Jewish music and The Tempest

[TomP317 <TomP317...>]

This weekend I went to the Globe Theatre in London, to see The Tempest. I was 
in a seat where you don't see the action much, but you do get to sit next to 
the musicians. I didn't know who the musicians would be before I went (a 
friend got me in) but here's the line-up:

Violin: Steve Bentley Klein/Joe Townsend
Drummer: Michael Gregory/Phil Hopkins
Double Bass: Andy Lewis/Dave Ayre
Clarinet: Merlin Shepherd/Dai Pritchard
Accordian: Kevin Street/Mark Bousie

List members going on my night would have recognised Merlin Shepherd at least 
- he gets to stand over the balcony a lot and invokes storms with his 
clarinet. I don't think Kevin Street was playing when I went but he plays a 
lot of Jewish music too. The effect during a Shakespeare wedding scene of 
having a Klezmer outfit on stage was tremendous. They had big tall hats on, a 
little like you see on p111 of Henry Sapoznik's book only taller (it's the 
picture with Naftule Brandwein and Shloimke Beckerman in it, in Joseph 
Cherniavsky's Yiddish-American Jazz Band). 

The intention, according to Nigel Osborne the composer, was to respond to the 
director's suggestion that the production have a Balkan character. He writes: 
"At the time of Shakespeare [The Tempest is dated 1610/1611] the Balkans saw 
a melding of Bogumil gnosticism with independent fraternities like the 
Bosnian Church, and Islamic mysticism. Accordingly, I have echoed the sounds 
of both Christian gnostic glossolalia and Dervish chanting in the most 
profound ritual moments of the play."

I only read that afterwards. For me the music and its execution felt at least 
as though it was in touch with the Jewish tradition: the wedding music 
started as a slower and muted ancestor of the Heyser Bulgar melody. It made 
Prospero a cabbalist for me, with his books and magic; and it put the strange 
atmosphere of the Globe, with its attempt to recreate the London stage of 
Shakespeare's time, into a kind of perspective: like with the theatre, we 
couldn't really tell if the music was "authentic" or not; but it set the 
imagination free. 

So I heartily recommend the production. The box office number is (44) 20 7401 
9919. As for the play itself, I understand it concerns a deposed duke and his 
life on a remote island.

I think this is at least slightly about Jewish music. I mention this because 
of all the emails I've been getting which talk about talking about Jewish 
music (and which now appear to outnumber the ones about Jewish music).

Tom Payne

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+