CANTORIAL COMMENTS

BY

CANTOR ELIHU FELDMAN

Louis Lewandowski Spearheads the Formation of the Modern Jewish Choir

After Solomone Rossi, the most prominent force in Jewish choral music was

Louis Lewandowski.In the year 1840 in the city of Berlin, Louis Lewandowski

became the first choir director in the history of the modern European

synagogue. At the Heiderautergasse Temple, and later at the new

Oranienburgerstrasse Temple, Louis Lewandowski (1821-1894) conducted the

music of his Viennese mentor, the great Cantor Salomon Sulzer, as well as

his own compositions. The music of German synagogues had for centuries

consisted of cantorial recitatives and congregational responses, and

Lewandowski's choral compositions introduced a new and popular type of

service.

Louis Lewandowski was born in the Polish town of Wreschen. At the age of

twelve, after his mother's death and because of his family's extreme

poverty, he left for Berlin where he became an apprentice for Cantor Asher

Lion. Soon Lewandowski's musical ambition reached out beyond the ghetto.

With the help of Alexander Mendelssohn (cousin of the composer Felix

Mendelssohn), Lewandowski became the first Jew to attend the Berlin Academy

of the Arts.

But after showing great promise in the field of secular music (including a

prize for composition from the prestigious Berlin Singakademie), Lewandowski

succumbed to a serious depression

and was forced to relinquish his scholarship and abandon his studies. It was

after his partial recovery that he decided to devote himself fully to the

music of the synagogue.

For twenty-four years Lewandowski worked as choirmaster at the

Heidereutergasse Temple in Berlin, conducting the music of Salomon Sulzer.

But in 1864 the building of the Oranienburgerstrasse Temple, which was

equipped with an organ, offered Lewandowski the opportunity of creating an

entire new service with organ accompaniment, a task never before undertaken.

The culmination of his career came in 1882 with the publication of his

magnum opus, Todah ve-Zimrah (Thanks and Song), a setting of the entire

liturgical cycle for four soloists, cantor and organ.

Lewandowski was among the most significant composers of synagogue music,

reproducing the traditional melodies in a more classical form and giving

freer treatment to the organ music than his distinguished predecessor Cantor

Sulzer had. He exerted a strong influence on Western Ashkenazi synagogue

music through his activities as a teacher at the Jewish Free School and the

Jewish Teachers' Seminary in Berlin. He based his compositions on the

liturgical tradition of the Old Synagogue, on the one hand, and on the East

European tunes he received from immigrant cantors, on the other. His choral

settings followed the style of Mendelssohn's oratorios and works for choir.

Among Lewandowski's principal works are Kol Rina u-Tfillah (1871), Todah

ve-Zimrah for four soloists, cantor and organ (1876-1882), and 18 liturgical

Psalms for solo, choir and organ.

Although Lewandowki's influence dominated choral music in the synagogue, at

the end of the nineteenth century the European Jewish community was divided

into several factions. For some Jews, life would continue exactly as it had

for countless centuries. They had no use for the secular world; the

spiritual realm guided their every move. For others, a more liberal attitude

on the part of civil authorities signaled an opportunity for them to end

their age-old isolation. Many of these individuals attempted to abandon as

much of the Jewish way of life as was possible, and others attempted to

adapt Jewish practices to modern times.

Inspired by the dreams and efforts of such men as Theodore Herzl and Eliezer

Ben-Yehudah,Jews began to assert their identity in national as well as

religious terms, and to reestablish their connection with the ancient

homeland and its language. Seeking new modes of expression,

Jews began to experiment with new forms of cultural nationalism. Among these

were: Jewish Orchestras, Jewish music concerts, and synagogue choirs.

Rumshinsky describes the first Jewish Music concert in his autobiography,

"After the concert was announced, within three days the

tickets were sold out, eagerly snatched up by those Zionists and

assimilationists..."

In 1899 a Jewish attorney, N. Shapiro, petitioned the governor of Lodz (in

Poland) for permission to establish a Jewish choral organization.

Anticipating the hostile reaction with which government officials greeted

any gathering that smacked of political sedition, Shapiro asserted

that his organization would serve patriotic aims by keeping the young people

of Lodz away from the revolutionary and antigovernment assemblies that were

poisoning their minds. He ended his petition with the words, "Let these

young kids amuse themselves with choral singing, then there will be none of

that revolutionary foolishness on their minds."

Not only did the governor grant the petition, he instructed the police not

to interfere with the choir's rehearsals or to interrupt them in any way

from their patriotic work. Jacob Hartenstein was appointed the choir's

conductor, but after a few rehearsals it became apparent that

someone with more professional expertise would be needed. It was at this

point that the 18-year old Joseph Rumshinksy was engaged to become the first

permanent conductor of the chorus. Rumshinsky later recalled of that first

rehearsal in his autobiography, "When we stood up and

started to sing, a holy musical fire was kindled by the first Jewish choral

ensemble in the world."

But all was not smooth sailing for the fledgling chorus; hostility was

encountered on many fronts. The Zionist activists couldn't understand the

purpose of choral singing as a form of nationalistic expression. The

assimilated Jews derided the "Zhidn" who wanted to waste time singing their

"Mah Yufis" (a derogatory term for Jewish songs). And the Hasidim were

outraged that young men and women would be meeting together in the same

room. But after the first concert, the opposition seemed to melt away. The

chorus was named Ha-zomir which in English means The Nightingale and a

concert was a given in a major concert hall.

Hazomir soon had branches in the major cities of Russia and Poland. In 1914

the first Jewish choirs in the United States were founded: the Chicago

Jewish Folk Chorus, directed by Jacob Schaefer, and the Patterson (New

Jersey) Jewish Folk Chorus, directed by Jacob Beimel.

As immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe increased, Yiddish choruses began

to appear all across the United States. In 1921, Jacob Beimel called a

conference of Jewish singing societies in America and Canada with the

purpose of establishing a central organization of Jewish choral societies

and of publishing choral compositions in Yiddish, Hebrew and English with

Jewish textual content.

Unfortunately, the United Jewish Choral Societies had a brief history,

dissolving after all but three years of existence. But in its final days it

organized the largest Jewish Chorus ever seen in America. On April 15, 1923

a concert was given at the Hippodrome in New York City featuring nine

singing societies, totaling over six hundred singers! With the slackening of

immigration and the assimilation of most Jews into the cultural fabric of

American life, one by one the Yiddish Folk Choruses began to die out. By the

late 1950s only one such organization remained, the Workmen's Circle Chorus

of New York.

But in 1960 a new chapter in the history of the Jewish choral movement began

with the founding of the Zamir Chorale in New York City. Under the direction

of Stanley Sperber, this choir grew from a modest group of folksingers who

had met at a Jewish summer camp to an impressive, disciplined ensemble of

over one hundred voices. To a new generation of Jewish Americans growing up

in the 1960s, searching for their roots and finding pride in the image of

the new state of Israel, this Jewish chorus provided an attractive outlet

for their cultural, social and religious sentiments. Today the movement is

once again fully alive. Through the medium of the choral art, men and women

in cities from Boston to Los Angeles are proudly raising a cultural banner

for the Jewish people. Anyone who wishes to join the Zamir Chorale or just

see them rehearse can see them perform on Sunday evenings between 6:00-8:00

p.m. at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Of course, it would be wise to

contact the choir-master to confirm rehearsal times.

Sincerely,

Cantor Elihu Feldman