Re: Whence the music of Hatikvah?

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

I'm grateful for the recent postings re the music of Hatikvah and perhaps, 
by dint of checking in a few sources, can enlighten, a little, re where the 
music did or didn't come from.

As I think has already been made clear, Imber's poem (originally, btw, 
called "Tikvateinu") was set to a so-called itinerant or wandering 
melody--i.e., one which appears in the folk music of many cultures--but by 
whom is not absolutely certain.

Idelsohn does indeed, since someone asked, liken the melody to folk melodies 
in a number of cultures, as well as to the Spanish-Portuguese prayer for tal 
(dew) and the (traditional) Yigdal tune (Eric Werner also refers to a 
Sephardic Hallel melody); in addition to some exposition, he presents this 
in an oft-cited table  (in JEWISH MUSIC IN ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT, Table 
XXVIII; pp. 222-25 in my [probably standardly paginated] edition).

How Imber's text got set to this tune is not certain--though it seems 
*highly* unlikely that it reflected a borrowing from Smetana's MOLDAU (a 
possibility which Werner dismisses out of hand).  A number of authorities 
concur that one Samuel Cohen, a settler of Rishon le Zion from Moldavia 
(according to the EJ, Imber read his poem to the farmers of Rishon le Zion 
in 1882), set Imber's text to a melody--the one we know--which he (Cohen) 
adapted from a Moldavian-Romanian folk song, "Carul cu boi" (Cart & Oxen).  
(This would, of course, constitute just one of the many occurrences of this 
melody in the world's folk music, as above; I don't remember if Idelsohn 
includes this particular one.)

But Peter Gradenwitz, in THE MUSIC OF ISRAEL (though, so far, I can find no 
reference to this in my new and revised edition), apparently quotes a 
personal acquaintance of Imber's to the effect that Imber himself borrowed 
the tune from a cantorial composition by Cantor Nissan Belzer.  FWIW (maybe 
nothing), this seems less likely to me, but there you have it ...

--Robert Cohen
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com

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