Yiddish song

Yiddish song is a general description of several genres of Jewish music sung in Yiddish which includes songs of Yiddish theatre, Klezmer songs, and "Yiddish art song" after the model of the German Lied and French mélodie.

The Yiddish language and song

From the fourteenth century secular songs were sung in Yiddish, though rabbis of the period directed that sacred songs were only to be sung in Hebrew.[1]

Yiddish folk songs

One of the main genres of Yiddish folk song in Central and Eastern Europe is Klezmer, which was also exported to America and Israel, though Henry Sapoznik (2005) writes "Historically, Yiddish song and theater have had a higher visibility than klezmer music in Israel."[2] Generally 17th and 18th century songs and lullabies are anonymous, but the composers of others such as are known; such as Oyfn Pripetshik "On The Hearth" by Mark Warshawsky.

Yiddish theatre songs

In Europe many of the songs of the Yiddish theatre companies were composed as incidental music to musical theatre, or at least plays with strong musical content, whereas others are "hit" individual arias and numbers culled from Yiddish operetta.[3] In America, aside from America's own Yiddish theatres, songwriters and composers employed Yiddish folk and theatre songs, along with synagogue modes and melodies, as material for the music of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and Hollywood.[4][5] Irving Berlin was one of the popular composers to move from Yiddish song to English songs.[6] Bei Mir Bistu Shein is an example of a Yiddish song which was later recast as an English hit.

Yiddish political and secular choral song

Di Shvue "The Oath" (1902) was the Yiddish anthem of the socialist, General Jewish Labour Bund in early 1900s Russia. Another song by the same composer, S. Ansky (Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport), was In Zaltsikn Yam "In the Salty Sea". Yiddish workers' choral societies continued - including that led by Lazar Weiner in New York until the 1960s. Zog Nit Keyn Mol "Never say (this is the end of the road)" was a partisan song written in 1943 by Hirsh Glick, for the Vilna Ghetto resistance.

Yiddish art songs

Composers of self-consciously "serious" Yiddish art songs include the composers of the Society for Jewish Folk Music founded in St. Petersburg in 1908 which was associated with composers including "the Jewish Glinka" Michael Gniessin, Joseph Achron, Moses Milner, Alexander Krein, and Solomon Rosowsky. In America composers included young immigrants Lazar Weiner, Solomon Golub, film composer Henech Kon, and Los Angeles cantor Paul Lamkoff.[7] Though like many German Lieder and French mélodies Yiddish art songs may make sensitive use of folk tunes.[8] One example of a conscious 21st Century approach to the Yiddish folk song as art song, as tribute to Schubert, are the A Yiddish Winterreise and Di Sheyne Milnerin cycles of folk songs arranged by Alexander Knapp for English baritone Mark Glanville.[9][10]

Selected Recordings

Art song

References

  1. ↑ David Philip Shuldiner Of Moses and Marx: folk ideology and folk history in the Jewish p95 1999 "Although there are no records of the earliest songs in Yiddish, indirect evidence exists from as early as the fourteenth century in the form of rabbinic invective against the singing of religious songs in Yiddish."
  2. ↑ Henry Sapoznik Klezmer!: Jewish music from Old World to our world 2005
  3. ↑ Norman H. Warembud, ed., The New York Times Great Songs of the Yiddish Theatre (New York, 1957), 175–81
  4. ↑ Gottlieb Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and Hollywood (2004)
  5. ↑ Michael Isaacson Jewish Music as Midrash: What Makes Music Jewish? p55 2007 "In Jack Gottlieb's entertaining book, Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and Hollywood (SUNY Press), the author traces the "Jewish" genesis of many popular song "
  6. ↑ Michael Billig Rock 'n' roll Jews 2001 p22 "Berlin may have written his earliest songs in Yiddish, but he knew, as he approached Tin Pan Alley publishers while still in his teens, that he would have to write in English if he were to capture the wider market."
  7. ↑ The Life and Work of Lazar Weiner (1897-1982): Master of the Yiddish Art Song. Musica judaica: 11 American Society for Jewish Music - 1991
  8. ↑ Tracey Scher Yiddish art song: a comparative study 2003
  9. ↑ Knapp, A. - introduction to the recording A Yiddish Winterreise on Naxos.
  10. ↑ Knapp, A. - introduction to the recording Di Sheyne Milnerin Nimbus 2012
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