Jewish Voices In The New World

Rohde:Schola Hebraeica:Levin

Regular: £11.49

Sale: £11.49
Regular

Out of Stock

Unit Price: per

Cat No: 8559411

Email me when this is available

Release Date: 01 October 2004

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943941126

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: JEWISH VOICES IN THE NEW WORLD

Description
Jewish Voices in the New World Chants and Prayers from the American Colonial Era. The birth of the American Jewish community dates to 1654, when a group of 23 Jews - most of them Amsterdam Portuguese Sephardim -- arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam from the Jewish community in Recife, Brazil, which had just come under Portuguese control. By 1776, the Colonial American Jewish population was estimated at 2,000, and by the mid-18th century there were functioning synagogues in five cities .One of the most important elements of early Jewish life in America was the maintenance of the authentic Western Sephardi liturgical music tradition that had developed chiefly in Amsterdam (and to a lesser degree, London) during the late 16th and 17th centuries. This tradition, brought here by those first Jewish settlers, in fact served as the primary vehicle for defining Jewish identity in this country. This Milken Archive CD features synagogue melodies and biblical chants that would typically have been heard in Colonial-era synagogues up to circa 1830.They include Psalm texts, Torah readings (biblical texts), prayers from the Sabbath eve and Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) services, and prayers recited on Tisha B'av, a solemn day in the Jewish calendar commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The liturgy is authentically rendered, as it would have been in 18thcentury America, by a cantor and men's (sometimes with children) choir singing in unison, without harmonization. Hazzan Ira Rohde of New York's Shearith Israel, America's oldest congregation, is heard with the Schola Hebraica a conducted by Neil Levin .The development of the Western Sephardi musical tradition echoes Jewish history in the Diaspora .After the demise of the so-called Golden Age of Spanish Jewry and the expulsions from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1497) of all Jews who declined conversion to Christianity, the largest number of Jewish exiles, now called Sephardim (from Sepharad--Spain in Hebrew), resettled in Moslem-ruled lands of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, including various parts of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Among those Jews who converted and remained on the Iberian Peninsula, some practiced Jewish customs and ceremonies in secret, but the synagogue was non-existent and its musical traditions could have no role in their lives. Toward the middle of the 16th century, these conversos began to leave their homeland, settling in Amsterdam, Venice, and southern France, other Western European cities including London, Paris, Vienna and Hamburg; Brazil and the Caribbean; and eventually, North America. Known in their new communities as "Portuguese" Jews, they are best described as "western Sephardi," to distinguish them from their North African and eastern Mediterranean counterparts. The foundations of the western Sephardi liturgical music tradition were laid in its "mother" community in Amsterdam. The conversos who arrived there possessed little knowledge of Jewish rituals, but sought to reestablish authentic links to their lost Jewish heritage .Looking eastward, they recruited knowledgeable cantors and rabbis from some of the principal North African and Ottoman Sephardic enters, and the musical repertoire that emerged was thus based partly on those traditions. The eastern style of vocal rendition - heavily ornamented, rhythmically ambiguous and marked by "exotic" timbres and modes – probably seemed foreign to the more western-attuned sensibilities of the Amsterdam Jews. Over time, these eastern musical characteristics were streamlined and "westernized," and the repertoire was expanded to include original creations by local cantors familiar with western European art music, as well as "foreign" accretions such as Ashkenazi liturgical tunes and non-Jewish, secular folk songs. The engagement of cantors trained in Amsterdam in the Western Sephardi tradition by that city's "sister" communities, including New York, contributed to the stability and relative uniformity of their liturgical repertoires, and helped maintain the tradition in America through the Colonial period and beyond. We can thus be reason ably assured that the music on this Milken Archive recording -- all of which is preserved intact in the current repertoires of two major American western Sephardi synagogues that date from the Colonial period -- New York's Shearith Israel (1654) and Philadelphia's Mikve Israel (1782) -- is essentially the same as that sung in the Colonies throughout much of the 18th century. Among the highlights of this CD are various prayers and readings associated with the observance of Tisha B'av, the annual fast day of mourning that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem .For Sephardim, the day has an additional significance: it coincides with the accepted date of the 1492 expulsion edict. Special synagogue services for this day include the reading (i.e., chanting) of the Book of Lamentations, whose lyric poetry laments the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, as well as later elegies by medieval Hebrew poets that refer to both ancient calamities and subsequent catastrophes in the Diaspora. Each of the principal Jewish rites (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Persian, Yemenite, etc.) has its own special cantillation pattern for the Book of Lamentations; the one heard here is unique to the Portuguese tradition as it was known in the American Colonies."
Tracklisting