Sylvan Sholom Kalib | |
|---|---|
 Sylvan Sholom Kalib | |
| Born | 24 July 1929 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Music Theorist, Musicologist |
| Notable work | The Musical Tradition of The Eastern European Synagogue |
Sylvan (Sholom) Kalib (born July 24, 1929, Dallas, Texas) is an American music theorist, musicologist, cantor, conductor, pedagogue and composer. [1] His primary work falls broadly into two categories: 1) Schenkerian music theory and 2) the musical tradition of the Eastern European synagogue.
Kalib's parents were immigrants from Ukraine who met and married in Dallas, Texas. His father was a furniture finisher by trade who acquired notable musical skill during his youth in Russia through exposure to his brother's cantorial training. Consequently, Kalib's first musical training was with his father. From him, Kalib acquired not only a solid foundation in rudimentary musicianship but also in the traditions and sanctity of the Eastern European synagogue. Thus, during his youth in Dallas, he mastered the skills of music notation and solfeggio, learned to chant from the Torah, and functioned as a child chazzan. This duality of music theory and music of the synagogue proved to be the core of Kalib's life and work.
Kalib's family moved to Chicago in the summer of 1942 where Sylvan enrolled at the Chicago Jewish Academy. The following year, at age fourteen, he was appointed choir leader for Cantor Abraham Kipper, officiary of Jewish High Holidays at the Chicago Rumanian Synagogue, Shaarei Shamayim. Kalib commenced formal study of Western art music at newly founded Roosevelt University in 1946, where he became the protégé of the eminent Austrian music theorist, and first-generation scholar of Heinrich Schenker, Oswald Jonas. As a result, Kalib's art-music aesthetic and chief academic pursuits largely were shaped by the principles and philosophy of Schenkerian theory. Following formal apprenticeship, Jonas remained Kalib's informal mentor and guided him in determination of his Ph.D. dissertation topic. Jonas suggested Kalib cover essays from Schenker's three yearbooks, Das Meisterwerk in der Musik, and procured copies of the out-of-print volumes, selected the essays he considered most vital and—as neither Schenker nor his wife were alive at the time—garnered permission for Kalib to translate and annotate the essays from Professor Erwin Ratz of Vienna (a nephew of Schenker's widow who inherited the rights to Schenker's works).
Kalib led various synagogue choirs in the Chicago area between ages fourteen and eighteen before assuming his first cantorial post, at age nineteen, in 1949. The following year, and throughout the 1950s, he was under the employ of the Jewish Music Institute of the College of Jewish Studies (now the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies) as instructor of nusach and chazzanut (cantorial art). During this period and beyond, Kalib worked closely with Cantors Todros Greenberg and Joshua Lind, both preeminent cantors of Chicago at that time. From them, Kalib gained further invaluable experience and informal instruction in traditional cantorial as well as synagogue choral repertoire and art. Kalib reciprocated by notating from dictation the entire creative output of Cantor Greenberg, a process which Kalib began at thirteen and continued until Greenberg's death in 1976, and which ultimately resulted in publication of Greenberg's complete works. [2] Similarly, Kalib edited, and prepared for publication, two volumes of works by Cantor Joshua Lind. [3] Kalib gradually acquired a national reputation for exceptionally fine musical arrangements and accompaniments and for his skill in transcribing Ashkenazic cantorial chant as evidenced in the Greenberg and Lind volumes. He was elected conductor of the choral ensemble of The Cantors’ Association of Chicago in 1953, an ensemble consisting of twenty-five of Chicago's preeminent cantors.
Kalib married Goldie Szachter (a Holocaust survivor) in 1954 and had two daughters: Ruth and Vivian. [4] He completed the master's degree in music theory at DePaul University in 1962 with a thesis entitled The Hindemith System: A Critique, and worked as a cantor, choral director and teacher of general music in the Chicago public school system from 1960 to 1969. [5] In 1966, Kalib began the Ph.D. in music theory at Northwestern University, where he introduced Schenkerian analysis to the faculty (and was, incidentally, classmate to Joseph Schwantner, Thom David Mason and Harold Wiesner). Kalib's doctoral dissertation, Thirteen Essays from “Das Meisterwerk in der Musik” by Heinrich Schenker: An Annotated Translation, Volumes I–III (1969–73), was the first translation of Schenker's Yearbooks into English and rapidly became a pillar of English-language scholarship in Schenkerian theory. [6] In a letter to Kalib, Milton Babbitt declared the work to be “referentially clearer than the original,” and it remains among the most effective and important digests in explanation of Schenker's highly complex “prolongational” procedures, “Chord of Nature,” and general views regarding musical analysis and various disciplines of music. Kalib's work was used widely as a textbook for advanced music theory coursework during the 1970s, ’80s and early ’90s—specifically at Columbia, Harvard, Yale and Purdue Universities, and correspondence among prominent academicians of the time illustrates unanimous deference for his expertise and scholarship: [7]
Despite rapidly increasing enthusiasm for Schenker theory in American musical academe during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s—and pending standardization of Schenkerian analysis into the canon of American graduate music theory—Schenker’s highly original theories and analytical techniques were not yet mainstream at the onset of Kalib’s academic career. In fact, as mentioned earlier, it was Kalib who introduced Schenker theory to the faculty of Northwestern University. Later, as “Professor of Music Theory and Literature” at Eastern Michigan University (1969–1999), under the auspice of “independent studies,” a number of students received advanced private instruction from Kalib in Schenker theory, harmony and counterpoint, and toward the close of his thirty-year professorial career, he taught a course specifically slated to offer all E.M.U. graduate music students the benefit of his specialty.
A fortuitous academic consequence of Kalib's mastery was the exceptional commitment to in-depth training in fundamental areas of music theory within the overall comprehensive approach to the subject at Eastern Michigan University during his tenure. These areas included ear-training, figured bass, voice leading, harmony and counterpoint—disciplines that have, to a significant extent, become relegated to the “pedagogy of music theory” in contemporary academic musical parlance. Kalib's choral works include a concert High Holy Day Service, The Days of Awe, and a similar concert work for the Sabbath, The Day of Rest, both for cantor, children's choir and orchestra. [9] Six selections from the latter work were recorded by the Vienna Boys’ Choir in 2001 as part of the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music featuring the preeminent cantor of the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, Naftali Hershtik. [10]
Coinciding with the period of his career in academe, Kalib noted that whereas scholarly interest in Schenkerian theory had grown widespread, in-depth, scholarly documentation of significant areas of the traditional synagogue music of his youth remained unaddressed. Kalib's primary research and scholarly pursuits, therefore, gradually returned to his lifelong passion for the traditional art music of the synagogue. While maintaining cantorial posts in Detroit and Flint during his professorial career, and throughout formal sabbaticals, Kalib undertook musicological research in major Jewish communities in North America and Israel, recording and archiving fading historic cantorial tradition and repertoire in one-hundred-and-twenty taped interviews with forty Eastern European professional and lay cantors. [11]
Kalib formally retired as “Professor Emeritus” from Eastern Michigan University in 1999. In “retirement,” and with renewed resolve, vigor and focus, Kalib resumed work on his landmark musicological tome, The Musical Tradition of The Eastern European Synagogue: a projected five-volume, twenty-book treatise on Eastern European Ashkenazic liturgical music history, repertoire and tradition. Volumes I and II, History and Definition and The Weekday Services, were published by Syracuse University Press in 2002 and 2005 respectively and are lauded by musicologists and ethnomusicologists as definitive texts unprecedented in both scope and focus. [12] Volume III, The Sabbath Services, came out in two parts: IIIA, the Friday Evening Services, in 2017, and IIIB, The Sabbath Day Services, in 2023. [13]
In partnership with his daughter, Ruth Eisenberg, Kalib created the Jewish Music Heritage Project in support of The Musical Tradition of The Eastern European Synagogue (2005). They also formed a corresponding volunteer choir (conducted by Kalib) to record an exhaustive audio archive as companion to the literary work. The choir produced an Inaugural Season compact disc—the first in a set of seventy-five planned recordings—but archival recording ceased in 2007 due to insufficient funds and musical resources. [14]
Schenkerian analysis is a method of analyzing tonal music based on the theories of Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935). The goal is to demonstrate the organic coherence of the work by showing how the "foreground" relates to an abstracted deep structure, the Ursatz. This primal structure is roughly the same for any tonal work, but a Schenkerian analysis shows how, in each individual case, that structure develops into a unique work at the foreground. A key theoretical concept is "tonal space". The intervals between the notes of the tonic triad in the background form a tonal space that is filled with passing and neighbour tones, producing new triads and new tonal spaces that are open for further elaborations until the "surface" of the work is reached.
Igor Gorin was a Ukrainian Jewish baritone and music teacher. In screen credits, he is sometimes known as Charles Igor Gorin.
Pizmonim are traditional Jewish songs and melodies sung with the intention of praising God as well as learning certain aspects of traditional religious teachings. They are sung throughout religious rituals and festivities such as prayers, circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, weddings and other ceremonies.
Josef "Yossele" Rosenblatt was an Ashkenazi chazzan and composer. He was regarded as the greatest cantor of his time.
Abraham Wolf Binder was an American composer.
Jewish music is the music and melodies of the Jewish people. There exist both traditions of religious music, as sung at the synagogue and in domestic prayers, and of secular music, such as klezmer. While some elements of Jewish music may originate in biblical times, differences of rhythm and sound can be found among later Jewish communities that have been musically influenced by location. In the nineteenth century, religious reform led to composition of ecclesiastic music in the styles of classical music. At the same period, academics began to treat the topic in the light of ethnomusicology. Edwin Seroussi has written, "What is known as 'Jewish music' today is thus the result of complex historical processes". A number of modern Jewish composers have been aware of and influenced by the different traditions of Jewish music.
For the purposes of this article, “contemporary” refers to the period from 1967 to the present day, “Jewish” refers to the various streams and traits of Judaism practiced. Many Orthodox Jews use the term “religious” to refer to a strict adherence to Jewish law. For the purposes of this article, “religious” refers to the content and context of the music itself: liturgical or implicit references to the divine.
This article describes the principal types of religious Jewish music from the days of the Temple to modern times.
Nusach Ashkenaz is a style of Jewish liturgy conducted by Ashkenazi Jews. It is primarily a way to order and include prayers, and differs from Nusach Sefard and Baladi-rite prayer, and still more from the Sephardic rite proper, in the placement and presence of certain prayers.
The modern Reform Cantorate is seen as a result of developments that took place during the 19th century, largely in Europe. The process continued to evolve in America following the emigration of German Reform Jews towards the end of the century.
Herman Wohl was a Jewish–American composer closely associated with the American Yiddish Theatre.
Adele Terese Katz was a music teacher and music theorist, and writer. She was the first person to publish English-language writings about Schenkerian analysis.
Oswald Jonas was a music theorist and musicologist, and student of Heinrich Schenker. Despite Schenker's conservative nationalist views Jonas was an admirer of Karl Kraus.
Julius Mombach was a 19th-century English synagogue composer. Tunkel (2012) regards him as "the most important of the composers of synagogue music in the Anglo-Jewish tradition of the 19th Century" whilst Elton (2003) doesn't even restrict this assessment to England.
Neil W. Levin is a Professor Emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and since 1993 has served as the Artistic Director of the Milken Archive of Jewish Music.
Ernst Oster was a German pianist, musicologist, and music theorist. A specialist in the use of Schenkerian Analysis, he was the English translator of Heinrich Schenker's final work, Free Composition.
Ben Zion Shenker (1925–2016) was a world-renowned American Hasidic composer and hazzan (cantor), associated with the Modzitz hasidic dynasty. Shenker was born in the heyday of the American hazzan. He became interested in the art as a child, and was performing on radio by his early teens. Soon after, he became close to Rabbi Shaul Taub, the Holocaust-surviving Modzitz Grand Rabbi, who was known for his mystical Hasidic compositions. He dedicated much of his life to recording and publishing the large stock of pre-war Modzitz songs, as well as Taub's post-war work. Shenker created a music label, Neginah, for the purpose of recording those songs, and himself became a composer of hundreds Modzitz moded songs.
In Judaism, musical nusach refers the musical style or tradition of a community, particularly the chant used for recitative prayers such as the Amidah.
Timothy L. Jackson is an American professor of music theory who has spent most of his career at the University of North Texas and specializes in music of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, Schenkerian theory, politics and music. He is the co-founder of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. In 2020, he became controversial for editing a special issue of that journal containing articles criticizing Philip Ewell's plenary talk "Music Theory's White Racial Frame".
Jack A. Kessler (1944–2024) was an American hazzan, musician, and educator. After working as a cantor for synagogues for 20 years, he organized several musical ensembles including Atzilut, a group of Jewish and Arab musicians, which toured venues around the world including the United Nations. He also adopted the practice of chanting trop for haftarah and other biblical texts in both Hebrew and English to make the text more vivid and alive for synagogue worshippers.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
