Sephardic Pesach Melodies
Kessler, Jack
SEPHARDK PESACH MELODIES: INTRODUCTION BY JACK KESSLER Israel, while a historical miracle, has been for Jewish music a disaster of sorts. The melting pot for Jews from numerous Oriental...
...The author wishes to thank Professor Johanna Spector of the Jewish Theological Seminary for consultation on this article...
...Had Gadya: From Sarajero and Bucharest...
...In addition, European Jewish folk music borrowed from its surrounding cultures so that many songs of Russian Jewry, for instance, feature extended range and leaps of large intervals, like Russian folksong...
...Jack Kessler is Chazan of Temple Beth Sholom in Framingham, Massachusetts...
...Sephardic folksong is characterized by small range, movement by small intervals (usually stepwise), textual rhythm, much vocal ornamentation and addition of grace notes to the basic melody and modality...
...The Anthology was published by Maran Book Manufacturing Company, Limited, in Jerusalem...
...Adir Hu: In Maqam Hejaz, which should be instantly familiar if you go to shul a lot...
...Harmonization of microtone scales is extremely difficult, and most non-Western music cannot be harmonized without being rewritten into the tempered scale as defined by the piano...
...All music is reproducedfrom the Anthology of Judaeo-Spanish Liturgy edited by Isaac Levy in collaboration with the Division of Culture of the Ministry of Education and Culture...
...This era came to an end when the Inquisition expelled several hundred thousand Jews from Spain...
...In studying these melodies the importance of using the past to enrich the present becomes clear— we owe it not only to a mutual history but also to ourselves to draw on the diverse Jewish sources of culture and heritage so that our own experiences may be enhanced and deepened...
...a popular Middle Eastern scale, also used extensively in Ashkenazic synagogue music (example: Avinu Malkeinu) An interesting comparison can be made by singing first the familiar Pesach melodies we all know, then learning a few of the Sephardic melodies for the same texts (incidentally, the fact that most Jews everywhere share these texts, melody aside, indicates that they date right back into the very dim mists...
...These melodies are in Maqam Bayat, with similar endings, a signpost indicating a common ancestry of at least part of the melody...
...Most of these Jews settled in Southern France, North Africa, Italy and cities in the Turkish Empire...
...The 'modes' or maqamat (the more accurate Arabic term) utilized in the Pesach songs printed here may be approximated on a piano or similar modern instrument as follows: Rast — a scale on C (sounds like a major scale) Bayat = a scale on D (sounds like a minor scale but has a raised sixth) Siga = a scale on E Hejaz = no Western equivalent...
...Sephardic Jews, while sharing basic tenets of belief and practice with other Jews, observe many distinctive customs, not the least of which is their musical heritage...
...The melting pot for Jews from numerous Oriental communities, each with distinct, ancient musical traditions, has produced assimilation of younger Jews into the highly Westernized popular Israeli culture...
...Most Jews in Spain lived in the southern half of the peninsula, the area of strongest Moorish control, and their music was strongly influenced by the dominant Arab culture...
...4/4 or 3/4 time) rather than following patterns of the accents in the text...
...The close similarity among melodies of widely separated communities implies their antiquity, dating them probably back to Spain...
...The Sephardim settled alongside their Ashkenazic and various Oriental brethren, maintaining separate synagogues in most instances...
...They are all in Maqam Rast, with almost identical endings...
...The reaction among Jewish ethnomusicologists has been a desperate attempt in the last thirty years to record on modern equipment the great variety of Jewish song that is rapidly disappearing...
...Non-Western Jews are sometimes erroneously lumped together as "Sephardim...
...It can be harmonized with basic Western chord patterns...
...Sephardic song shares many characteristics with Arabic music and differs in several respects from European Jewish folksong...
...The folk music of Ashkenazic Jews however, is largely westernized...
...The Jewish community of Spain was quite ancient, dating well back into the time of Visigothic and possibly Roman control of the Iberian Peninsula...
...Most nonEuropean music is modal, based on scales of different intervals...
...The effect, particularly in Middle Eastern and Jewish music, is an emphasis on horizontal melodic flow, almost devoid of harmonization, as opposed to the vertical harmonic structuring (use of chord patterns) made possible by fixed pitches of the modern "tempered" scale, which originated in post-Renaissance Europe...
...Modality...
...there is little vocal ornamentation and rhythm is metric (e.g...
...In the absence of tempered tuning, the other cultures of the world developed their own scales, built on non-tempered intervals of varying sizes, called micro-tones...
...Mah Nishtanah: Melodies from Jerusalem-Turkey, and Syria...
...This signaled the beginning of what is called the Golden Age, almost eight hundred years of Jewish creativity...
...In the course of history Sephardim have always comprised a discreet group...
...The Arabs established themselves in Spain in 711 C.E...
Vol. 3 • April 1978 • No. 5
