Vocal Athletes at the Amud
The Origin of Melismas in Cantorial Music
Agitata da due venti freme l'onda in mar turbato e 'l nocchiero spaventato già s'aspetta a naufragar. Agitated by two winds trembling waves in the turbulent sea and the frightened steersman already awaits to be shipwrecked. Dal dovere da l'amore combattuto questo core non resiste e par che ceda e incominci a desperar By duty and by love this heart is assailed it cannot resist and seems to give up and begins to despair.
Love and duty are the two prevailing winds in human life. Their sacred tides are pushed and pulled by the twin moons of the human superego and id, and sailing smoothly between them is at the heart of religious life.
How have Jews navigated this tension? Today we’ll explore this by braving the mostly uncharted waters of an old Jewish musicological question: how the cantorial vocalise first entered the Ashkenazic synagogue.
Thank you for reading Beyond the Music! If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please consider supporting me with a paid subscription.
Melismatic singing — that is the chanting of many notes in succession on one syllable — has been an essential aspect of cantorial music for at least the last three centuries, and arguably more. It achieved its zenith in Western Europe in the cantorial fantasia of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These complex compositions, which have been thorough analyzed by my colleague, Geoffrey Goldberg, included extensive Baroque vocalises between short snatches of traditional liturgy and melody. But whence came such a thing first into the Ashkenazic synagogue?
This has been one of my research questions as I sail forth with my doctoral dissertation, and I’m happy to share some of its fresh scholarly treasure with you here.
I. The Maharil and Medieval Melodies
The issue of extended melody in prayer came to the fore in the medieval writings of Rabbi Jacob Moellin, known as the Maharil (1360-1420). In his Sefer HaMaharil, melody and liturgical poetry were used frequently as a means of time-management, both to extend and to shorten the length of the service. On Rosh Hashanah, the Maharil explained that “one is commanded to extend out the service on Rosh Hashanah [with piyyutim]..at least through midday.”1 This melodic expansion realized the Talmudic ideal for the day of the festival being half for devotion and half for celebration.2 The Kol Nidre service, which begins during daylight in order to perform the nullification of vows, was also “extended with melodies” until nightfall when the evening service could be chanted. The Maharil adds that this musical bridge also facilitated the opportunity for community members to come early to the synagogue, requesting forgiveness from each other before the start of the evening service. Such musical moments in the service thus created expansive opportunities for meaningful prayer and fulfilling the religious vision of the holiday.
Yet the potential dangers of extended melody and liturgy were also well-known to the Maharil. For the morning service of Yom Kippur, he wrote that “every sheliach tzibbur (prayer leader) should be careful to hurry his prayers [and cut back on his extended melodies] so that he can also pray the Musaf service before the time Mincha Gedolah has arrived, which means a half hour past noon.” Even for the expanded melodies of Rosh Hashanah, the Maharil warned of the dangers of being distracted by the music, for “the heart of a man should not wander off if the sheliach tzibbur lengthens the prayer [with melodies], rather, his attention should be directed for the sake of heaven.”
Perhaps shockingly, when the cantor expanded melodies on Shabbat, the Maharil would…read a book! No, not the the latest New York Times bestseller, but Jacob ben Asher’s Arba’ah Turim, the first major Ashkenazic code of Jewish law. This literary preoccupation was not because the Maharil held the cantor’s melodies in disdain — on the contrary, he took the cantorial role very seriously. But extended melody was a sacred function of the cantor alone; while important, it did not require his direct participation.
II. The Ashkenazic Vocalise in the Early Modern Period
It is hard to tell whether the Maharil’s fifteenth-century comments are actually related to the cantorial vocalise; they could just as easily describe large quantities of melodies rather than melismatic singing. Such ambiguities begin to fall away in the centuries to come; not only did seventeenth century rabbinic moralists begin address the extension of melodies in soloistic parts of the service, but depicted an emerging cantorial culture in which extended melodies were interpolated between words and even letters, potentially sapping the liturgy of its meaning and leaving only its musical and entertainment value behind.
One moralist on such matters was R. Isaiah Horowitz (1555-1630), called the Shelah after his magnum opus, the Shnei Luchot HaBrit. R. Horowitz wrote about cantorial conduct in this famous book and in his commentary to Yesh Nochlin, the ethical will of his father R. Abraham ben Shabtai Sheftel Horowitz. Both sources contain continuities from the Maharil’s medieval milieu, as well as a few new musicological clues as to the new developments evident in the Ashkenazic communities of East-Central Europe.
One major transformation in the Ashkenazic life in the intervening years between the Maharil and the Shelah was the spread of Lurianic Kabbalah. Suffusing prayer with special, mystical intentions and redemptive theurgical power, kabbalah rendered correct prayer execution as a complex and high-stakes affair. So it is not surprising that, when criticizing knowledgeable cantors who nevertheless sang to please the congregation or themselves, the Shelah remarked: “There is no doubt that the extending of voices [leads to] the extending of the Exile.”3 For in his lifetime, synagogue melodies had begun to balloon with the melodic expansion of the words themselves:
“One should rebuke and remove those who greatly extend in melody on the word amen, until one letter is no longer near the next, and there is no meaning in the word, but it is only music [zmurta].”…..and so too in kedushot and kaddish prayers and barchu, the music-makers extend far too much on Sabbaths and Festivals in the making of their melodies, and draw out the words and letters too much until one is not close to the other…they are doing no good.”4
We naturally find that the cantor’s solo portions of the liturgy are the sites of this emerging musical expansion, a Dionysian threat to the coherence of the liturgical text.5 Yet like the Maharil, the Shelah’s moralism does not come from a lack of appreciation of sacred music, but from a pious concern that prayers are sung with correct pronunciation and intention. The Shelah further remarked that extended melody actually prevents one from having deep intention, which is especially important in the special holy prayers he lists which require a quorum of ten to perform.6
The Shelah and his father also shared the Maharil’s custom of reading a sacred book during the cantor’s solo prayers. This was not understood as an act of holy rebellion, but as one of mindfulness and piety. As the elder R. Abraham Horowitz clarified in his Yesh Nochlin:
“When the music-maker sings kaddish or kedusha or ana or hodu or other things that cantors often extend in the mahzor or the yotzrot with melodies, you should study at that moment from a book [in order to] not have words come out of your mouth, for this is a forbidden interruption. You should only look in the book and immerse yourself and contemplate the heavens…and not have any speech come out of your mouth. Thus will you find Torah and prayer in one place.”7
In a way, reading a book during cantorial music was like having a sacred fidget, making sure that you kept your intention in the right place and did not interrupt the chant through its trusted singer. The younger Shelah circumscribed this practice even further, only encouraging such fidget-reading during the cantor’s wordless vocalise; during his pronunciation of the words, he instead exhorted the congregation be silent, listen, and intend the prayer as chanted by the cantor.8
III. Coda: The Olympic Cantorate
Future generations of cantors would issue more guidance on how to avoid the excesses of the cantorial vocalise, as the music of the service continued to develop in complexity through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The unfolding of this sacred music tradition is one of the main subjects of my doctoral dissertation, though I’ve written briefly on it here and here.
But in this earlier era, at the dawn of the Jewish Baroque, we should ask — why do we find more “music” anyway?
There are a myriad of answers, both pious and populist. As we saw, melodies were used to facilitate devotion, to manage time in services, to honor God with one’s gifts, and to create sacred space for intending the mystical secrets of prayer. As the seventeenth-century cantor, Yehuda Leib Zelichower would later comment: “For this purpose, the earliest cantors founded and set melodies and beautiful songs, in order that they could intend those mystical unifications [yichudim].”9 But of course, sacred melodies can also be used in ways unrelated to God — for the exaltation of self, or for pleasing the masses.
The impious indulgence of self or even of the congregation is of course, in a religious context, to be abjured. But we should also peer past this to the deeper meaning of this emerging musical form. For the growth of the cantorial vocalise in the Baroque era can also be understood as an expression of freedom. The musical growth of the service represents, to the musical cantor and his populist congregational enablers, not mere entertainment but the sheer delight of expanded human possibility.
Tens of millions of people just tuned in to watch humanity’s paragons of athleticism in the Summer Olympics. Though we could easily see these athletes as self-aggrandizing, we more readily find ourselves inspired by their dedication and the wonders they perform. The American gymnast Simone Biles, with both emotional grace and herculean skill, commands the world’s respect with her athletic fortitude. Her accomplishments are a testament not just to herself, but to the human spirit as well.
What then of musical ability? You may not know this, but the arts were actually once part of the Olympics. This parallel between arts and athleticism actually explains much of the mystery of the cantorate. The irksome question “what does the cantor do all day” is ultimately a similar question to “what does an olympic athlete do all day"10 Yet the former always seems more mysterious, while the latter is very clear. The two remain similar in that the cantor must train, in music and voice as in Jewish faith and practice, to model broader human possibility. As my colleague, Cantor Benjamin Warschawski, teaches:
“The function of the artist societally is to venture to the edge of possibility through intense practice and the attempted perfection of their craft. Then they return to us regular folk in the real world and “report” through performance what it’s like going to and living on that edge, saving us the trouble of that journey that most of our lives don’t allow us to explore so deeply.”
This is a theory of both art, and potentially artistic expression in the cantorate, in which the musical specialist offers a glimpse of going deeper — as both religious Jew and as an expressive soul.
But of course the cantorate is different from the olympics or the opera. While the latter two model human ability and even emotion, the former must also model faith. That is why the Maharil, the Shelah, and other cantorial ethicists always mediated musical considerations with those of intention and prayer. The sad consequences of olympic-level cantorial acrobatics were recently observed by the great cantorial master, Jack Mendelson, looking back on the Golden Age of Chazonus [listen from 2:00]:
This struggle, between the striving of humanity through music and sport, and the taming of humanity through piety and faith, is a timeless one. And it is always to be found in the realm of music. The Jewish Baroque saw this struggle intensify, as musical beauty and the lure of human potential bared their horns like bulls in the china shop of piety and halacha. Yet within this struggle is the acknowledgment that music is an immutable sign of life, and even of love — of God, the community, or oneself — whether for ill or for good.
The two moons pull, and the sea roars.
Yet the steersman takes comfort, for above the noise of many waters, above the mighty waves of the sea, is the Lord.
All translations of the Maharil featured here are from David James Berger, “Rabbi Jacob Molin (The Maharil) and a Translation of and Commentary on Selected Chapters from Sefer Maharil,” Masters Thesis (HUC-JIR School of Sacred Music, 2007).
ואין ספק שאריכות בקולות היא אריכות הגלות בעו"ה
Some Jewish readers may find it confusing that the kedushah is considered a “solo” portion of the liturgy; the norm of congregational melodies and responses in the kedushah is an innovation of the past century. I thank my colleagues at Ask the Beit Midrash for their assistance in clarifying this distinction.
“But if their intention is towards the beauty of their melody, [and] to honor the Blessed King of Glory with that which he has graced them with the pleasantness of their voice, then both may realized by way of shortening the music. And it is also better to extend melodies in places other than the great kedushot like nekadesh, na’aritzcha, l’umatam, uvdirvrei kodeshecha, a barchu, and in kaddish that starts “yitgadal.…yitbarach” — for these are sanctifications of the holy, blessed name of greater power than others, and for these holy matters we must have the highest intention. If one extends so much with melodies, sufficient intention is impossible.”
R. Abraham Horowitz, Sefer Yesh Nochlin (Amsterdam: Attias, 1701): 16b.
R. Isaiah Horowitz, ibid. ad loc.
Yehuda Leib Zelichower, Sefer Shirei Yehuda (Amsterdam: Kosman Emerich, 1697), 27a
This suspicion of solipsism is one that always dogs the specialist in the gaze of the generalist. It can be equally applied to rabbis who apply themselves in Torah study to the exclusion of other activities expected by the community.
Thank you many times over. I, who considers myself to be at least a Surface Scholar in comparison to you in matters of Jewish music and Baroque historical references and connections, have learned and keep so delightfully learning of these connections.
Melismas have been an important element in my appreciation of cantorial singing, of implementation into my own playing especially in Doinas, as well as being a little point of humor in my past as years ago my synagogue of 25 years ago employed a new cantor who stretched every word possible in a prayer. My young daughter at that time nudged me at my elbow, showing her dismay at the time it was taking to finish just one “Omeyn” while I enjoyed the artistry. And the congregation took on the task of “How to shorten the service”, also something I admit to appreciating, truth be known.
Please keep your insights coming!