Re: Dutch Cantorial Music/Prewar Media (fwd)

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

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 12:23:34 +0100
From: Olve Utne <utne (at) nvg(dot)org>
Reply-To: jewishshulmusic (at) yahoogroups(dot)com
To: jewishshulmusic (at) yahoogroups(dot)com
Subject: Re: [jewishshulmusic] [Fwd: Re: Dutch Cantorial Music/Prewar
    Media]

At 23:11 06.03.2002 +0200, Cantor Sam Weiss wrote:
>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?

The ng-like quality of the 'ayin is a general trait of Western Sephardic
pronunciation.
But it is actually also a typical trait of Dutch Ashkenazi pronunciation,
stemming from
the situation back in the early 17th Century, when the Ashkenazim in
Holland were still too
few to maintain their own synagogues. They were allowed to have 'aliyot in
the Sephardic
synagogues, but only under the condition that they would make the proper
distinction
between alef and 'ayin...
Incidentally, a few words in the Ashkenazi world outside the Netherlands
suggests that
earlier Ashkenazi pronunciation may have had a similar sound --
note, e.g., the ng-sound in Yankef (for Ya'aqov)...
I have also heard, but don't have any sources for that, that some Litvak
Ashkenazim
make a distinction between alef and 'ayin. Anyone know anything about that?

Another Sephardic influence on the Dutch Ashkenazim is apparently that many
of the
sifre Tora used by Dutch Ashkenazim are actually Sephardic, or at least: so
I've heard... :-)

-Olve Utne
________________________

Olve Utne <utne (at) nvg(dot)org>
URL: http://utne.nvg.org
________________________

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