Micrologus; Echoes from the Diaspora

84-15 ECHOES FROM THE DIASPORA

The centuries of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque eras were dominated, in the arts, by the patronage of the Christian Church. The Church, in many, many cases, educated the musicians, then provided a livelihood and an outlet for their compositions.

But, at the same time, we have definite but widely scattered evidence of the activity of Jewish musicians all through this era. In fact, "scattered" is an appropriate description since these centuries fall within the long period of Jewish history known as the Diaspora—the "dispersion" or "scattering" of the Jews, the exile from their homeland.

Jews were not treated well in Western Europe during this time. Fed by the longstanding mistrust over the rejection and crucifixion of Christ, there was a tendency to blame them for natural disasters which could otherwise be ascribed (disconcertingly) only to the wrath of the Almighty. It is sad to report, for example, that the great 14th century poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut was credulous enough to blame the Jews for the great Plague of 1348. He and many others believed they had poisoned the wells of Europe.

So, for the most part, Jews kept to themselves, on the one hand, to minimize the fear and misunderstanding of the Christian populace, and on the other, to support each other in the preservation of their own religion and cultural heritage. Only occasionally did an acknowledged Jew succeed in the mainstream of European musical life. What we have as evidence of Jewish musical activity from the Middle Ages to the Baroque, is a body of folksongs, a handful of polyphonic works composed by Jews, as well as some inspired by Jews or Jewish music.

The earliest evidence of Jewish participation in the general musical life of Western Europe comes from the 13th century, where among the Cantigas musicians of Spain, the Trouvères of France, and the Minnesingers of Germany are one or two artists known to have been of Jewish extraction. In Spain, the evidence is purely documentary; in France, there are two songs attributed to one "Matthew the Jew"; and in Germany, there are a handful of poems and a portrait of the Minnesinger Susskind van Trimberg. That is all we have.

Most of the surviving evidence of Jewish activity in monophonic music comes with the repertory of Sephardic Songs. But because these songs have depended to such a great extent on oral, rather than written, transmission, there is considerable disagreement as to their antiquity.

I reached the Canadian scholar and performer of Sephardic songs, Judith Cohen, for comment:

COHEN: There is a big difference between the age of the texts and the age of the melodies. Many of the texts are based on Medieval epics and sometimes Renaissance songs, and have survived in a pretty intact form (although some were composed later), whereas the music probably does not have much relation to the original tunes that were used, or even to the tunes in the Renaissance cancioneros.

DUFFIN: What do you think the melodies in these Sephardic songs would have been during the time that the texts were composed?

COHEN: It is difficult to say, since most of the texts are Spanish in origin and not Jewish In origin, except for some of the ballads called Biblical ballads and the wedding songs: they were probably just the melodies that were in current usage in that region at the time. For example, in the wedding songs you have very simple melodies which are quite Western in sound, but played in a style which is influenced by local Arabic music with the driving rhythm and a different vocal timbre and that may or may not have been the case, as well, in medieval Spain. In other words, the actual melody may have just been taken from the Spaniards in the region, and they might have been sung in a more typically Jewish or Sephardic style, but we do not really know.

We are going to listen to Judith Cohen perform the song "Las quejas de Ximena," from a recording by the ensemble Gerineldo, directed by Oro Anahory Librowicz. Here is what she had to say about it:

COHEN: "Las quejas de Ximena" is one of the oldest romances, in terms of texts. It is based on one of the old Spanish epics. Ximena appears before the king, King Leon, to ask for justice. She says that the man who murdered her father, who is the Cid—the famous Cid—is around every day, and she has to watch him feeding his falcon on her pet dove, and cannot the king do something about it? And she says that if he does not, he should not reign and he should not deserve to eat fine meals and he should not consort with his Queen. In the end the king marries her off to the Cid himself, so she becomes the wife of the same man who killed her father.

[MUSIC]

DUFFIN: The first Jew to attain real fame in the musical world was Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro. He and his teacher Domenico da Piacenza were the first important dance theorists and choreographers in the history of our culture. His services were sought by the most brilliant courts in Italy in the mid-15th century, and it is known that just before his death, he was dancing master to Isabella d'Este, that most diligent and illustrious patron of ltalian arts and letters. Many times he is referred to as Maestro Guglielmo, so when a manuscript dance turned up bearing the ascription, M. Guilelmus, many scholars assumed it to be his work. It is not certain, but the dance is based on a favorite melody of the repertoire and the musical style is right for Guglielmo's milieu. That all seems too much to be a coincidence.

[MUSIC: The Guildhall Waits performing "Falla con misuras," a basse danse based on the well-known La Spagna melody, and probably composed by the 15th century Jewish dancing master, Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro]

The 15th and 16th centuries also provide a handful of works which seem to have been composed by non-Jews, but which purport to be based on Jewish music. There is, for example, a 3-voice motet with some Hebrew words originating from Spain around 1450, which seems to be a more or less benevolent parody of Jewish music of the time. From 16th century German lute collections come a couple of dances with the title "Judentanz" (Jew's Dance), simple, folk-like melodies over drones in the style of the contemporary branles, and not so different from the Israeli Hora, as it is performed today. (It is worth noticing that the most famous of these pieces—that by Hans Neusidler—was mistranscribed for decades in our own time and is still being recorded with wild cacophonies, which bear no relation to Neusidler's intent nor, in all probability, to Jewish music of the 16th century.)

Perhaps the most interesting recent discovery about Jewish musicians in the Renaissance was made by British musicologist Roger Prior, who determined that all of the Italian instrumentalists hired by Henry VIII of England around the 1540s to form the nucleus of his Royal Band, were Jewish. These included both Ashkenazic Jews from central Europe and Sephardic Jews from Spain—all hired in or near Venice, and presumably thankful to trade the clutches of the Inquisition for the embrace of a music-loving and religiously independent monarch.

The Ashkenazic Jews seem to have specialized in wind instruments, as performers, composers, and even as makers. Pre-eminent among them were several members of the Bassano family, one of whom composed this Pavane which we hear performed by His Majesties Sagbuts and Cornets.

[MUSIC: His Majesties Sagbuts and Cornets, performing a Pavane composed by one of the Bassano family (probably Augustine) for the English Royal Band]

The Sephardic Jews were specialists in bowed stringed instruments, both viols and violins, and, from the very beginnings of their association with the English Royal Court in 1540 for over a hundred years to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, they included members of the Lupo family. From a Maske in honour of Lord Hayes and his bride, published by Thomas Campion in 1607, here is the ayre "Time that leads the fatal round" by Thomas Lupo, performed by Emma Kirkby and the Consort of Musicke, directed by Anthony Rooley.

[MUSIC]

Probably the most celebrated of Jewish musicians in earlier centuries was the violinist and composer Salomone Rossi, who was active in Mantua in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Rossi’s work at the Gonzaga court earned him the marked favor of the duke, whose exacting demands eventually drove away the likes of Monteverdi and Frescobaldi, although Monteverdi and Rossi were colleagues in Mantua for almost 25 years.

Rossi's output comprises fourteen published collections, including sinfonias, madrigals, dances, and sonatas in the new Baroque style. Of special interest in the history of Jewish music is the volume Shirim Asher Li’Shlomoh (The Songs of Solomon), published in Hebrew at Venice in 1622. Here is "Barechu et Adonai” from that collection, performed by the Boston Camerata, under Joel Cohen.

[MUSIC]

The Baroque era in France provides such works as the Canticum Hebraicum of Louis Saladin, a suite of dances and songs composed by that non-Jewish composer to Hebrew texts and presumably for a Jewish patron. The virtuoso keyboardist and composer Louis-Claude Daquin is known to have been of Jewish origin, and we may wonder also about the enigmatic 17th century family of virtuoso lutenists named Dubut, since to one of them is ascribed a sarabande with the title "La belle Ébraise" (The beautiful Jewess). Here it is performed, with an element of personification, by lutenist Deborah Minkin.

[MUSIC]

After Salomone Rossi, the later baroque in Italy saw no more Jewish composers of such stature. There are some surviving works with Jewish connections, however. In a situation similar to Saladin's in France, the composer Carlo Grossi, a non-Jew, was commissioned to write a work with Hebrew text, "Ahai ve-Reai'' (My brothers and friends). However, the most interesting and monumental Italian-baroque collection with a Jewish stamp is Estro Poetico-armonico, settings of the first fifty psalms, published by Benedetto Marcello in the 1720s. Again a non-Jew, Marcello nevertheless stated his intention to capture something of how the psalms were traditionally sung in Hebrew in his day. Although he uses an Italian translation, he does make use of traditional Jewish melodies in eleven of his fifty settings, five of them Sephardic and six Ashkenazic.

[MUSIC: "Allora offerte," the final verse of Psalm 50 from Benedetto Marcello's collection, Estro Poetico-armonico, performed by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis]

That’s all for today. Special thanks to Judith Cohen for her comments. You’ve been listening to a program exploring the contributions of the Jews to early music, “Echos from the Diaspora.”