Re: Isaac Nathan

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

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Fred Blumenthal wrote:

> I have also been unaware of Isaac Nathan and his work, and so I thank
> you for bringing this up!  I was aware of Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," but
> this provides whole new channels for research.
>
> I've had relevant thoughts about "Shney Zeytim."  The melody that Irwin
> Oppenheim has provided lends itself well enough to harmonization, but is
> only 16 measures long.  It would be more useful with more length,
> perhaps through more verses.

I could provide you with the text of the complete poem.
There are about 7 verses. Moreover, the last section of
the beracha into which the poem gets inserted, i.e,

'Or chadash 'al tsiyon ta'ir
venizkeh khullanu meheyrah le'oro
Barukh 'atah hashem
yotseir hame'orot

is customarily sung using the second part of the Shnei Zeitim tune.

> For this year's Chanukah concert I found a traditional melody,
> "Y'vanim."  The words were one of the subsequent verses to "Maoz Tsur,"
> so the poetic meters matched, and so I made an arrangement of several
> verses, borrowing the other verses of "Maoz Tsur."

Could you provide me this "yevanim" tune, preferably
in gif and midi format? Then I could post it on my
web site.

> This practice - imposing pre-existing words on pre-existing music -
> might make purists cringe, but it has ancient precedent in church music,
> where it was called "contrafactum."  It occurs to me that the "Shney
> Zeytim" melody and words lend themselves to similar substitutions, and
> that the melody associated with Marcello, with its melismas, would be
> even more flexible. So there's opportunity for several new songs,
> including a "Maoz Tsur" to the "Shney Zeytim" melody.
>
> Fred Blumenthal
> xd2fabl (at) us(dot)ibm(dot)com

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