St. Petersburg Society

[Sam Weiss <samweiss...>]

Eliott Kahn <Elkahn (at) JTSA(dot)EDU> wrote:

> Curiously, the St. Petersburg Folk Music Society came to just such a juncture 
> in 1915. ...

There are interesting similarities between the genesis and activity of 
the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music at the beginning of the 
20th century and the Klezmer Revival at the end of the century.  The 
foundational myth of the Klezmer Revival centers around that famous 
question asked of its prophet Henry Sapoznik by Tommy Jarrell, with whom 
Henry was studying traditional American music, regarding the great 
number of Jewish musicians interested in early American music:
"Hank, don't your people got none of your own music?"

The prime figure of the Russian Jewish music movement was Yoel Engel 
(1868-1927), a totally assimilated Jew who graduated the Moscow Imperial 
Conservatory and started on an illustrious carreer as a music critic.  
Following are some excerpts from the introduction to the St. Petersburg 
Society collection recently reprinted by Tara Publications:


   <<Engel quickly succeeded in winning broad recognition among the 
artistic and academic circles of St. Petersburg, Moscow and other 
centers. Russian topnotch authorities like Rimsky- Korsakov, Taneyev, 
Cui, and others, acclaimed the outstanding articles of the young critic 
Engel...

...[Many years later] I finally asked him the crucial question: "Tell 
me, please, how did it really occur that you, a typically Russian 
intellectual, suddenly turned around all 180 degrees into an ardent 
propagandist, pioneer, and exponent of Jewish music?"
Engel smiled. "You see," he said, "strange as it may seem, I owe this to 
the Russians, or rather to one Russian." And he told me of the 
remarkable episode, a fascinating story indeed, which caused that 
decisive turn of his life into a new path. It was the "holy night" the 
eve of Russian Easter in Moscow, when the young Russian music critic 
Engel met a friend of his, the sculptor Mark Antokolsky for the purpose 
of introducing Engel to the eminent Vladimir Stasov, the enthusiastic 
advocate of Russian national art...

   ...When both guests entered his hotel room, they found Stasov in the 
company of the famous painter Repin, the two men absorbed in Stasov's 
beloved topic, nationalism in the arts. Stasov, a genuine Slav, 
nevertheless was a great admirer and student of the Old Testament. He 
felt the inner profound relationship between the Bible and western 
culture. After Yuli Dmitrevich Engel was introduced by Mark Matveyevich 
Antokolsky, Stasov immediately started a vigorous attack on both as Jews 
who used Russian first names instead of their own Hebrew ones. "Look 
here," he shouted at Antokolsky, "What is the idea of calling yourself 
Mark, a genuine Roman Latin name? What have you in common with Mark? 
Certainly nothing. Are you ashamed of your own Mordechai? I simply 
cannot understand it. Where is your national pride of being a Jew? Don't 
you realize all the magnificent biblical splendor, all the nobility of 
that Mordechai? Yes, yes, you should forget that Mark, and become proud 
of your ancient aristocratic forefather Mordechai. The great Mordechai." 
So yelled the giant Stasov as if in a delirium of ecstasy...

   ...Stasov particularly challenged Engel, as a highly educated 
musician, to examine his own heritage of Jewish music. He vigorously 
reminded Engel of the ancient Temple music of the Levites, of the 
historic synagogue liturgies with cantorial prayer chants, and 
especially of the Yiddish folk songs heard in the Russian countryside. 
Then Stasov shouted at Engel, "Where is your national pride in the music 
of your own people!"

   The young Engel was overwhelmed, bewildered. The tall man with his 
long gray beard looked like a true impersonation of a biblical prophet. 
His thundering voice sounded like one of an Isaiah, Elijah, or Jeremiah. 
His words struck Engel's imagination like lightning and the Jew awoke in 
him. This was indeed the greatest moment in Engel's life, as well as a 
big event for the whole of Israel. For this was the memorable night when 
Jewish art music was born.

   Engel acted quickly. An immediate decision was taken. Two months 
after the Stasov meeting, he left for his summer vacation heading west 
to join his people. He spent a whole summer listening to, and noting 
down loads of Jewish musical folklore. Upon his return to Moscow, he 
carefully assorted the material and harmonized the choicest tunes, then 
setting them for publication. Two more summers of similar activity 
followed, and finally in 1900 the first "Album of Ten Jewish Songs," 
compiled by Engel and published at his own expense, was released. One of 
the first copies went to Stasov, in personal acknowledgment. Later in 
the same year, Joel Engel organized a public lecture with illustrations 
on Jewish music, the first one ever delivered on the subject. It took 
place at the Moscow Polytechnical Museum on Malaya Lubyanka Street, and 
was sponsored by the music section of the Imperial Society for Natural 
Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography....

...[The lecture] hardly meant much to the assimilated Moscow Jewry. But 
to the national-minded few, mostly young music students, the lecture was 
a true revelation, or better, a revolution. A far reaching echo of the 
Russian Jewry was the response to Engel's lecture, whose detailed 
comments appeared in Voskhod (The Dawn), a Russian-Jewish periodical 
read by the whole intelligentsia. Jewish musical activities started 
simultaneously in several centers, with the ultimate result of the 
foundation of the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg. >>


______________________________________________________
Cantor Sam Weiss === Jewish Community Center of Paramus, NJ

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