RE: Shlomo Carlebach/Giora Feidman

[Sam Weiss <SamWeiss...>]

At 11:55 AM 12/3/03, music (at) sterlingmp(dot)org wrote:
>You learn to write well by reading well-written prose; I suspect that you
>create beautiful melodies in part as a response to listening to beautiful
>melodies.

More to the point, You learn to write English well by reading well-written 
=English= prose -- not just any prose, just as you learn to write English 
sonnets well by reading well-written English =sonnets=.  So the issue is 
not whether a melody is beautiful, but whether the beautiful melody is 
representative of any particular tradition, style, or genre.  If you don't 
think that the latter is relevant or important, then you are further 
corroborating the point of my original posting.

>a charlatan is (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition) "a person who 
>makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or 
>knowledge."  That may or may not apply to some of the rabbis and cantors 
>of whom Sam speaks; I wasn't, and am not, speaking to that.

If neither you nor I am speaking to that, then why do you even raise such 
an inflammatory point?

>But it doesn't apply to inspired melodists or niggun
>writers.  They're not making any claims of any kind.

But teachers do make claims of some kind.  What exactly they are claiming 
is worth investigating.


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


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