RE: Eyn Keyloheynu and other drinking songs

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

Sam,

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  These kinds of "rumors" drive me crazy.


Reyzl

----------
From:  Sam Weiss [SMTP:samweiss (at) bellatlantic(dot)net]
Sent:  Tuesday, May 15, 2001 1:02 AM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant
Subject:  Eyn Keyloheynu and other drinking songs


"Jonathan Gordon" jbgordon (at) cloud9(dot)net wrote:

 >i still wonder about the ein keloheynu, sam. surely
 >freudenthal is credited wtih writing it but i have always
 >heard that it is a reworking of a Germanic Drinking song.
 >Of course, the source was always disparagers who
 >wanted to weaken the importance of traditional music,
 >and i was also annoyed to hear it. I wonder what is the
 >source of that repeated rumor. Come on, you must have
 >heard it. And who was Freudenthal, anyway? The tune,
 >which i still use to close shabbat morning services, is
 >peculiar with its use of secondary dominant harmony,
 >very much not traditional jewish practice, but out of the
 >european tradition. so, drinking song or other, i wonder
 >about it. jonathan

The innocent ur-text on which the rumor is based (and the only useful 
information I've seen on the tune or the composer) is this passage from p. 
238 of Idelsohn's "Jewish Music in its Historical Development," in which 
I've capitalized the most
relevant sentence:
<<The Chazzan Hirsch Goldberg (1807-1893) served [in Seesen from
1833] until 1842 and was then appointed Chazzan in Brunswick. Together
with Julius Freudenthal (Brunswick 1805-1874), Dukal musician, he
modernized the Synagogue song and published in 1843 a collection of
songs for solo and small choir in two parts [footnote: 'The title of the
collection is Gesaenge fuer Synagogen. It became very popular and
experienced several enlarged editions.']. To this songster Freudenthal
contributed several tunes, and especially his famous tune for En Kelohenu,
which he had composed in 1841. THIS TUNE HAS THE TYPICAL
GERMAN MELODIC LINE, AND IN ITS FIRST PART RESEMBLES A
GERMAN MELODY OF 1774 (No.1) (see table XXIX), which was reworked
in 1819 and in 1844 (No.3) and published in 1844.>>

Note that Idelsohn says "its first part" (i.e. the first 4 measures, out
of a total 16), and he says "resembles." He does not say "derives from,"
"comes from," or "is based on." The German melody which he reproduces in
his table XXIX is not a drinking song, but the Lutheran hymn "Grosser
Gott wir loben Dich." The table contains the three similar versions of
the hymn referred to in the above passage, plus Eyn Keyloheynu. A careless
reading of the highlighted sentence, combined with a quick glance at the
table, creates the illusion that the table illustrates some sort of
progression from an early hymn to the Freudenthal Eyn Keyloheynu, but
this is plainly not what Idelsohn wrote. (It also makes it seem as if
other measures beside the first four merit comparison. You can decide
for yourself by listening to the hymn at
<http://www.lutheranhymnal.com/online/tlh-250.mid>) It is
indeed puzzling why Idelsohn would bother reproducing the hymn variants,
other than to document its =publishing= history; i.e. that it appeared
in print one year AFTER the Goldberg-Freudenthal collection, and thus
was probably NOT the basis for Freudenthal's composition.

Nevertheless, in his "Studies in Jewish Music" A.W. Binder writes
(p.258) that Freudenthal's tune <<is derived from German Christian
hymnody of the eighteenth century,>> and he gives the above page in
Idelsohn as his source (!).
Macy Nulman, in his "Encyclopedia of Jewish Music" (p.76) has an even
more preposterous reading of Idelsohn: <<This [Eyn Keyloheynu] tune,
derived from a German melody, "Grosser Gott wir loben Dich," has been
revised several times until its present form.>> Again, page 238 of
"Jewish Music in its Historical Development" is the citation, as if
Idelsohn's table illustrates variants of Eyn Keyloheynu, rather than
variants of Grosser Gott!

If a serious author like Binder is attracted to "demonizing" Eyn
Keyloheynu, it should be no wonder that lesser lights take the ball and
run with it. What is the impulse that drives such "rumors"? I don't
think that it's so much a case of "disparagers who want to weaken the
importance of traditional music." I think an important factor is the
urge to sensationalize and titillate, but there's an additional point to
consider. It is a commonly known fact that nineteenth century German
Jewish reform recast synagogue choral and congregational music in the
Lutheran mold, as well as appropriated Lutheran melodies and texts for
synagogue use. Fortunately, the results of that activity have for the
most part withered away. It is thus very tempting to grasp at whatever
German sounding synagogue music that has endured and stereotype it as
an illustration of that sordid activity, regardless of its actual history.

Where did the drinking song enter the picture? This is an obvious
confusion with the stereotyping of Ma'oz Tzur, which contains a snatch
that resembles a Lutheran hymn as well as one that resembles a German
battle song. (Cf. Idelsohn pp. 171-173.) As with all ethnic stereotyping,
the juicier and the more colorful the better, so "German battle song"
becomes "German drinking song," and the "Eyn Keyloheynu - German hymn"
connection is transformed by folk savants into the "Eyn Keyloheynu -
German drinking song" connection. As a matter of fact, since the most
recent iteration of this discussion on this list started with
the question of Sh'ma Yisrael being a drinking song, I think it won't
take long before the same question is asked about the High Holiday
Aleynu ("Yikes, a major triad!") and the High Holiday Barkhu (you
know... the one derived from a Gregorian drinking song).

The use of secondary dominant harmony in Eyn Keyloheynu merely shows the
origin of this congregational melody in a German choral composition,
intended to
be sung with organ support. The commonly sung "Hodo Al Eretz V'shamayim,"
based on a Sulzer choral piece, has an even trickier lick (though somewhat
homogenized from the original composition) also showing its arty heritage.
These examples illustrate how the "nusakh-less" areas of the liturgy,
like hymns and the Torah service, attracted "traditional" congregational
responses based on congregants' singing along with the professional
choral pieces.

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


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