The melody for Vayhee
Beensoa Haaron, which we sing when the Torah is
removed from the ark was
composed by Salomon Sulzer. Who was Sulzer? When
did he live and why was he
so great?
Little is known about
Sulzer's childhood. However, there remains a famous
anecdote about how he
became involved in Jewish music. Salomon Sulzer almost
drowned in a childhood
swimming accident. As the boy’s life was hanging in
the balance, his mother
vowed that if he would be saved, she would devote
his life to a sacred
career. That little accident was to have quite an
impact on the future of
Jewish liturgical music! Salomon was resuscitated,
and subsequently received
extensive training in the cantorial art. The lad
soon proved himself more
than equal to the task. By the time he reached age
of bar mitzvah, this young
prodigy was already known as the finest cantor in
the town of Hohenems where
he was born. Moreover, after acquiring a
conservatory education in
composition and singing, Sulzer became the first
musician in modern times to
create a synagogue liturgy of the highest
aesthetic standard by
combining the cantorial heritage with forms and
performance techniques of
modern European music.
In 1827, the Jewish community
of Vienna was searching for a new cantor:
someone knowledgeable in
Jewish music, yet sophisticated enough to match
their own cosmopolitan
tastes. The 23-year-old Sulzer was just the man
Vienna was looking for.
At the Seitenstettengasse
Temple, Cantor Sulzer tried to find the "middle
road"---a path that
would preserve the essential elements of Jewish musical
traditions, but clothe them
in modern Austrian garb; that would please the
older generation, and at
the same time provide a idiom to which the younger
acculturated Jews could
relate.
People flocked from all
over Europe to hear the new cantor and his choir.
And not only Jewish
worshippers came to the synagogue; some of the most
sophisticated gentile
musicians found their way to the Seitenstettengasse
Temple.
Franz Liszt, the famous
pianist and composer, had this to say in his diary:
"In Vienna we visited
the famous tenor Sulzer, who served in the capacity of
precentor in the synagogue,
and whose reputation is so outstanding. For
moments we could penetrate
into his real soul and recognize the secret
doctrines of the
fathers.... Seldom were we so stirred by emotion as on that
evening, so shaken that our
soul was entirely given to meditation and to
participation in the
service."
In 1866 the great music
critic Eduard Hanslick wrote in the Neue Freie
Presse: "[Sulzer] is
one of the most popular figures of Vienna…. Even today
no foreign musician leaves
Vienna without having listened to the celebrated
cantor. His performance,
from the slightest breath to the most powerful of
tones, combines the charm
of the exotic with the persuasiveness of a glowing
faith."
Joseph Mainzer, a Catholic
composer, wrote of Sulzer: "The synagogue was the
only place where a stranger
could find, artistically speaking, a source of
enjoyment that was as solid
as it was dignified. Never, except for the
Sistine Chapel, has art
given me higher joy than in the synagogue. In seven
months I did not miss a
single service. One has to attend no more than once,
however, in order to find
oneself instantly freed, as if by some sudden
reaction, of all the odious
prejudices against the Jews instilled in us with
baptism in early
childhood."
A very famous Englishwoman
Frances Trollope who heard Sulzer conducting
services wrote: "There
is in truth so wild and strange a harmony in the
songs of Israel as
performed in the synagogue in this city, that it would be
difficult to render full
justice to the splendid excellence of the
performance, without
falling into the language of enthusiasm.... The volume
of vocal sound exceeds
anything of the kind I have ever heard; and being
unaccompanied by any
instrument, it produces an effect equally singular and
delightful."
But Sulzer’s fame today
rests not so much on his singing as on his
compositions. Some of
Sulzer’s choral melodies became so popular that the
congregation began to sing
along---a practice that the great cantor
discouraged at every turn.
But the melodies that Sulzer composed for VaY’hi
BiNesoa Ho-Oron, Yehalelu
Es Shem, and Shema Yisroel are heard in nearly
every Ashkenazic synagogue
today.
Sulzer’s compositions, as
well as those which he commissioned from Franz
Schubert and several other
great Viennese musicians---together with his
transcriptions and
arrangements of ancient traditional Jewish melodies---all
these works were brought
together and published between 1839 and 1865 in the
two volumes of his magnum
opus, Schir Zion.
Hanslick wrote,
"Sulzer’s Schir Zion lies open before me. The chants have
the stamp of genuine Jewish-oriental
music. It was Sulzer who restored
order, dignity and lofty
aesthetic form in the musical liturgy of Judaism."
In our own time, Sulzer is
again receiving recognition from the general
musical community. Volume
134 in the scholarly series, Denkmäler der
Tonkunst in der Österreich
(Monuments of Austrian Music), published in 1983,
is devoted to Sulzer’s
synagogue music. And, ten years ago, the Austrian
government issued a stamp
bearing a portrait of Cantor Sulzer and the words,
"100 Todestag von Salomon
Sulzer, 1804--1890, Republik Österreich, 1990."
Sincerely,
Cantor Elihu Feldman