RE: In defense of the recorder

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Josh,

>Indeed there were Jewish guilds all over eastern Europe and what today is
>Germany. Documents exist as early as the 16th century.

That statement by itself is a true statement.

But why are you implying that if one studies the general history of Jewish 
guilds all over Eastern Europe, you can make inferences about any Jewish 
guilds in Eastern Europe?
I have not looked into the foremost authoritative book on Jewish guilds, 
i.e., Mark Wischnitzer's "A History of Jewish Crafts and Guilds" (New York, 
1965) in the last 5 years and don't own the book to check it at this 
moment, but I do remember looking at the music guilds info in there.  My 
memory tells me that he cites less than one handful of music guilds in his 
book.  Someone please check this for me.  I just went over my almost 
complete set of YIVO Bleter and find nothing about them either from 
Shatzky, Lechinsky or anyone else.  Sorry, I am not bothering to read each 
article.   Even if there were local "guilds" or "khevres" in each town, 
there is no documentation to support the statement by Matt Jaffey.

>Mr Hescheles said
>that the guild (called "tekh") which served his town (Gliniany) was quite
>strict, though I haven't heard or read that these restrictions involved 
the
>instrumentation of kapelyes.

First of all, the Yiddish word for 'guild' and the one that Hescheles might 
have used is "tsekh" and not "tekh".  This might seem like a minor point, 
but should we trust the accuracy of anything else you say after that?   It 
is one thing for someone to make an error in speech.  It is something else 
to make it writing.

Are you sure that Mr. Hescheles said "tsekh" or guild when he talked of 
this association or was this a term that you ascribed to the group he was 
describing?  Maybe he borrowed a general term that you and other young 
American scholars would have been most familiar with, but does not best 
reflect a formal organization which the use of this term implies?  Could he 
have meant "klezmer family"?   Would there have been a guild in a little 
town of Gliniany, a town I never even heard of?   How many bands did 
Gliniany have that they needed a guild?  How many Jews did Gliniany have? 
  Sorry, I don't have time to search this info for you, but anyone who 
accepts Hescheles information should definitely check this out.

> though I haven't heard or read that these restrictions involved the
>instrumentation of kapelyes.

Should we understand that as a correction in Matt Jaffey's previous 
statement?  I am happy to take it as such.

>Beregovsky writes that there were czarist
>restrictions in the Ukraine for a time which had such restrictions, but 
that
>is definitely not the guild, but rather the government.

Thank you for saying that, Josh.  To the untrained ear, what's the 
difference between one restriction and another restriction?  :)   They are 
all alike, aren't they? :)  Sorry for my cynicism, but yesterday's 
sloppiness was really is too much for me.

>But when Beresh came to America, he and his kapelye
>[ensemble] remembered it and played it, because they were no longer under
>the jurisdiction of the tekh there...?

It would be helpful if the term 'khazuke' [='khazoke'= claim to title, 
right of possession] and all its implications in a musical context were 
explained so that uninformed people would not make false inferences about 
it.



Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky



----------
From:  Joshua Horowitz [SMTP:horowitz (at) styria(dot)com]
Sent:  Saturday, March 25, 2000 3:14 PM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:  Re: In defense of the recorder


-- Budowitz Home Page: http://www.merlinms.dircon.co.uk/budowitz/

Indeed there were Jewish guilds all over eastern Europe and what today is
Germany. Documents exist as early as the 16th century. Mr Hescheles said
that the guild (called "tekh") which served his town (Gliniany) was quite
strict, though I haven't heard or read that these restrictions involved the
instrumentation of kapelyes. Beregovsky writes that there were czarist
restrictions in the Ukraine for a time which had such restrictions, but 
that
is definitely not the guild, but rather the government.

here is an excerpt from the lined notes of our new CD regarding one
conversation I had with Mr. Hescheles:

This piece was attributed to a shalosh sudes tune, the third and last meal
of shabbes, eaten Saturday evening. It was probably played by the leader of
the Gliner Kapelye of Gliniany, Pesakhye Wolf, who was the uncle of the
famous klezmer violinist (formerly trumpet player) Beresh Katz. Beresh
recorded the piece in 1927 with the Boibriker Kapelle, led by the 
violinist,
Hersh Gross, in New York.  ?Back in Gliniany, Beresh wouldn?t have dared to
play it, because in the tekh [guild], Pesakhye would have had a khasuke [a
hold, or rights] on that tune. That means it would have been considered
Pesakhye?s tune. But when Beresh came to America, he and his kapelye
[ensemble] remembered it and played it, because they were no longer under
the jurisdiction of the tekh there...?

The text to Budowitz Mother tongue also deals with guilds and we have had
previous discussions about this on the list. It points to a fact that the
whole economic and social structure of klezmer music was probably much more
sophisticated than we portray it today...Josh


>>Guilds held control over the composition of kapelyes.
>
> What?  Who?  Where?  Maybe music directors in the Warsaw theater made
> formal exclusions, and this still needs to be checked if its true, but no
> such guilds existed in towns and villages.  You can not find take one
> little fact and rip it out of its context to make general, sweeping
> statements this way.
>
>
> Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky
>
>
> ----------
> From:  Matt Jaffey [SMTP:mjaffey2 (at) mum(dot)edu]
> Sent:  Friday, March 24, 2000 10:12 AM
> To:  World music from a Jewish slant
> Subject:  Re: In defense of the recorder
>
> Regarding suitability of an instrument for playing klezmer - of course,
> tastes change. I have been told that, at the time when brass instruments
> were being introduced in kapelyes in the Ukraine, they were being
> rigorously excluded from kapelyes in the more conservative Poland, where
> guilds held control over the composition of kapelyes. Not only that, all
> but the very best of clarinetists were also being excluded in Poland. So
> for them, brass, and most clarinet playing, were considered unsuitable.
> This is supposedly from Mr. Hescheles. If anyone has more definitive info
> on this, I'd be happy to hear about it.
>
> Hope Ehn wrote:
> <<While many recorders, including good plastic ones, do have a coupling
> between pitch and volume, expensive wooden recorders do have the capacity
> to change volume without changing pitch.>>
>
> Perhaps a coupling between pitch and volume need not be considered a
> liability when playing klezmer. Last summer, I attended a workshop 
intended
> to show how Hassidic singing practice could inform klezmer performance.
> Amongst the more obvious things were how some klezmer ornaments are
> intended to imitate the human voice. It was also pointed out that 
untrained
> voices singing nigunim tended to naturally rise in volume and intensity 
as
> pitch rose, whereas, voice training has as one goal to smooth out volume,
> and musical instruments (such as the clarinets and violins at the 
workshop)
> tend to have a much wider range of pitch without appreciable affect on
> volume. It was interesting to attempt to imitate untrained voice on the
> violin, by moving the bow away from the bridge when descending a scale, 
and
> toward the bridge when ascending, or by using less and more bow etc. Of
> course this would have to be integrated into a whole repertoire of 
possible
> tools, and always with an eye toward playing musically. But maybe this
> would actually be easier on the recorder?
>
> Regarding the overall volume of a recorder being "too quiet", I have been
> surprised by how well some recorders can carry, for example, I've seen a
> recorder successfully used in an outdoor setting, as a primary melodic
> instrument for dancing, with other activities going on in the vicinity.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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