Jewish Music
Jewish music, the music of Jews, is quite diverse and dates back thousands of years. Sometimes it is religious in nature, other times it is not. This is because Jews are both a religion and a nation. The music of Jews vary greatly depending on origins.
Religious Jewish Music in the 20th century has varried greatly. Religious Jewish Music in the 20th century has spanned the gamut from Shlomo Carlebach's nigunim to Debbie Friedman's Jewish feminist folk. Velvel Pasternak has spent much of the late twentieth century acting as a preservationist and committing what had been a strongly oral tradition to paper. Periodically Jewish music jumps into mainstream consciousness, with the reggae artist Matisyahu being the most recent example. In the 1970s, Jewish boys choirs became popular.
Also, many Orthodox Jews often limit their children's exposure to music produced by those other than Orthodox Jews, so that they will not be influenced by many of the, in the parents' eyes, harmful outside ideas and fashions. A large body of music produced by Orthodox Jews for children is geared toward teaching religious and ethical traditions and laws. The lyrics of these songs are generally written in English with some Hebrew or Yiddish phrases.
A piyyut is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually designated to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious services. Piyyutim have been written since Mishnaic times.. Most piyyutim are in Hebrew or Aramaic, and most follow some poetic scheme, such as an acrostic following the order of the Hebrew alphabet or spelling out the name of the author.
Many piyyutim are familiar to regular attendees of synagogue services. For example, the best-known piyyut may be Adon Olam ("Master of the World"), sometimes attributed to Solomon ibn Gabirol in 11th century Spain. Its poetic form consists simply of rhyming iambic tetrameter, and it is so beloved that it is often sung at the conclusion of many synagogue services, after the ritual nightly saying of the Shema, and during the morning ritual of putting on tefillin. Another well-beloved piyyut is Yigdal ("May God be Hallowed"), which is based upon the Thirteen Principles of Faith developed by Maimonides.
Pizmonim are traditional Jewish songs and melodies with the intentions of praising God as well as learning certain aspects of traditional religious teachings.
They are sung throughout religious rituals and festivities such as prayers, circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings and other ceremonies. Pizmonim are traditionally associated with Middle Eastern Sephardic Jews, although they are related to Ashkenazi Jews' zemirot. The best known tradition is associated with Jews descended from Aleppo, though similar traditions exist among Iraqi Jews (where the songs are known as shbaִhoth, praises) and in North African countries. Jews of Greek, Turkish and Balkan origin have songs of the same kind in Ladino, associated with the festivals: these are known as coplas.
The texts of many pizmonim date back to the Middle Ages or earlier, and are often based on verses in the Bible. Many are taken from the Tanakh, while others were composed by poets such as Yehuda Halevi and Israel Najara of Gaza. Some melodies are quite old, while others may be based on popular Middle Eastern music, with the words composed specially to fit the tune.
Modern Israeli music is heavily influenced by its constituents, which include Jewish immigrants from more than 120 countries around the world, which have brought their own musical traditions, making Israel a global melting pot. The Israeli music is very versatile and combines elements of both western and eastern music. It tends to be very eclectic and contains a wide variety of influences from the Diaspora and more modern cultural importation. Hassidic songs, Asian and Arab pop, especially Yemenite singers, and hip hop or heavy metal.
From the earliest days of Zionist settlement, Jewish immigrants wrote popular folk music. At first, songs were based on borrowed melodies from German, Russian, or traditional Jewish folk music with new lyrics written in Hebrew. Starting in the early 1920's, however, Jewish settlers made a conscious effort to create a new Hebrew style of music, a style that would tie them to their earliest Hebrew origins and that would differentiate them from the style of the Jewish diaspora of Eastern Europe, which they viewed as weak. This new style borrowed elements from Arabic and, to a lesser extent, traditional Yemenite and eastern Jewish styles: the songs were often homophonic (that is, without clear harmonic character), modal, and limited in range.
"The huge change in our lives demands new modes of expression," wrote composer and music critic Menashe Ravina in 1943. "... and, just as in our language we returned to our historical past, so has our ear turned to the music of the east ... as an expression of our innermost feelings."
The youth, labor and kibbutz movements played a major role in musical development before and after the establishment of Israeli statehood in 1948, and in the popularization of many of these songs. The Zionist establishment saw music as a way of establishing a new national identity, and, on a purely pragmatic level, of teaching Hebrew to new immigrants. The national labor organization, the Histadrut, set up a music publishing house that disseminated songbooks and encouraged public sing-alongs . This tradition of public sing-alongs continues to the present day, and is a characteristic of modern Israeli culture.
Jewish musicians in the Western European classical tradition have long debated the question of what is Jewish music. Most musicians of Jewish origin in the 19th century composed music that could not be considered Jewish in any sense, either by critics or by the musicians themselves. For example, Jacques Offenbach (1819 - 1880), a leading composer of opera and operetta in the 19th century, was the son of a cantor, and grew up steeped in traditional Jewish music.
Yet there is nothing about his music which could be characterized as Jewish in terms of style, and he himself did not consider his work to be Jewish. As another example, Felix Mendelssohn, the grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, continued to identify himself as a Jew, even though he was baptized as a lutheran at the age of seven. Yet, while he occasionally draws inspiration from Christian sources (one of the themes in his second piano trio, opus 66, is the Lutheran doxology), there is nothing characteristically Jewish about any of his music. "Music written by Jews is not necessarily Jewish music," wrote Erich Werner in 1938 in a seminal essy on the subject in the journal "Musica Hebraica".
That said, there are nonetheless a number of composers who wrote music that they considered Jewish, even if stylistically there was nothing to tie their compositions to traditional Jewish music of liturgy or to the Eastern European klezmer tradition. The first, and one of the most important of these, was Salamone Rossi (1570 - 1630). As court composer in Mantua, Rossi was instrumental in the development of the Baroque trio sonata form. Rossi composed a song cycle called "The Songs of Solomon", which drew on Jewish liturgical and biblical texts.
Other composers who drew on Jewish subjects include
Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote the oratorio "Elijah". While Mendelssohn never acknowledged that his choice of a topic was influenced by his Jewish origins, it is probable that his intimite familiarity with the biblical text came from his childhood.
Fromental Halévy was a well-known composer of opera in the second half of the nineteenth century. He drew occasionally on Jewish themes for his operas, most notably, La Juive.
Giacomo Meyerbeer, also a leading opera composer, arranged a number of liturgical songs, including a motet arrangement for double choir a capella of Psalm 91.
Religious Jewish Music in the 20th century has varried greatly. Religious Jewish Music in the 20th century has spanned the gamut from Shlomo Carlebach's nigunim to Debbie Friedman's Jewish feminist folk. Velvel Pasternak has spent much of the late twentieth century acting as a preservationist and committing what had been a strongly oral tradition to paper. Periodically Jewish music jumps into mainstream consciousness, with the reggae artist Matisyahu being the most recent example. In the 1970s, Jewish boys choirs became popular.
Also, many Orthodox Jews often limit their children's exposure to music produced by those other than Orthodox Jews, so that they will not be influenced by many of the, in the parents' eyes, harmful outside ideas and fashions. A large body of music produced by Orthodox Jews for children is geared toward teaching religious and ethical traditions and laws. The lyrics of these songs are generally written in English with some Hebrew or Yiddish phrases.
A piyyut is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually designated to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious services. Piyyutim have been written since Mishnaic times.. Most piyyutim are in Hebrew or Aramaic, and most follow some poetic scheme, such as an acrostic following the order of the Hebrew alphabet or spelling out the name of the author.
Many piyyutim are familiar to regular attendees of synagogue services. For example, the best-known piyyut may be Adon Olam ("Master of the World"), sometimes attributed to Solomon ibn Gabirol in 11th century Spain. Its poetic form consists simply of rhyming iambic tetrameter, and it is so beloved that it is often sung at the conclusion of many synagogue services, after the ritual nightly saying of the Shema, and during the morning ritual of putting on tefillin. Another well-beloved piyyut is Yigdal ("May God be Hallowed"), which is based upon the Thirteen Principles of Faith developed by Maimonides.
Pizmonim are traditional Jewish songs and melodies with the intentions of praising God as well as learning certain aspects of traditional religious teachings.
They are sung throughout religious rituals and festivities such as prayers, circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings and other ceremonies. Pizmonim are traditionally associated with Middle Eastern Sephardic Jews, although they are related to Ashkenazi Jews' zemirot. The best known tradition is associated with Jews descended from Aleppo, though similar traditions exist among Iraqi Jews (where the songs are known as shbaִhoth, praises) and in North African countries. Jews of Greek, Turkish and Balkan origin have songs of the same kind in Ladino, associated with the festivals: these are known as coplas.
The texts of many pizmonim date back to the Middle Ages or earlier, and are often based on verses in the Bible. Many are taken from the Tanakh, while others were composed by poets such as Yehuda Halevi and Israel Najara of Gaza. Some melodies are quite old, while others may be based on popular Middle Eastern music, with the words composed specially to fit the tune.
Modern Israeli music is heavily influenced by its constituents, which include Jewish immigrants from more than 120 countries around the world, which have brought their own musical traditions, making Israel a global melting pot. The Israeli music is very versatile and combines elements of both western and eastern music. It tends to be very eclectic and contains a wide variety of influences from the Diaspora and more modern cultural importation. Hassidic songs, Asian and Arab pop, especially Yemenite singers, and hip hop or heavy metal.
From the earliest days of Zionist settlement, Jewish immigrants wrote popular folk music. At first, songs were based on borrowed melodies from German, Russian, or traditional Jewish folk music with new lyrics written in Hebrew. Starting in the early 1920's, however, Jewish settlers made a conscious effort to create a new Hebrew style of music, a style that would tie them to their earliest Hebrew origins and that would differentiate them from the style of the Jewish diaspora of Eastern Europe, which they viewed as weak. This new style borrowed elements from Arabic and, to a lesser extent, traditional Yemenite and eastern Jewish styles: the songs were often homophonic (that is, without clear harmonic character), modal, and limited in range.
"The huge change in our lives demands new modes of expression," wrote composer and music critic Menashe Ravina in 1943. "... and, just as in our language we returned to our historical past, so has our ear turned to the music of the east ... as an expression of our innermost feelings."
The youth, labor and kibbutz movements played a major role in musical development before and after the establishment of Israeli statehood in 1948, and in the popularization of many of these songs. The Zionist establishment saw music as a way of establishing a new national identity, and, on a purely pragmatic level, of teaching Hebrew to new immigrants. The national labor organization, the Histadrut, set up a music publishing house that disseminated songbooks and encouraged public sing-alongs . This tradition of public sing-alongs continues to the present day, and is a characteristic of modern Israeli culture.
Jewish musicians in the Western European classical tradition have long debated the question of what is Jewish music. Most musicians of Jewish origin in the 19th century composed music that could not be considered Jewish in any sense, either by critics or by the musicians themselves. For example, Jacques Offenbach (1819 - 1880), a leading composer of opera and operetta in the 19th century, was the son of a cantor, and grew up steeped in traditional Jewish music.
Yet there is nothing about his music which could be characterized as Jewish in terms of style, and he himself did not consider his work to be Jewish. As another example, Felix Mendelssohn, the grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, continued to identify himself as a Jew, even though he was baptized as a lutheran at the age of seven. Yet, while he occasionally draws inspiration from Christian sources (one of the themes in his second piano trio, opus 66, is the Lutheran doxology), there is nothing characteristically Jewish about any of his music. "Music written by Jews is not necessarily Jewish music," wrote Erich Werner in 1938 in a seminal essy on the subject in the journal "Musica Hebraica".
That said, there are nonetheless a number of composers who wrote music that they considered Jewish, even if stylistically there was nothing to tie their compositions to traditional Jewish music of liturgy or to the Eastern European klezmer tradition. The first, and one of the most important of these, was Salamone Rossi (1570 - 1630). As court composer in Mantua, Rossi was instrumental in the development of the Baroque trio sonata form. Rossi composed a song cycle called "The Songs of Solomon", which drew on Jewish liturgical and biblical texts.
Other composers who drew on Jewish subjects include
Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote the oratorio "Elijah". While Mendelssohn never acknowledged that his choice of a topic was influenced by his Jewish origins, it is probable that his intimite familiarity with the biblical text came from his childhood.
Fromental Halévy was a well-known composer of opera in the second half of the nineteenth century. He drew occasionally on Jewish themes for his operas, most notably, La Juive.
Giacomo Meyerbeer, also a leading opera composer, arranged a number of liturgical songs, including a motet arrangement for double choir a capella of Psalm 91.
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