularly appropriate for klez, hmm?  At least not so frequently
> used, or so it seems to me.

Well, its one of those gestures which have come to mean "Gypsy." So if
you harmonize that way now, that's what a musically informed listener
will hear. Jewish style didn't use "chromatic" harmonies. Even Poldek
Koslowski told me that, and he loves to harmonize.

happy tsimbling, Josh

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