Re: Dutch Cantorial Music/Prewar Media

[SamWeiss <SamWeiss...>]

I've been browsing Irwin's interesting Chazzanut Online site and wish that 
my German (let alone my non-existent Dutch) were better, so that I could 
more easily read some of the writings about the music.  As I made my way 
through the music transcriptions, however, I was struck by the fact that 
both the Katz and Lissauer collections use the "ng" consonant to represent 
the Hebrew vowel "ayin."  I have always known this to be a characteristic 
of Spanish-Portuguese Sephardic pronunciation, yet here it appears in a 
collection of Ashkenazic music, amidst other obviously Ashkenazic 
pronunciation.  Is this a Dutch convention for transcribing Hebrew that 
does not necessarily reflect pronunciation, or was/is this music shared by 
the Sephardic community as well, prompting a hybrid transcription?

I am also intrigued by the MIDI transcriptions of Hazzanut.  Some of the 
soundfiles are of selections that have a regular meter, but others sound 
like metrically even renderings of basically non-metrical 
compositions.  (Metrical vs. non-metrical =written= transcriptions of such 
pieces is another issue, which was discussed at length on this list a while 
back regarding the transcriptions in Joshua Horowitz's Sephardic 
Songbook.)  Since about one of these, Katz's R'tzey Vimnuchateynu, Mr. 
Oppenheimer writes that it is still sung today, then if the transcription:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~danio/irwin/music/katz/katz-15.mid
indeed reflects current practice, this would indicate an interesting 
musicological development.  (Even if actual current renditions are more 
free-flowing, the very fact there are six of Katz's cantorial recitatives 
"still in regular use in Amsterdam today", according to Mr. Oppenheimer's 
introduction, is noteworthy.  Or perhaps this refers to the more melodic 
excerpts from these compositions.)

Related evidence of the blurring of the distinctions between free-flowing 
hazzanut and metrical melody is found in Berlijin's The Dutch Priestly 
Melodies.  Here the interesting evidence is in written form as well.  His 
"Birkat Nesi'at Kapayim" gives the instruction "Andante, quasi recitativo," 
yet it is composed for two voices.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~danio/irwin/music/nusach/berlijn-05.html
That the written transcription is an attempt to fit a non-metrical work 
into a metrical strait-jacket is indicated by all the fermatas that it 
contains.  Yet the scoring for two voices indicates that the composer heard 
this music with more "Western" ears than his East-European counterpart 
would have.
Perhaps this also speaks to a cross-influence between the Sephardic and 
Ashkenazic Dutch communities.

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