Tsur Yisra'el

[I. Oppenheim <i.oppenheim...>]

Remembering our earlier discussion
about tunes of which the composer gets "lost,"
I came across an interesting reference concerning
the well known "Tsur Yisra'el" tune.

The niggun is discussed extensively in Mark Slobin's "Chosen Voices: The
story of the American Cantorate", pp 202-206.

To quote Slobin: "Extensive questioning of hazzanim produced a tentative
view that it might have been composed by Zeidel Rovner (1886-1943), a
cantor-composer... who was influential in America in the interwar period.
The fact that the melody has become 'traditional' shows that hazzanim can
be just like their congregations: within a short period of time, they
forget the origins of a tune if it is not printed in a standard text. The
fact that this melody is *not* published is surprising for such a popular
tune and shows how strong oral tradition still is in the cantorial world."

Slobin also quotes the niggun itself, in several variations.

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