Re: Church Music

Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 00:15:20 -0400 (EDT)
Newsgroups: rec.music.opera
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From: email-address-deleted (EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque))
>Jeffrey Snider wrote:
>My point was actually a simple one: that
> church music and opera are related, if not
> dependant on each other. As less and less
> classical music is performed in church (and
> school for that matter) the fewer young
> people will have the "trained" sound in their
> ears.
>Perhaps this is cyclical, and we'll go back
> before long, but I fear we are on the losing
> side in this battle. ---------------------------
>It's not just Christian churches, either -
>I attended a Bar Mitzvah in a Reformed
> temple yesterday. Not only was the cantor a
> woman, but the music bore no resemblance
> to what I thought was "traditional" Jewsih
> liturgy - it was the same common, garden
> variety musical pablum you hear in other
> "brands" of relgious services nowadays, too.
> (The woman had a rather pleasant, trained
> voice, but her cantorial duties certainly didn't
> make any demands upon it.) What you describe can be heard at www.wqxr.com on most Fridays, 5:30
PM, ET. The female cantors engaged at this Evening Service of the Temple
Emanu-El, are almost always lyric-sopranos of notably fine quality. The music seems of recent composition, and while *very* pleasant, has
little likeness to the virtuoso "Characteristically Hebraic" cantorial
melodies more frequently heard even a single generation ago. *Those* passages, with their ornamentations to rival Rossini and
Bellini, can still be enjoyed in the recordings of the art's legendary
exponents, - including Rosenblatt, Kwartin, Oisher, the Koussevitskys,
Peerce, Tucker, and (for a while) Schmidt and Jadlowker. Peerce's and Tucker's cantorials may be the most readily available.
The music and such voices, combined with their fervor, can be mildly
described as *dazzling*.
LT