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Cellist Steven Isserlis onstage with Philharmonia conductor Nicholas McGegan during a rehearsal
CULTURE > MUSIC

Concert halls and ghettos — where Jewish and


non-Jewish music blended
BY ROB GLOSTER | FEBRUARY 9, 2018

I n order to understand the influence of Jewish worship on the world of music, it’s necessary to suspend the
normal interpretation of two key words — “ghetto” and “synagogue.”

That’s according to Francesco Spagnolo, curator of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley, who
provided much of the context for “Jewish Songlines,” a multimedia presentation by the Philharmonia Baroque
Orchestra & Chorale last night at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.

The sold-out show, which featured cellist Steven Isserlis and mezzo-soprano Heidi Waterman, was the second of this
year’s two Bay Area programs in the PBO’s Jews & Music Initiative. The first, in December, featured performances of
George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Joseph And His Brethren.”

The PBO, a San Francisco-based ensemble that performs on period instruments and focuses mostly on music
composed before 1830, is the only U.S. orchestra with a series dedicated to Jews and music.

The event at the CJM drew direct links between the sounds traditionally heard in synagogues and the music of
Jewish and non-Jewish composers. The similarities are so striking that the Nazis mistakenly labeled as Jewish the
French composer Maurice Ravel, whose “Deux melodies hebraiques” (Two Hebrew melodies) was played at the
concert by Isserlis and a 17-piece Philharmonia ensemble.
Magnes curator Francesco Spagnolo with Philaharmonia conductor Nicholas McGegan
Spagnolo said ghettos are traditionally understood as places where specific groups, usually minorities such as Jews,
are segregated from the rest of the population. And he said synagogues usually are seen as private spaces for Jewish
worship.

Instead, he said, the ghettos of Renaissance Italy were often places where Jews and non-Jews mingled and shared
influences.

“The ghettos were places also of inclusion. The gates of ghettos were guarded at night, but people snuck through,”
he told the audience. “Non-Jews would sneak through at night to go to synagogues to watch the Jews being Jewish.”

And the synagogue actually “has instead always been a porous space of cultural exchange,” Spagnolo said in the
program notes for the show. Synagogues reflected the musical cultures of their surroundings and, in turn, were
reflected in the outside world.

The sounds of Jewish services in places like Venice and Amsterdam moved from synagogues to Jewish homes, and
eventually to the non-Jewish world. Gentiles such as the 18th-century Italian composer Benedetto Marcello
interviewed cantors and rabbis to learn about their melodies, Spagnolo said.

Kabbalah-inspired sounds, which mixed Hebrew texts with European aesthetics, often became popular outside
synagogues. In one aria sung by Waterman at the CJM, Marcello wrote the first three lines in Hebrew — from right
to left — and the rest in Italian.

“Why would somebody go into the synagogue to collect this?” Spagnolo asked. “Marcello says he was looking for
musical antiquity. [Listeners] expected to hear what Jesus heard in his lifetime.”

Rob Gloster
Rob Gloster is J.'s senior writer. He can be reached at rob@jweekly.com.

Tags: Magnes, Jewish music, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, Baroque

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