Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 3:47 PM
Subject: Appeal for Outlook Magazine
Dear friends and colleagues,
I just returned home from a week's vacation to find a copy of the attached
letter from Outlook Magazine in my mail. In response to this letter, I am
taking what is an unprecedented step for me: circulating an appeal
for a very worthy undertaking.
For years, Outlook has provided a unique assortment of material on
Jewish and other themes from a universalistic (as opposed to a
Jewish-centric) perspective. I await each issue eagerly, knowing that I
will find articles and items I don't find anywhere else. As I recently said
to Carl Rosenberg, the magazine's editor, "I don't understand how you
do it. What you put together regularly outdoes other magazines with
much greater pretensions as well as much greater budgets."
In this era of Israeli chauvinism, Outlook has provided a dependable source
of information from Israeli and other voices, rebutting the tribalistic call
to arms that has come to dominate the dialogue in the Jewish community.
But its coverage goes far beyond Israel and Palestine, providing new and
insightful perspectives on both historical and contemporary issues.
I cannot commend Outlook highly enough. If you're already a subscriber,
you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, do yourself a favour and
subscribe. Now. Send gift subscriptions to friends and colleagues. Send
the attached letter (which includes all of the necessary subscription
details) to other folks you think will be interested. Encourage them.
.
In closing, we have a wonderful resource at our disposal. We cannot let it
slide away. Please respond to this appeal at your earliest convenience.
Thanks for taking this message to heart.
Sincerely,
Sid
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/opinion/09hoffman.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th
The Music You Won't Hear on Rosh Hashana
By Miles Hoffman
NY Times: Sept. 09, 2010
TODAY is the first day of Rosh Hashana, the holiday that marks the beginning
of the Jewish new year. For the next 10 days, through Yom Kippur, the Day of
Atonement, Jews around the world will gather to chant the prayers of the
High Holy Days to melodies that have been used for generations.
Some of the melodies will be simple and some complex, and some will be
particularly beautiful. What almost none of them will be is "classical":
Western classical composition, the dominant feature of Christian sacred
music for more than a millennium, remains mostly absent from Jewish
liturgical music. Given the number of extraordinary Jewish classical
composers over the last two centuries, this absence is particularly
striking.
But it's not surprising. The reasons for the dearth of classical music in
the synagogue may be tangled, but they all lie in the familiar ground of
Jewish history and experience: religious observance, rabbinic law, social
and legal exclusion, systematic persecution, love of tradition - and the
complicated psychology of being Jewish in a largely gentile world.
Western classical music has various ancient antecedents, including,
interestingly, the early music of the Jewish liturgy. But its modern history
begins in the Middle Ages with music written for the Roman Catholic Church.
And to a large extent it owes its subsequent evolution to the work of
musicians trained and employed by the church, the great patron not just of
musicians but of artists, scribes and scholars.
It's true that secular musical forms, training and traditions developed
along the way, and throughout history one finds great contrasts in style and
emphasis between sacred and secular forms in classical music.
But in terms of classical music's basic principles, the similarities
outweigh the differences: Bach is still Bach and Mozart is still Mozart,
whether in Masses or sonatas. The language of classical music, in other
words, is the language of Christian church music.
Jews, however, were long excluded from the practice of Western classical
music. Jews were barred from church schools, of course, but until the
Italian Renaissance, and the later Enlightenment in other parts of Europe,
they were likewise forbidden from public academies, organizations and
functions.
As a result, Jews were for the most part limited to cultivating and
preserving their own liturgical music, music for the synagogue and home
prayer based on ancient chants and motifs - and enriched over the centuries
of the diaspora by borrowing from the folk music of local cultures. From the
12th century to the 14th century, for example, elements of German, Spanish
and French folk tunes all found their way, modified and adapted, into Jewish
liturgical melodies.
Rabbinic law tightened the limits still further by banning musical
instruments in the synagogue - and outside the synagogue, except during
weddings. This prohibition dated from the destruction of the Second Temple,
in A.D. 70, after which rabbis decided that the playing of musical
instruments was inappropriate for a people in mourning.
But explanations based on historical exclusion and rabbinic law go only so
far. What kept emancipated Jewish "classical" composers of the modern era
from writing music for the synagogue, as their Christian colleagues wrote
for the church? Where are the liturgical contributions of Salomone Rossi,
Giacomo Meyerbeer, Jacques Offenbach, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg,
Erich Korngold and Aaron Copland, to name just a few?
The answers rest in the eternal dual longings of the Jewish people: the
longing, on the one hand, for distinction, separateness and "chosenness,"
and on the other for acceptance and belonging.
These forces are always in conflict, but in the field of music, when Jewish
composers were finally free from prohibitions and persecution and began to
develop their talents within the cultural mainstream, their longing for
acceptance triumphed.
In a way, they were still able to remain separate, or "chosen," if only by
becoming musicians, members of a rarified profession. But in the thrill of
their new freedom they sought the broadest possible citizenship, eagerly
choosing to write for their countries, or for the whole world, rather than
for the much narrower world of their co-religionists, and to define
themselves by their secular accomplishments.
Rossi, for example, did publish a collection of settings of Hebrew texts,
but he's better known, and plays a more important role in music history, as
an innovator in early Baroque instrumental music and violin technique.
Meyerbeer and Offenbach, both German Jews, became more French than the
French - Meyerbeer as the king of French grand opera, Offenbach as the
champion of operetta. Mahler, who went so far as to convert to Catholicism,
was a giant of the symphony, and Korngold held similar sway over film music.
Copland came to define American classical music and Schoenberg, although he
did write works on Jewish subjects, including a setting for the Kol Nidre,
the opening prayer recitation for the Yom Kippur service, will forever be
identified with his internationally influential system of twelve-tone music.
It's certainly strange that their very liberation as Jews led to composers'
leaving the substance of Judaism behind, at least artistically. But is it
realistic to expect brilliant Jewish composers, exposed to some of the most
magnificent artistic creations of Western civilization and struck by the
universal impact and appeal of those creations, to be satisfied setting
Hebrew texts for their local congregations?
Yes, it's possible that if some of these great composers had written
monumental works for the synagogue, those works might eventually have found
a broad public. And some have: Ernest Bloch's "Avodath Hakodesh" ("Sacred
Service"), for example, is widely performed - in concert halls more than
synagogues - and Leonard Bernstein's settings of Hebrew texts have not
lacked for mixed audiences.
More recently, contemporary Jewish composers like Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo
Golijov and Max Raimi have made compelling use of traditional Jewish tunes
and styles in music for the concert hall and found a sizeable audience.
But historically speaking, many Jewish composers simply felt compelled to
strike out well beyond their parochial origins, and to avoid at all costs
the possibility of being pigeon-holed as composers of "Jewish music."
STILL, the interests of Jewish musicians are only a part of the story.
Perhaps even more important, many Jewish congregations over the years
weren't
particularly interested in changing their traditional musical practices in
any fundamental way - and in most cases still aren't.
Under the pressures of the diaspora and persecution, "home" has often been a
fluid and elusive concept for Jews, a dream more than a reality. But if the
forms of worship remain the same, if the music remains the same, then any
synagogue anywhere can still feel like home.
This isn't to say that musical beauty in the synagogue is not highly prized.
The Jews tend to have a deep appreciation, for example, for great cantorial
singing, and many synagogues have fine choirs. It's also true that many
distinguished Jewish composers have set liturgical texts to music - the
names Darius Milhaud, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Hugo Weisgall come
quickly to mind - and there's no diminishing their accomplishments or
contributions.
Nevertheless, it's safe to say that despite its undeniable artistic quality,
most of this music hasn't caught on in any widespread way in Jewish
liturgical practice, and certainly hasn't replaced the age-old chants as the
most comfortable and familiar way for most observant Jews to communicate
with the Almighty.
When it comes to music for the synagogue, invention and innovation have
simply not proved as important to the Jewish community as tradition and
continuity. Whether this is a good thing is an open question. But if nothing
else, it's a testament to the enduring power of music itself, and to the
role it has played in sustaining a faith and a people.
Miles Hoffman is the violist of the American Chamber Players and a music
commentator for the NPR program "Morning Edition."
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